Once again, Art's words seemed to sink in to his brain half a second after he'd actually said them. Ben looked at Art for a second, then shrugged the way he sometimes did when he was about to make a joke. "Yeah," he said, with a quick twist of his mouth to indicate a smile. It looked like all the right things, in short, except that it had come a second too late, and Art would have noticed. Probably anyone would have noticed, but especially Art, and it was stupid to try and lie to Art about this because he wanted to look confident and collected before the duel tomorrow when he wasn't going to be fooling his friend anyway.

So he let it slip. His expression fell, and he shook his head. "No."