Dominic + Iseut // Storyboarding
Who: Dominic and Iseut
When: Friday 3rd Feb (Masque)
Where: House Sabreme
Ratings & Warnings: None.
Dominic peered through the slits of his mask. Beyond the kohl-black rims of the raven's oddly shaped eyes, he beheld a riot of colliding colour; the nobility of Tyrol was out in force. From glittering gold to cerise, magenta to turquoise, the mess of rainbow hues went on as far as the eye could see, and for the first time in his life, Dominic exulted in every single mismatched shade. Where before he might have used his anonymity to purse his lips and whisper mischievous nothings to Paz, tonight he forgot all of his supposedly superior fashion sense in favour of being grateful that he could see at all.
Since Pearle's assessment, he had gone from strength to strength. Her professional name had lent weight to his claims, and Belief had taken care of the rest. It was not yet perfect; he did not have the sharp lines that he had enjoyed prior to the accident, nor did he have the easy collection of specific detail, but already he was able to put face to name, title to object, and fantasise about when he could pick up a paintbrush once more.
A flurry of sober browns caught his eye. Amongst the bevy of bedecked peacocks, the duller, quieter colours of a falcon were easily enough to capture Dominic's interest, and as with most things lately, it started to take shape as a picture in his mind. He tilted his head a little to the left, considering composition. He wondered if he could be so bold as to talk to the creature for a while, see if he could spend the extra minutes garnering the details he had yet to observe. Anonymity gave him courage, and he politely stepped up to the mark as the falcon made her rounds.
"My lady," he said. "Are you enjoying the masque so far?" It was a banal question for sure, but what else was there?
Iseut was bored. She was trying to behave in a manner that was appropriate, which meant that she was not hiding against a wall or in a corner somewhere, but it was deathly boring. People were discussing things that only they cared about in the first place. It was almost easy to tell who was who by what they were talking about; it would be easier, she thought as she walked and tried to look like she was actively engaged in something or other, if she talked to people more.
Which did not matter because she did not truly care about telling who anyone was.
None of which could be spoken aloud, although she was distracted enough she nearly told the truth to the person dressed as a raven when he asked her.
"Yes. Thank you, my lord." She curtseyed in response, unsure as to who this was and preferred to play it safe. "Has it been an enjoyable masque for you?"
The raven slid his eyes this way and that, affecting a slightly conspiratorial air. "It's a trifle dull," he said, quietly. "Not enough dancing, a little too much politics." There was no lack of people to dance with, to be sure, but as Dominic was still somewhat removed from the central core of the social elite, it was no surprise that the young churchman was able to spend the bulk of his time at the masque in self-reflection - or even external reflection. He brought his eyes back to the falcon and the detail of her mask. Anonymity brought courage, he reminded himself. For now he was safe from all censure so long as he maintained equilibrium and manners. He could see again! Life was too short.
"You are fond of hawking, my lady? Is that too wide a guess to make?"
Was that an invitation to dance? It was a subtle one, and one she could ignore until he was more overt. It would be rude to say that there was too much dancing as well as too many politics, but she nodded in agreement. "It seems to be a common aspect of many parties."
The anonymity of the masks was still not occurring to Iseut; she was predictable and anyone that knew her could imagine she'd go as a falcon, a horse, or a dog. However, she was more than familiar with the fact people recognized her name more often than they recognized her.
"Yes. I suppose it is a logical conclusion." She glanced at the crowd of colors, feathers, and opulence given physical form. Her brown was almost striking in comparison.
Perhaps that was why her stepmother had allowed her to wear what she preferred.
"Do you enjoy hawking?"
He hadn't been extending that invitation, and so her restraint saved them both a measure of embarrassment. It was thus far beyond Dominic's scope to so much as approach a potentially strange female, let alone ask her to engage in activities often seen as flirtatious. He did, however, quite like dancing. Something about the courtly patterns appealed to more than one of his artistic senses; he liked the idea of swirling gowns and straight, yet loose shoulders; he enjoyed the general good humour that dancing procured, and even more so the uniform of it, with mistakes or not. He had not danced even once since coming to Tyrol, he realised, and wondered when life had changed so much that it had precluded their presence at court so thoroughly. Here, the fact he was the third son, not the first, seemed to matter a great deal more. He considered it all to the good that he had chosen to stay with the Civitates.
