Free Elvenblood by Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton

between then and now.
    He gestured to her abruptly, and she managed to make her way through the crush to his side, still, as far as she could tell, without anyone noticing that she was there.
    He took her arm as soon as she was near enough, and pulled her through a gap between two of the other guests. She found herself standing beside him, and facing two men, one young, one very old—she knew that the second was
very
old because he actually showed the signs of age. No elven lord ever did that until he was near his own end. No matter what the humans were led to believe, elves were not immortal—though to short-lived humans, they probably seemed that way. Both men were engrossed in conversation with three ladies, one of them the vivacious Katarina an Vines, who was smiling raptly up into the younger man's face.
    "Lord Ardeyn, Lord Edres, may I present my daughter, Sheyrena?" Lord Tylar said into the first break in the conversation.
    The older man smiled into her eyes; the younger bowed over her hand without looking at her at all. Lord Ardeyn's attention was fixed entirely on Katarina to the point of ignoring everything else—not that Rena could blame him. Why would anyone even look at
her
, when Katarina was in the same room?
    "Charmed," Lord Ardeyn said absently, then resumed his conversation with Katarina, who had no need of cosmetics or jewels to enhance
her
beauty.
    "I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance, my dear," Lord Edres said, taking her hand as quickly as Lord Ardeyn had dropped it. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he smiled at her. "I hope you will enjoy our little fete." He actually
kissed
her hand, as Rena blushed with confusion, then released it and turned to her father.
    "You have a most charming child, Tylar," the old man said, transferring his smile from the daughter to the father. "Sweet, modest, fresh and innocent I am sure she will make a good match for you."
    That was clearly a dismissal, and Lord Tylar was not too dense to know it
    "That is my hope, my lord," Lord Tylar replied, and with a tug on Rena's arm, took her out of the circle of Ardeyn's intimates.
    She cringed inside, waiting to hear his immediate censure, but to her immense relief, Lord Tylar was not ready to take her head off for not captivating the guest of honor.
    "That went better than I expected," he said quietly, as he continued to draw her along to some new destination. Fortunately for her neck,
he
was important enough that people noticed her trailing train, and did not step on it. "Lord Edres seems to like you. I suppose you must remind him of his daughter."
    Oh, charming, I remind him of a half-wit, who can't even dress herself without help.
    "I didn't really hope that Ardeyn would pay you any attention; it seems that other girl was one of the first to arrive, and he hasn't left her side all evening." Lord Tylar made a sound that for any other man might have been taken as a small sigh of regret. "Well, I can't fault his taste. You're hardly any competition for
that
beauty."
    Even though she had thought that herself, it hurt to hear it from her father. Now she blushed again, but this time with shame.
    "Never mind, there are plenty of other young lords here, and I haven't seen one of them that would make a bad alliance." He stopped, and gave her a brusque push in the direction of another group, this time of dancers. "Go on, get over there, let yourself be seen, talk to people. You know what you have to do, or you should by now."
    With those gentle words, he left her, striding purposefully after another knot of men with that indefinable air of importance about them, leaving her standing stupidly at the edge of the group of dancers.
    This time someone
did
step on her train. Fortunately, she wasn't moving.
    "Oh, bother, I've gone and done something stupid again!" the young man said, a little thickly, and she immediately suspected he'd been drinking too much. He managed to get himself off the train without tangling his feet in