When he returned her to Sereva’s side, her cousin wanted to know everything Emron had said to her. “I think it was ‘Would you dance with me once more?’ and ‘That was very pleasant,’ ” Kit recounted. “Neither of us appear to be talkers.”

“Well, he’s a nice man,” Sereva said again. “Maybe I should have him and his cousin over to dinner one evening.”

The whole possibility that she could ever be married off to some eligible blueskin beau, discarded though he may have been by someone far more desirable, seemed so remote to Kit that she didn’t even protest. Instead, she wanted to know exactly what information she was allowed to give out about her current employment. “What I meant to ask you,” she began, but did not have a chance to finish her sentence. The whole room grew taut with incredulity; the force of three hundred stares turned Kit’s head toward the door.

“Oh, no,” she said involuntarily.

“Unbelievable,” Sereva breathed. “Aliria Carvon is wild as they come, but what an insult to Corzehia!”

“That poor man,” Kit said.

She received Sereva’s scorching look. “That poor man? What is he doing here? How dare he walk into a house like this?”

“How dare he—” For a moment, Kit’s anger was so hot that she felt it sizzle past all her bones. She paused, pressed her lips together, tried to be rational. “She invited him. How would it have occurred to him to come here on his own? How could she do such a cruel thing?”

Sereva waved her hands as if to say, I don’t want to argue about this. “This is real trouble,” she said in a worried voice. “I can’t imagine—This will ruin the whole evening for Corzehia.”

“Maybe they’ll leave early,” Kit said.

“That would be best.”

But the miscast couple stayed for the next hour, and the next. Everyone watched them even when they appeared not to. Even as Kit’s hand was solicited for three more dances by young men whose names she could not recall, she could not completely drag her attention away from the gulden man and the indigo woman. How had he learned these indigo dances? For these were not performed in Geldricht. Aliria Carvon must have taught him over the past week or so; she must have been planning to bring him to the party for some time. Which made her actions now even more reprehensible.

Kit felt herself growing more and more tense as Aliria Carvon spent less and less time with her consort. She knew the temper of gulden men. They did not like to be ignored or ridiculed, and they were unlikely to take either action lightly. But what would he do, could he do, in an indigo stronghold such as this? He could make a scene, of course, but there were plenty of servants to throw him out and prevent him from growing violent.