"I've never been," he admitted. For all his admiration of birds as a species, Dominic was somewhat repelled by the idea of willfully sending one creature after another, nature be damned its food chains. "But I do have a predilection towards birds." Probably obvious, given his mask. Possibly the wrong thing to say, given she too had taken on an avian guise. He resisted the urge to chew his lip. Anything he followed up with would be even more trite, and so he held his tongue.
"Ah." That was odd; Iseut had not met many nobles who did not enjoy hawking or hunting, and it was supposed to only be those of noble birth here tonight. "Do you hunt, then?" Perhaps it was the difference between the sports.
His outfit was more shocking than hers was. Black made a greater impression among colors than brown, which were easy to fade in even among the bright colors of the masque. His was like to be on purpose, much more than hers was.
"Not actively." He had attended in his time, but more to ride out the horse than to take part in the grisly business itself. Dominic did not qualm about killing to eat, but if at all possible he would prefer not to be the one to do it. Some would call that cowardly, others gentle. Neither word was particularly complimentary. "My siblings are fond of it enough to make up for my lapse, I believe." These days he could probably use the excuse of being an Initiate, he realised. Maybe later, when they were not maintaining their anonymous guises. Instead, he lifted a pale finger to the tip of his mask. "The Raven eats things that others have killed," he murmured.
"Killed and abandoned when they are finished with it." Carrion. Iseut tilted her head slightly at him. "You have a very striking outfit."
Was he an Other? It was possible, she supposed. It seemed to be something common among all groups now. They had even gotten into the Citadel, who were absolutely against it. Nobility ... well. That one was obvious. Iseut very carefully did not look around to see if she could find Lady Cataline in the crowd.
"I took it under advice," he replied, lightly. "Without trying to be forward, you and your bird stand apart from the rest quite beautifully." It was hard for a man to deliver such a compliment without making it sound as though he were being either inappropriate or clumsy, and Dominic was trying to avoid both. He liked the simpicity of the falcon, enjoyed that she seemed to wear it well amongst a flock of more brashly decorated competitors. "I admit, I was mentally putting you and your surroundings to canvas a few moments ago."
Iseut blinked. That was not the reaction she had been expecting. Even in the vague realization that her brown was singular, it didn't occur to her that someone else would consider it such.
Or find it a positive thing.
"You enjoy painting?" She asked, after a few moments of silence. She could not think of anything else to say in response to that, and it would have been ruder to let it keep going in silence as she considered it.
When she finally spoke again, Dominic was relieved. She hadn't walked off or particularly acted in an offended manner, but the lack of response had led him to worry he'd caused it anyway. He took a careful sip from his flute of wine before he spoke again. "I'm a little out of practice," he admitted. It had been several months since he'd laid even pencil to paper, let alone the precious pigments of his palette. He was vaguely afraid to, concerned that it wouldn't be as he remembered - or worse, that he had never held any particular skill at all. He restrained a fidget. "But yes, I do very much. Is it a fondness of yours?"
Iseut shook her head. "I learned, but it never interested me enough to practice in order to become proficient." She preferred the outdoors, and the difficulty of putting what was in her mind onto a paper was more annoying than it had any right to be. "What do you paint?"
"Stories." It was a response that lacked, both in detail and explanation, but Dominic was hard-pressed to know how to explain what it was he truly painted without giving away painful secrets. "I suppose you could say I paint histories, more than stories... but anything, really. Anything that strikes me." The Raven offered a slight, but enthusiastic smile, the hint of it visible below the mask. "What do you do instead?"
"Stories?" Iseut tilted her head at him again. "How does one paint stories?" Everyone else talked of painting pictures or portraits. Stories was a new concept.
"Hawking, hunting. I go riding a lot, although it is more difficult in winter." Plus many things she did not enjoy doing, such as these parties, but she figured that could go unsaid.
Dominic pursed his lips, and then turned away from the falcon slightly, urging her with a gesture to take in the rest of the room. "Look at them," he said. "We don't know who they are, but by their body language, their dress, their mannerisms, we can guess what they are doing." A subtle nod of his head. "The lady in the cerise feathers is not enjoying the party so far. She is moody and her shoulders reflect the sulk. Why?" A turn of his foot, and he nodded towards a man in blue quitting the scene. "He has offended her in some way, perhaps she fancied herself his favourite only to find out he has chosen another." The raven mask tilted as Dominic cocked his head. "Why did the falcon choose an outfit so very different from the rest of the scene?" he queried, quietly. "Does she believe herself drab, or did she realise the rest would blend together in motley array and choose to set herself apart?"
