Y espina en el corazon?

He ended the verse with an accompanying flourish miming the pain of the alleged thorn in the region of his heart. He followed the pantomime with what he hoped was a disarming grin.

The purple vision swirled to a halt with a yip of astonishment. Instead of fleeing at once, as he feared she might, she held her ground. She adopted an aggressive posture. A cross face stared up at him in challenge. This was a girl who could deliver a thorn to the heart or a kick to the privates, he judged. If he’d been down there at her level, he would have checked her for concealed catapults or half bricks.

“Hey! Who do you think you’re calling a whore?” she wanted to know.

His grin would appear to be losing its potency.

“Oh, I say, I do beg your pardon, Miss—er, I had no intention of—”

“Then why use that word to get my attention? Percanta—that’s what you called me! It’s Spanish. And it’s not at all polite!”

“Oh, I don’t know. Um, What about ‘naughty minx,’ then? Shall we settle for that? I don’t happen to have a Spanish dictionary on me at the moment.”

“You wouldn’t find it there, anyway. I’ve looked. It’s too rude for inclusion. I had to ask Carlos. He learned it in the conventillos of Buenos Aires, he says.”

Redfyre decided not to interpret this as an invitation to wander off in dubious company on a word hunt down a South American backstreet and fell silent. They watched each other for a moment, ill at ease, seeking an acceptable means of disconnection from the situation and finding none, rather like a pair of terriers circling each other when token meaningless growling will go on until one backs off. Redfyre decided he was the clumsy oaf who had caused the offence and he would be the one to roll over in submission.

Before he could apologise, she decided to throw another log onto the fire of her glowing anger. “If you’re not going to arrest me for disturbing the peace of the Sabbath, Mr. Copper, you can sling your hook and let me get on with my practice. Good Lord! Is there no corner of Cambridge where I can have a bit of privacy to polish my corrida garabito? Some of us have May balls coming up, you know, and a girl has to have something more adventurous than the waltz and the fox-trot in her repertoire these days. I’m paying a fortune for these tango lessons, and I’m not a natural dancer. I have to work hard and practice where I can. I thought I was quite safe here, halfway between the dead”—she gestured in the direction of the graveyard—“and the dying.” Another flick of the hand towards the college was accompanied by a derisory sniff.