The young officer who’d just danced a gavotte with Adele wore a costume including at least six major color elements, most of which clashed with those nearest them in the ensemble. Apparently Kostroma’s Homo militaris was even less restrained in his notions of attractive garb than was his civilian counterpart.
The Kostroman stepped back, made a full formal bow, and said, “You have given me a great honor, Ms. Mundy. You dance divinely.”
He was quite serious. The pack of his gaily dressed fellows poising to beg her company for the next dance proved that beyond even Adele’s doubt. She couldn’t have been more surprised if someone informed her she’d been chosen to replace Guarantor Porra.
“No more for a moment,” she called loudly to forestall the rush of insistent Kostromans. “I really need to stand for a moment and have something to drink.”
That was the wrong thing to have said: she hadn’t specified water and the herd of naval officers was already thundering toward the buffet. She’d have twenty-odd glasses of punch pressed on her in a moment. The sip she’d taken earlier convinced her that the fluid would make a satisfactory paint stripper but had no other proper human purpose.
“Your escort is a lucky man, Ms. Mundy,” said the boy who’d just danced with her. She wished she’d caught his name. He’d apparently decided that he didn’t have a chance at another dance so he might as well keep her company until the punch arrived. “Who is he, may I ask?”
“Lieutenant Leary of the Cinnabar Navy,” Adele said. Her eyes automatically searched for Daniel as she spoke his name, but the chance of finding someone dressed normally in this assemblage of peacocks was vanishingly slight.
Her own Bryce-style party costume was a beige bodystocking with ruffs at the neck, wrists and ankles. She’d thought it might be extreme for Kostroma. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Of course, she’d also thought she’d be a wallflower here as she’d invariably been when she attended the frequent social functions at the Academy. Wrong again.
“Ah, of course,” said the young officer. His fellows were bearing down on him and Adele again, elbowing one another in universal determination to be the first to offer her liquor that she wouldn’t touch her lips to. “We provincials can’t compete with you sophisticates from the great empires, can we?”
The crowd of Kostroman officers arrived, pushing with increasing enthusiasm as each shouted his particular merits. It was as bad as the mob of water taxis that had greeted Adele when she stepped off the transport that brought her to Kostroma.
“Gentlemen!” she cried in a tone like that her mother used to correct sluggish servants; democracy wasn’t an ideal the Mundys pursued within their own home. “Step back, if you will!”
Several of them jostled her, pushed by others behind them, and Adele’s former dancing partner had a glass of punch emptied over his back. Still, she hadn’t been crushed against the wall behind her. That was the most likely result had she not started acting like a Mundy of Chatsworth.
“Please!” she continued in the same ringing voice. “I wish to continue my conversation with my friend here. Everyone who accepts the social conventions held on Cinnabar and Pleasaunce will permit us to do so.”
She was taking a cue from the youth’s comment about sophistication. It worked like a charm. The circle around them couldn’t have widened faster if she’d announced she had leprosy.
The reason that Adele had this unwonted and utterly unexpected popularity was the fact she came from Bryce, one of the core worlds of the Alliance, and she knew the dance steps current there. That made her very nearly unique in this gathering. Though one of the more prestigious Founder’s Day parties, the Admiral’s Ball didn’t attract recent visitors from “the greater empires” as her partner had put it.
A number of the officers’ consorts were attractive—and probably highly paid—imports from Cinnabar and the Alliance, but none of them had been on their home worlds as recently as Adele. They looked daggers at her as they memorized her movements.
Adele smiled coldly. While she’d learned the steps as a necessary part of her academic routine, she lacked the interest to have become skillful at them. In this assemblage she literally couldn’t put a foot wrong: her mistakes were assumed to be subtle variations. A dozen whores were already determinedly trying to copy her errors.