Oh. Iseut wondered if the rest of the world could read people like this. She never could, and never thought she would be able to. It made for an interesting story, but-
The falcon. Her? She looked at him. Was she drab? No. Practical, yes. Aronines were not prone to high displays of color or wearing their jewelry like it alone could confer high status. Even her stepmother had adjusted to that, although her own dress as a swan as as strikingly daring as his was as a black raven.
"I did not think of it either way." She answered, after thinking.
"You must have at least a little," he countered. "Otherwise you would not have had the foresight to pick out a mask that matched, or you would not have come wearing one at all." His eyes, as pale a green as to still bear the name, met hers, earnest and without mockery. "Please tell me why you chose the falcon," he said. "Otherwise I'll have to invent you a story, and I wouldn't want to be wrong. Not in this."
Because my step-mother picked it out for me. Iseut shook her head lightly - that was not a truth she was willing to admit.
"I like falcons. My Artemis, my Lanner Falcon, was a birthday gift when I was ten years old and after my father was delighted to learn I enjoyed the outdoors." Had she picked her dress and mask, that was the reason why. Perhaps, she wondered, her step-mother was finally realizing that it was no use to make her what she was not and preferred to attire her in what she would like?
"I only thought of what I liked, not what it would look like or what others would think."
Dominic nodded, tipping his glass in salute. "Better," he said. "Perhaps I can hazard, then, that it is not just in clothing that you separate yourself from the rest. You like to do things that other girls might not? The hawking, the hunting, the hobbies that take you away from the bower?" He had rarely been so enthusiastic and forward with a woman in his life. The mask, he thought, was a liberator.
Iseut blinked at him. "I've never considered it like that."
Was it true? Her stepmother abhorred most of it. Both of her aunts rode, but neither hawked or hunted. Very few of her Aronine cousins did either. Her father had told her most of her life that her mother hated both riding and hunting. Adelle hunted, Iseut knew, but she didn't know how far she went into that interest and how much was because it was merely expected.
It was a disconcerting thought.
"It is rare, to enjoy that even though I'm a woman?"
The rarity of it was a possibility. Certainly the bulk of women that Dominic knew took only superficial pleasure in being surrounded by animals and men, limiting their outside exploits to garden walks and occasional rides. His mother and Paz were certainly of that breed. Hollis, however, was not. She was much more at home with his brothers, often making them look shabby on the field beside her. "Rare? Possibly in some circles," he allowed, and lifted a pale hand to gesture subtly towards their colourful cohort. "But it makes your story more interesting to read than theirs."
Iseut had never been called interesting before. There wasn't anything she could think of in response to that. "I don't." He didn't know who she was.
Chances were, there was no way he could tell. She glanced into the crowd for the few costumes that she knew and didn't see any that she recognized.
"No one's said that to me before. I have more people tell me that I should be different, more interesting."
Mischief fueled Dominic's tongue - either that, or the protection brought to him by the mask enabled him to be more honest than was his usual custom. "I don't believe they look closely enough," he replied. A slight pause followed. "Would you mind if I painted you? This story?"
It was food for thought.
Iseut nodded. It - well, no. People who knew her would know it was her, but she agreed regardless. "I would not mind." She could not think of a reason why it wouldn't be proper, and neither could she think of a reason why she wouldn't be comfortable with it herself.
The idea of painting a living story instead of a dead one enthralled Dominic. There would be no better way to reengage with his art than through that which was fresh and vibrant. "My thanks," he said, warmly. "I will tell the story as best I can." He glanced towards the dance floor, then, and cast an eye to the smaller bird by his side. "Is it too much to hope that you would also do me the honour of a dance?"
It was probably too much to hope she could get out of a dance. Stifling a sigh, easier behind the mask than it would have been normally, Iseut agreed. "It is not." She held out her arm to him and waited.
Dominic set his wine glass onto the tray of a nearby servant, allowing a smile to curve upwards beneath the mask. She was reluctant, he could tell, but something suggested it was a general dislike of dancing that caused it, not him. That was enough for Dominic, his confidence undiminished by the fact that he'd successfully carried on the conversation for more than a few minutes. With the smile still in place, he took her arm in a gentle hold, and led her away through the rainbow-hued throng.
