Free Elvenblood by Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton Page A

it, and turned toward her, giving her a better look at him.
    He wasn't very handsome, and his eyes had the sort of vagueness about them that she tended to associate with too much to drink.
    In other words
—
he's the same version of Lord Ardeyn that I am of Katarina. A bad, blurred copy, and rather flawed
.
    "Excuse me awfully, would you? Terribly sorry and all that. I'm a clumsy brute, or so they all keep telling me." He laughed a little, a high titter, and she realized at that moment that it wasn't the wine that was making him silly—he was that way all on his own.
    Correction. On his copy of Lord Ardeyn, they forgot to pour in the brains as well.
    "I don't suppose you'd care to have a dance with a clumsy brute now, would you?" he asked hopefully, with another titter for his own "cleverness."
    "Perhaps if you'd loop up that tail thing, I wouldn't get tangled up in it again, and we could have a pleasant turn or two around the floor, eh?" He stared at her hopefully, and added, "They say I'm a silly ass, but they all admit I'm a good dancer."
    Under other circumstances, she might have declined his awkward invitation, with an awkward refusal of her own. But she felt rather sorry for him—here he was, quite probably dragged here by
his
father as she had been dragged by hers, and for the same reason. He was supposed to be making the acquaintance of eligible females with good alliance potential.
    In fact, it has to be harder for him! I just have to stand here, properly modest, and hope someone notices me
. He
has to make advances
.
    So she smiled kindly at him, and his dull eyes lit up with pathetic cheer as she nodded.
    He must have been turned down an awful lot this evening to be so happy to dance with me. I'm not exactly a prize beauty.
    His name, it transpired, was V'keln Gildor er-Lord Kyndreth; scion of one of the older and more powerful Houses. And he was probably quite a disappointment to his noble High Lord father. Everything he said to her about his "lord father" indicated that the patriarch of the family had more than once wished there were some way he could prove poor Gildor was someone else's offspring. She felt so sorry for him that she even danced with him again, several times, and let him bring her wine and a few refreshments.
    He wasn't a really good dancer, although he wasn't a bad one, either. "Passable"; that was what her own dancing master would have called him. He didn't know anything but the most old-fashioned of dances, either, which left them standing on the sidelines watching, more often than not. He tried to make clever conversation, but he was, unfortunately, just as dull and stupid as she had feared he was. Still, he was company of a sort, and be seemed to like the tame animals—though he kept talking about how exciting it would be to hunt them instead of petting them. And as long as she was with a male, she was obeying Lord Tylar's orders, and he certainly couldn't take exception to
that
.
    Finally, though, he spotted an older man making his way purposefully toward them, and said, with a trace of apprehension, "Oh, curse it. There's my lord father, and it looks as if he wants me. It's been grand—"
    And he was off like a called dog, bumbling his way through the crowd as if summoned to his father's side by a whistle, without another word to her.
    She sighed, and worked her way back through a thin crowd of onlookers toward the edge of the illusory "forest." Evidently her lack of charms—or perhaps, lack of status—was noticeable even to a dolt like Gildor. He hadn't even offered to introduce her to his father, which probably meant he didn't think she was worth introducing to him.
    Well, the rabbits and birds didn't care if she looked like a wax doll in an absurd costume—and while she stood here, in the shadows of the overhanging boughs, there wasn't anyone treading on her train.
    If this had been some other occasion, she might even have managed to enjoy herself. The birds and animals were very