Victor gave a careless you caught me grin. "It's my birthday," he said, as though this were an accomplishment. "Well, yesterday was, but we've just come off the party. Started the day in Santorini — have you been? Wait, no — I wanted to ask you something else," he continued before she'd had a chance to respond to the question about whether or not she had ever visited Greece. She probably hadn't; young women didn't tend to do much traveling prior to getting married, from what he understood, and what limited travel they did indulge in was never to anywhere very interesting or exotic. France and Germany seemed the only destinations anyone had been to, unless they had some family abroad, in which case they forewent Germany in favor of wherever the relations lived.

She had a flute of champagne, he noticed, and he wanted one too (ill-advised though it might have been if he had any intentions of making it to the dance floor this evening), but he'd missed the window of opportunity to catch the waiter with the tray. Drat. A wild but fleeting thought occurred to him and he pictured simply taking hers out of her hand, more to see the look on her face than anything else, but of course he wouldn't do that.

"So you're — how old? Nevermind, the specifics don't matter," he said with a vague wave of his hand, as though dismissing his own question. "But you're not married. Is that by design?"

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