Alfred grabbed two bottles from the ice box and returned to the front room, handing her one. "Yeah, we're clearly not fancy here, either," he said, with a vague acknowledgement of the room around them. He'd slept aboard the Voyager for months when he returned to England, and that was where most of his money went; he'd gotten the flat almost as an afterthought so that he didn't have to spend winter nights sleeping in a floating bedroom on the icy Thames. "But it didn't make a lot of sense to go out and buy a bunch of nice things when I was planning to spend more than half my time out to sea." The bedroom was a bit better furnished, but — well, he wasn't just going to invite her to the bedroom. That would be setting him up for trouble.

After having taken a seat on the sofa next to her (but with more distance between them than previously), Alfred tried to turn the conversation back to where it had been a moment ago. "So do you have a separate wardrobe for when you're working? A whole closet full of dresses with dirt stains on the knees?" he speculated. "Or are you really good at cleaning spells? Because you don't look like someone who spends all day in the mud," he teased lightly.