When: Friday 3rd Feb (Masque)
Where: House Sabreme
Ratings & Warnings: None.
Dominic peered through the slits of his mask. Beyond the kohl-black rims of the raven's oddly shaped eyes, he beheld a riot of colliding colour; the nobility of Tyrol was out in force. From glittering gold to cerise, magenta to turquoise, the mess of rainbow hues went on as far as the eye could see, and for the first time in his life, Dominic exulted in every single mismatched shade. Where before he might have used his anonymity to purse his lips and whisper mischievous nothings to Paz, tonight he forgot all of his supposedly superior fashion sense in favour of being grateful that he could see at all.
Since Pearle's assessment, he had gone from strength to strength. Her professional name had lent weight to his claims, and Belief had taken care of the rest. It was not yet perfect; he did not have the sharp lines that he had enjoyed prior to the accident, nor did he have the easy collection of specific detail, but already he was able to put face to name, title to object, and fantasise about when he could pick up a paintbrush once more.
A flurry of sober browns caught his eye. Amongst the bevy of bedecked peacocks, the duller, quieter colours of a falcon were easily enough to capture Dominic's interest, and as with most things lately, it started to take shape as a picture in his mind. He tilted his head a little to the left, considering composition. He wondered if he could be so bold as to talk to the creature for a while, see if he could spend the extra minutes garnering the details he had yet to observe. Anonymity gave him courage, and he politely stepped up to the mark as the falcon made her rounds.
"My lady," he said. "Are you enjoying the masque so far?" It was a banal question for sure, but what else was there?
Iseut was bored. She was trying to behave in a manner that was appropriate, which meant that she was not hiding against a wall or in a corner somewhere, but it was deathly boring. People were discussing things that only they cared about in the first place. It was almost easy to tell who was who by what they were talking about; it would be easier, she thought as she walked and tried to look like she was actively engaged in something or other, if she talked to people more.
Which did not matter because she did not truly care about telling who anyone was.
None of which could be spoken aloud, although she was distracted enough she nearly told the truth to the person dressed as a raven when he asked her.
"Yes. Thank you, my lord." She curtseyed in response, unsure as to who this was and preferred to play it safe. "Has it been an enjoyable masque for you?"
The raven slid his eyes this way and that, affecting a slightly conspiratorial air. "It's a trifle dull," he said, quietly. "Not enough dancing, a little too much politics." There was no lack of people to dance with, to be sure, but as Dominic was still somewhat removed from the central core of the social elite, it was no surprise that the young churchman was able to spend the bulk of his time at the masque in self-reflection - or even external reflection. He brought his eyes back to the falcon and the detail of her mask. Anonymity brought courage, he reminded himself. For now he was safe from all censure so long as he maintained equilibrium and manners. He could see again! Life was too short.
"You are fond of hawking, my lady? Is that too wide a guess to make?"
Was that an invitation to dance? It was a subtle one, and one she could ignore until he was more overt. It would be rude to say that there was too much dancing as well as too many politics, but she nodded in agreement. "It seems to be a common aspect of many parties."
The anonymity of the masks was still not occurring to Iseut; she was predictable and anyone that knew her could imagine she'd go as a falcon, a horse, or a dog. However, she was more than familiar with the fact people recognized her name more often than they recognized her.
"Yes. I suppose it is a logical conclusion." She glanced at the crowd of colors, feathers, and opulence given physical form. Her brown was almost striking in comparison.
Perhaps that was why her stepmother had allowed her to wear what she preferred.
"Do you enjoy hawking?"
He hadn't been extending that invitation, and so her restraint saved them both a measure of embarrassment. It was thus far beyond Dominic's scope to so much as approach a potentially strange female, let alone ask her to engage in activities often seen as flirtatious. He did, however, quite like dancing. Something about the courtly patterns appealed to more than one of his artistic senses; he liked the idea of swirling gowns and straight, yet loose shoulders; he enjoyed the general good humour that dancing procured, and even more so the uniform of it, with mistakes or not. He had not danced even once since coming to Tyrol, he realised, and wondered when life had changed so much that it had precluded their presence at court so thoroughly. Here, the fact he was the third son, not the first, seemed to matter a great deal more. He considered it all to the good that he had chosen to stay with the Civitates.
