"Oh- right, I thank you, yes.  Is it already time?"  She stacks her last dish and goes to check if anyone else is waiting.

"Just about." Some people are there already but not all of them.

Right.  Okay.  She can do this.  She heads over to the table and gives them a tiny smile and an acknowledging nod. 

"Good evening, all, I thank you for returning."  Is it more embarrassing to ask if anyone knows if the other guy is coming or to assume he's not and have him turn up late... fuck, she can't quite remember if he's Cabrera or Cambra, that answers that then.  "Has anyone any thoughts to discuss before beginning?"

"I kind of can't tell if the book is set in Cheliax or not," someone says. "It seems like it must be somewhere like it, but the county's made up and the adventurer's going to have to get to Paula's county somehow and I don't know that they'd let him past a border check."

"Mm, good question."  How in all the hells did her stepmother make this look so easy.  "I know little about border checks-" and please let her have parsed that phrase right- "are they between counties as well?  ...has anyone thoughts on why the author may have chosen to write it so?"

"Well, the adventurer sure isn't Chelish."

"Could turn out he's Andorani. Could come in through a forest, maybe."

"Well you don't want to write about a real county, the real count'd take offense."

Most of what Khalida's heard about Andoran has been variations on 'fucking pirates AGAIN' but she does vaguely recall them having once been Chelish, it makes sense they'd have a land border too. 

"Is it often for a novel to be definitely Cheliax, or definitely not Cheliax, then?  For what reason might the author have an Andorani swordsman, in either?"

"There's books set in Cheliax, and in some other places but less often, and made up places."

"You'd have an Andorani swordsman so he can be, you know, like that, and then she can chew him up."

"If she didn't it wouldn't have got past the censors, yeah."

"I'm kind of surprised it got through even though she's got to come out on top."

Okay, she seems to have gotten the literature discussion going?  Sweet.  She's pretty curious about the censors but is it going too close to politics to ask, she doesn't want to kill the mood and have to skip to the stumbling over Chelish pronunciation part... "How would a swordsman more often be?"

"Well, he probably wouldn't rescue a random little girl."

"He might if he were trying to level?"

"But he was on the trail of his beast, he wouldn't have dropped it for a side quest."

"And if he did rescue her he would've let her big sister pay him back, you know."

"If he likes girls."

"He likes girls. He's in a romance novel."

"He could've just taken the money instead or something."

"Sure, I guess, but then why write the little girl an older sister at all."

"Perhaps he's very easily distracted?" she suggests with a small smirk at the mention of sidequests, but doesn't otherwise interrupt.

"Is it common, for men in romance novels to fuck, um, a girl who is not the one in the title?  Or just, he would not be in such a place?"  Back home in the kinds of books you don't admit to reading, he's often got unspecified prior experience so he knows how to treat a woman right, but not on the page.

"Well, sometimes it's a man in the title and then he's going to get around a lot."

"Not always."

"Okay, nothing's always."

"When the title's the girl, then after they meet if he fucks someone else he's in big trouble, but before that he might."

'Nothing's always' gets a nod of approval and a beaming smile before she remembers to tone it back down.  

"It's much the same in the ones we have in Sothis," she's not looking at the guys and not blushing but if women are honorary men here then surely men can be honorary women sometimes, and anyway they already know she's willing to read this one, "he may have a- girl who died to be sad about.  More often before the book begins, though."

"I bet he doesn't have a girl who died to be sad about."

"Unless the author's really good. I think you could get that past a censor if you were really good."

"Nah, it's too - themes-y - or something - some readers'll miss something and they'll get the wrong idea."

"They should dislike- the dying?  Or the being sad about?"

"They shouldn't be like, oh, if whatshername had lived, then everything would be great."

"Huh."  She... does not really see what there is to object to about that?  But it's not quite the thing she meant anyway.  "More often the girl in the title teaches him to- not be sad any longer, and things are more great with her than the dead girl, and they can marry."

Scattered laughter. "Maybe we should read a foreign book next time then."

Small smile.  "I regret I exploded to the snow so ill-prepared, then.  I've only the Book of Magic and a pamphlet on tax policy."

"Exploded to the snow" gets a laugh.

Okay, this seems to be about as much discussion as is happening, but it's still more than yesterday?  She digs the book out of her bag and gets the worst part over with starts in on chapter 3.

Paula orders her best horse saddled to ride out and inspect her new county, and takes the opportunity to discourse to the retainer from the last chapter about power and desire, for paragraphs at a time.  (Khalida finds it surprisingly easier going than before, more like the formal academic Taldane she has the most practice with.)

Apparently some of these lines are innuendos and make her audience giggle.

...Khalida is maybe coming to some realizations about the Chelish feminine ideal.  Some of which she will maybe want to revisit later in private.  

She passes the book along to the next person when the dialogue goes back to normal, rests her chin on her hands, and tries very very hard to look nonchalant.

Presently the countess comes across the adventurer, at long last, and finds him suspicious and hits him with a Hold Person. The text takes some liberties with how much conversation and incidental "searching his person for weapons" can reasonably fit into the duration of a Hold Person.

Not blushing not blushing.  Particularly at the bit of banter where the adventurer, though outwardly indignant at her ??something?, is nonetheless strangely compelled by the force of her gaze and feels himself becoming ??adjective? and secretly drawn to her.