"Well, there's nothing stopping us from having the wedding now, is there? Courted?" Marcello raised an eyebrow. "Oh dear, did I try to steal you from myself?"

"I wouldn't expect anything else of you," she replied sweetly. "Praise the gods you encountered me first and not, say, Elaine, otherwise I might consider calling things off after all. But yes." She nodded. "All the same tricks you tried the first time. Only they worked. I told you: it really isn't you, it's me."

"Now I'm utterly confused," Marcello replied. "I didn't really try tricks on you, did I? I was trying to give you space, because...ah. Well. I was technically your prisoner and then all those awful things happened and you were in love with someone else."

"Darling, you still thought you had to deliver a message from the Admiral," she said. "Moira must have erased everything right from the moment before you walked through the door."

Marcello blinked, and then shot her a smirk. "Well, let me guess, you didn't put me up in your grandmother's old drafty room this time, did you?"

"Of course I didn't. Nor did I put you in the cheeseroom, before you ask it." Her cheeks pinked. "Where else was I going to put you?"

He burst out laughing. "Love, believe me, if I'd walked in here the first time and you'd put me in your bed, I would have been the most shameless flirt you've ever met."

"The most shameless flirt I e'er met was Jochy and he didn't get anywhere near my bed, good neighbor," she replied primly, but turned even pinker. "You were sweet. It . . . it was rather nice to see that we might have fallen in love anyway, e'en when the world wasn't trying to kill us all the time."

He grinned at that. "I don't see how anyone could not love you, dear," he answered. "Do you want me to flirt shamelessly then? Because I can." He tugged on his earring. "Obviously I shouldn't have been so chaste with you."

"Chaste? You?" She chuckled with disbelief. "No, love," she said more seriously. "If you'd behaved like this when you first came here, I would have had you locked away to wait for the Admiral. I mean that. But I asked you not to, and you were considerate of me, and I thank you for that. I don't know that I e'er thanked you before."