"I've never been," he admitted. For all his admiration of birds as a species, Dominic was somewhat repelled by the idea of willfully sending one creature after another, nature be damned its food chains. "But I do have a predilection towards birds." Probably obvious, given his mask. Possibly the wrong thing to say, given she too had taken on an avian guise. He resisted the urge to chew his lip. Anything he followed up with would be even more trite, and so he held his tongue.
"Ah." That was odd; Iseut had not met many nobles who did not enjoy hawking or hunting, and it was supposed to only be those of noble birth here tonight. "Do you hunt, then?" Perhaps it was the difference between the sports.
His outfit was more shocking than hers was. Black made a greater impression among colors than brown, which were easy to fade in even among the bright colors of the masque. His was like to be on purpose, much more than hers was.
"Not actively." He had attended in his time, but more to ride out the horse than to take part in the grisly business itself. Dominic did not qualm about killing to eat, but if at all possible he would prefer not to be the one to do it. Some would call that cowardly, others gentle. Neither word was particularly complimentary. "My siblings are fond of it enough to make up for my lapse, I believe." These days he could probably use the excuse of being an Initiate, he realised. Maybe later, when they were not maintaining their anonymous guises. Instead, he lifted a pale finger to the tip of his mask. "The Raven eats things that others have killed," he murmured.
"Killed and abandoned when they are finished with it." Carrion. Iseut tilted her head slightly at him. "You have a very striking outfit."
Was he an Other? It was possible, she supposed. It seemed to be something common among all groups now. They had even gotten into the Citadel, who were absolutely against it. Nobility ... well. That one was obvious. Iseut very carefully did not look around to see if she could find Lady Cataline in the crowd.
"I took it under advice," he replied, lightly. "Without trying to be forward, you and your bird stand apart from the rest quite beautifully." It was hard for a man to deliver such a compliment without making it sound as though he were being either inappropriate or clumsy, and Dominic was trying to avoid both. He liked the simpicity of the falcon, enjoyed that she seemed to wear it well amongst a flock of more brashly decorated competitors. "I admit, I was mentally putting you and your surroundings to canvas a few moments ago."
Iseut blinked. That was not the reaction she had been expecting. Even in the vague realization that her brown was singular, it didn't occur to her that someone else would consider it such.
Or find it a positive thing.
"You enjoy painting?" She asked, after a few moments of silence. She could not think of anything else to say in response to that, and it would have been ruder to let it keep going in silence as she considered it.
When she finally spoke again, Dominic was relieved. She hadn't walked off or particularly acted in an offended manner, but the lack of response had led him to worry he'd caused it anyway. He took a careful sip from his flute of wine before he spoke again. "I'm a little out of practice," he admitted. It had been several months since he'd laid even pencil to paper, let alone the precious pigments of his palette. He was vaguely afraid to, concerned that it wouldn't be as he remembered - or worse, that he had never held any particular skill at all. He restrained a fidget. "But yes, I do very much. Is it a fondness of yours?"
Iseut shook her head. "I learned, but it never interested me enough to practice in order to become proficient." She preferred the outdoors, and the difficulty of putting what was in her mind onto a paper was more annoying than it had any right to be. "What do you paint?"
"Stories." It was a response that lacked, both in detail and explanation, but Dominic was hard-pressed to know how to explain what it was he truly painted without giving away painful secrets. "I suppose you could say I paint histories, more than stories... but anything, really. Anything that strikes me." The Raven offered a slight, but enthusiastic smile, the hint of it visible below the mask. "What do you do instead?"
"Stories?" Iseut tilted her head at him again. "How does one paint stories?" Everyone else talked of painting pictures or portraits. Stories was a new concept.
"Hawking, hunting. I go riding a lot, although it is more difficult in winter." Plus many things she did not enjoy doing, such as these parties, but she figured that could go unsaid.
Dominic pursed his lips, and then turned away from the falcon slightly, urging her with a gesture to take in the rest of the room. "Look at them," he said. "We don't know who they are, but by their body language, their dress, their mannerisms, we can guess what they are doing." A subtle nod of his head. "The lady in the cerise feathers is not enjoying the party so far. She is moody and her shoulders reflect the sulk. Why?" A turn of his foot, and he nodded towards a man in blue quitting the scene. "He has offended her in some way, perhaps she fancied herself his favourite only to find out he has chosen another." The raven mask tilted as Dominic cocked his head. "Why did the falcon choose an outfit so very different from the rest of the scene?" he queried, quietly. "Does she believe herself drab, or did she realise the rest would blend together in motley array and choose to set herself apart?"
