Ford wasn't sure whether Noble's question was intended to be kind, trying to make an in-road for Grace to participate in more of the conversation and bolster her confidence, or mean, putting her on the spot like that. It was an innocent question, and if they had been alone with just family Ford wouldn't have given it a second thought. The way Grace reacted, though, made it clear that she was not at all prepared to deal with such difficult follow-on questions as what games do you like. She just stared at Noble, and Ford had to resist the urge to lean forward and put his head in his hands so that he didn't have to keep watching. He took a few bites of soup so that he would have something to do while he waited for her to come up with something, so that it might be a little less obvious that everyone at the table was just waiting for her to speak.

And Lestrange was a fucking saint, because he responded without even acting like he'd noticed the too-long pause. Ford smiled warmly, feeling a rush of relief so strong that he honestly could have hugged the other man had they not both been seated at the table. "Well, we'll have more than three able hands tonight," he pointed out. "Maybe we could play a game after dinner." Maybe if Grace had cards to focus on, she would handle it a little better. At the very least, if she went a long time without saying anything it could be attributed to having to concentrate on the game instead of making it look like she was stupid.

The rest of the soup course passed uneventfully, with suitable small talk being achieved without any more far-too-long pauses, and Ford's trepidation about this entire evening was shrinking somewhat by the time the entree arrived.

"My sisters are also fond of music," Ford said conversationally to Lestrange. He felt confident enough by now to reintroduce Grace to the conversation, though he was certain that if she felt unable to it Verity would have no trouble leading on this point. "Verity plays piano and Grace has a lovely singing voice. And we all went to the Sonata last month — were you there?" he asked. He thought he'd seen Lestrange at one point, but he couldn't be sure (and he had been rather distracted, besides). It seemed as though he ought to make some sort of connection between this conversation point and his guest, but was aware that this was a little tenuous. Plenty of people were at the Sonata who didn't care for music, he assumed; there just weren't many other things to do in the middle of February.