She even had decided opinions on Aliria Carvon and her unexpected guest. For she and Nolan, like everyone else in the room, had kept a surreptitious eye on these late arrivals during the past two hours, and watched as Aliria seemed to grow more and more repentant of her outrageous act.

“She’s going to dump him,” Julitta said to Nolan after their second dance together. “Watch her.”

“She can’t. It would be too rude. She brought him here, and he doesn’t know a soul in the room.”

“She will. She’s overstepped, and she knows it, and she’ll do anything to get back in the fold.”

Nolan glanced down at her curiously, for that sounded like the voice of bitter experience. “Well, I’m sure she’s sorry, but—”

“Watch her,” Julitta said again.

Sure enough, twice in the next hour, Aliria left the guldman standing alone on the fringes of the room while she paused to chat with reluctant friends. Aliria never seemed less than animated and talkative, but the women she spoke to made cool and brief replies. Each time she left him, the guldman stood where he had been placed, arms folded across his chest, eyes impassively watching the crowd that made every attempt not to look at him.

“I wonder what he’s thinking,” Nolan said once.

“How to punish her,” was Julitta’s soft reply.

That had caught Nolan completely by surprise. He glanced down at her again. “Really? If I were in his situation, I would be wishing I could die or grow invisible.”

She smiled a little sadly. “That’s what you or I would be thinking. But a guldman has his own honor.”

Nolan caught himself before he said “Really?” again, and tried to imagine Colt in such a situation. Yes, definitely, he would not melt quietly into the wallpaper. Thinking about Colt here made Nolan a little nervous.

“Maybe someone should get him out of here before something happens,” he said.

Julitta shrugged. “Maybe.”

But Aliria was not ready to abandon her companion yet. She returned to him after the second extended absence, smiling up at him as if she had great news. The cool, considering look on his face did not change. He allowed her to lead him to the buffet table, and they picked among the offerings for their midnight meal. No one sat at their table while they dined. The guldman ate with a hearty appetite, but Aliria merely played with her food and seemed to lose some of that gaiety she had striven for all evening.

“She’s going to dump him,” Julitta sang in Nolan’s ear. “Not very long now.”