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The dance floor is quite a bit more cramped than the spatious and cold floors of the castles and halls of the Continent. It is all you can do to keep bumping into other couples. But you are waltzing in an airship at thousands of feet in the air - so you are prepared to let some things slide.
*Gotsimhimmel, he is a good dancer too.*
He leads the waltz with all the skills of a seasoned veteran. You yourself are not a slouch - you began your dance lessons when you were five years old. This was one battlefield where you may yet have an upper hand on him. But you decide to make a few wrong steps, and let him guide you through them. Men like being put in charge over trivial things.
No. Something doesn't add up. He is shrewd and socially intelligent enough to know how this necklace will be seen. You refuse to consider the possibility he has been blinded by ... ugh... love.
Besides, how long must have he been planning this? The necklace was in the package sent by the ruby merchant, there's no doubt about that. So he received it just a few days before you embarked the Empress. When you think of it, that was about the time he made up the abrupt scheme to launch the leisure cruise. And before that, you'd spent - what? Three or maybe four suppers together, and that one time he took you and his yes-men hunting?
There must be a lot of pretty ladies and opportunities. You are, in fact, somewhat of a spinster by Dominican standards (at the ripe old age of twenty.) Some merchant sons have been known to buy a title through marriage, but if so, you are quite certain he could do much better than a destitute baroness hailing from the mountains half the Continent away. Even so, the law of the land in Sternbergen dictated he wouldn't own the title. But his - your - children would.
*Don't be an idiot, Clarissa. He gives you one stupid rock and you are already planning children.*
