As suspected, this oath does very little to relieve that sort of strange mock-good humor Wysteria has adopted in place of frowning. Indeed for a moment it seems almost as if she might well and truly actually scowl at him while they stand there at the edge of the Kirkwall docks, the sunlight all pale and the morning's clamor of tradesman and fishermen and merchant sailors and what have you already wound to their full volume.

But that flicker of distemper is there and gone again as quickly as it had first manifested. She widens her smile by a half degree to compensate for the failure.

"Which is a fine theory, but I think you and I both know that I'm far too invested in the subject to turn a blind eye to it. I swear to tou that I will endeavor to do my very best to ignore your presence at the margins of dances entirely, Mister Ellis, but surely you mustn't think me invincible as all that. And when I inevitably notice, because you are my friend and I care for you, what would you rather have of me? I will either be miserable that I can't be a good partner to you in my current state, or furiously jealous at whoever gets to take my place after all this effort I've put into bringing you up! At least if we were to make a sort of game of it, then it might still be something we—"

No, that's too tender a bruise on her pride to push on. Wysteria veers away from it.

"If you really truly don't enjoy the dancing, then I won't insist you do it. But I will be very guilty if mine quitting means you do too."