He didn't particularly want to answer her questions or respond to anything she'd said, and he certainly didn't want to do it from such an undignified position. He'd managed to catch himself on the back of the sofa before hitting the floor, but now he had one arm over the sofa and the other still tangled in his pants, which were wrapped around one ankle and one shoe but definitely on backwards. Not very suave at all, and the worst part was that he wasn't entirely sure that he wouldn't fall over the other direction when he tried to fix it.

Aside from not wanting to talk in general, he didn't have anything very good to say in response. This lady clearly didn't know who he was, since she kept referring to our hosts as though he were just another party guest, but otherwise she had some points. Taking one's pants off in a random disused room in the house might not be rude, but during the middle of a party it also wasn't exactly exemplary behavior. He didn't want to admit that he'd been trying to fix a stain on his pants. That felt sort of embarrassing, for reasons he couldn't entirely articulate to himself. He didn't want to admit that his elbow was smarting from where it had hit the wood on the back of the sofa, because he didn't want her to offer to do anything about it. He could have gotten through this whole thing just fine by himself if she hadn't come in, and the last thing he wanted was some debutante — who already didn't like him much, if her name-calling at the market was any indication — to clumsily come to his aid.

"I'm fine," he said. He was trying for brusque, but couldn't quite manage it from this angle. "Why don't you go back to the party?"

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