“I’d like to walk you home, if it isn’t too much trouble. Especially if you plan on gracing any more questionable streets with your presence.”

I straighten my shoulders, sliding the right one out from under his hand, and look him full in the face. His eyes are dark, his features fine, almost femininely delicate, save his strong jawline. “With all due respect, sir, I’m not about to trade one strange man for another, and I have no interest in showing you where I live.”

His smile broadens. “Then I insist you let me buy you supper, and we will part as friends with no knowledge of the other’s residence.”

I open my mouth to inform him I’ve no time for supper, but before I can, he takes off his hat and I find myself entranced by the impossible gold of his hair. I have never seen such hair in my life. It’s like the sunshine of my childhood is concentrated there.

A door opens beside us, and his hand once again presses against my back. My feet trip forward of their own accord—traitor feet, what’s happening?—and suddenly we’re sitting in a warmly lit booth in a restaurant that smells of garlic and spice. My stomach and heart react at the same time: one with famished hunger and the other with renewed longing for home.

“I thought this would do nicely,” he says, and his smile reminds me of the expression my mother’s cat, Tubbins, would get when he’d done something particularly clever. “Why did you travel from Melei to attend school?”

“I never said I was a student. And how do you know where I’m from?”

“The beguiling way your mouth forms S and O gives away your island home.”

I raise an eyebrow at his attempt to be clever. “It wasn’t my dark skin and black hair?”

He laughs. “Well, those were rather large clues as well. As for the school, see—” He reaches across the table and takes my right hand in his. I try to pull it back, but his long fingers are insistent. “Look at your callus.” He points to the raised bump on the top knuckle of my middle finger. “And see how it is stained black? If you were a secretary, no doubt they’d have you on one of those horrible new typewriters. You don’t have the pinched look of someone who keeps ledgers, either. And, much like your skin, your school uniform is a bit of a giveaway.”

I stifle a snort of laughter, not wanting to give him that point. Then, realizing he still has my hand in his, I pull it back and take a sip of tea. When did the tea get here? Have I been so distracted by his hair? I am not that shallow, surely. But I use the tea to buy myself a moment to look at him. “And what am I studying?”

He taps his chin thoughtfully. “In your final year of preparatory, yes? So you’d have to be in your focus. You have the soulful eyes of a writer and the heavy bag of a reader. Literature, certainly.”

“History.”

He narrows his eyes. “But that is not your first choice.”

“Alas, apparently the feminine mind is not suited to the mathematical arts, all my test scores to the contrary. Now you, sir. Or is it ‘lord’?”

“You may address me as anything you wish.”

“Well then. You have all the grace and manners of nobility, not to mention clothes that cost more than our server’s yearly wages. Your quick smile indicates an arrogance born and bred into you through generations of never having to answer to anyone, so I’m guessing lord, or perhaps earl, but lord suits your savior complex better. In your spare time, because being wealthy and privileged is a full-time occupation, you like mingling with those too far beneath you for notice. Chambermaids, waitresses,” I glance meaningfully at where our serving girl is leaning against the counter gazing moons at him, “and even the occasional student. Unfortunately, sometimes you miscalculate your appeal and try to use your charms on girls who grew up on an island spotted with bastard children who were fathered by visiting Albens. I am therefore immune to being overwhelmed by your exceptional ancestry. You will, however, be able to console yourself with your vast lands and holdings and never again have to consider the student who paid for her own tea and then begged leave.”

I dig out my purse and drop a few coins on the table, expecting him to sneer or curse, but instead I look up to find his first genuinely delighted smile. It makes him look younger and I realize he’s probably not much older than me. Eighteen, perhaps.

“Oh, please stay and eat, won’t you?” he asks. “I haven’t had someone be so honest with me in ages, and I cannot tell you how refreshing it is.”

Something in the open happiness of his face, the almost childlike hope there, whisks away my resolve to be cold.

“Very well.” I sit back and consider my strange companion. “Though you haven’t told me whether or not I’m right, my lord.”

“I’ve no doubt you’re right with startling frequency, and while I’d very much like to be yours, I am not a lord. Sandwiches to start?”

The meal is the best I’ve had since I left Melei. Halfway through, I’m struck with sudden fear for the cost of such a meal, but in one of those odd, sliding moments where I seem to be entranced by the light playing on his hair, the plates are gone and the bill is paid.

“Thank you,” I stutter, unsure what else to say. I am out of sorts; I know we’ve spoken of many things, but I cannot grasp the particulars of any of it.

“Thank you, my dear Jessamin. Are you quite sure I can’t walk you back to the dormitories?”