Oh. Iseut wondered if the rest of the world could read people like this. She never could, and never thought she would be able to. It made for an interesting story, but-
The falcon. Her? She looked at him. Was she drab? No. Practical, yes. Aronines were not prone to high displays of color or wearing their jewelry like it alone could confer high status. Even her stepmother had adjusted to that, although her own dress as a swan as as strikingly daring as his was as a black raven.
"I did not think of it either way." She answered, after thinking.
"You must have at least a little," he countered. "Otherwise you would not have had the foresight to pick out a mask that matched, or you would not have come wearing one at all." His eyes, as pale a green as to still bear the name, met hers, earnest and without mockery. "Please tell me why you chose the falcon," he said. "Otherwise I'll have to invent you a story, and I wouldn't want to be wrong. Not in this."
Because my step-mother picked it out for me. Iseut shook her head lightly - that was not a truth she was willing to admit.
"I like falcons. My Artemis, my Lanner Falcon, was a birthday gift when I was ten years old and after my father was delighted to learn I enjoyed the outdoors." Had she picked her dress and mask, that was the reason why. Perhaps, she wondered, her step-mother was finally realizing that it was no use to make her what she was not and preferred to attire her in what she would like?
"I only thought of what I liked, not what it would look like or what others would think."
Dominic nodded, tipping his glass in salute. "Better," he said. "Perhaps I can hazard, then, that it is not just in clothing that you separate yourself from the rest. You like to do things that other girls might not? The hawking, the hunting, the hobbies that take you away from the bower?" He had rarely been so enthusiastic and forward with a woman in his life. The mask, he thought, was a liberator.
Iseut blinked at him. "I've never considered it like that."
Was it true? Her stepmother abhorred most of it. Both of her aunts rode, but neither hawked or hunted. Very few of her Aronine cousins did either. Her father had told her most of her life that her mother hated both riding and hunting. Adelle hunted, Iseut knew, but she didn't know how far she went into that interest and how much was because it was merely expected.
It was a disconcerting thought.
"It is rare, to enjoy that even though I'm a woman?"
The rarity of it was a possibility. Certainly the bulk of women that Dominic knew took only superficial pleasure in being surrounded by animals and men, limiting their outside exploits to garden walks and occasional rides. His mother and Paz were certainly of that breed. Hollis, however, was not. She was much more at home with his brothers, often making them look shabby on the field beside her. "Rare? Possibly in some circles," he allowed, and lifted a pale hand to gesture subtly towards their colourful cohort. "But it makes your story more interesting to read than theirs."
Iseut had never been called interesting before. There wasn't anything she could think of in response to that. "I don't." He didn't know who she was.
Chances were, there was no way he could tell. She glanced into the crowd for the few costumes that she knew and didn't see any that she recognized.
"No one's said that to me before. I have more people tell me that I should be different, more interesting."
Mischief fueled Dominic's tongue - either that, or the protection brought to him by the mask enabled him to be more honest than was his usual custom. "I don't believe they look closely enough," he replied. A slight pause followed. "Would you mind if I painted you? This story?"
It was food for thought.
Iseut nodded. It - well, no. People who knew her would know it was her, but she agreed regardless. "I would not mind." She could not think of a reason why it wouldn't be proper, and neither could she think of a reason why she wouldn't be comfortable with it herself.
The idea of painting a living story instead of a dead one enthralled Dominic. There would be no better way to reengage with his art than through that which was fresh and vibrant. "My thanks," he said, warmly. "I will tell the story as best I can." He glanced towards the dance floor, then, and cast an eye to the smaller bird by his side. "Is it too much to hope that you would also do me the honour of a dance?"
It was probably too much to hope she could get out of a dance. Stifling a sigh, easier behind the mask than it would have been normally, Iseut agreed. "It is not." She held out her arm to him and waited.
Dominic set his wine glass onto the tray of a nearby servant, allowing a smile to curve upwards beneath the mask. She was reluctant, he could tell, but something suggested it was a general dislike of dancing that caused it, not him. That was enough for Dominic, his confidence undiminished by the fact that he'd successfully carried on the conversation for more than a few minutes. With the smile still in place, he took her arm in a gentle hold, and led her away through the rainbow-hued throng.