Thankfully the lady seemed to take his bumbling in strid giving Hugh the chance to recover enough to murmur the expected pleasantries, "A pleasure."

Her hand in his, he began to lead her toward the dance floor, grateful that she asked something. He ought to be able to answer simple questions, he reasoned. "'Yes. Quite recently." He almost regretted letting go of her hand to move to his position across from her. Miss --- had drilled the steps of such dances into him in the month he'd been back, she was quite adamant that her brother's quest to see his protege married would succeed - enough so that he often thought that she herself had motives regarding this.

"I've only been back a month." He added, thinking of his ill fated arrival in London just as dragons had escaped the docks. He might love history, but he really didn't feel any desire to actually be a part of history. Unless someone found a way to escape into the past, that kind of history Hugh would gladly stomach. He felt he'd rather make a good navigator for a band of pirates in the Indian Sea, at least there his size might be put to use in the motley crews that the pirates had gathered, rather than simply marking him as other.