Alfred bit his lip at this statement, which he supposed was meant to be encouraging. The truth was that if he believed that, he wouldn't have shown up in her garden on Friday in the first place. It was the fact that this all seemed endless, and that he was making no progress when Evander was engaged. It was the fact that Zelda was angry with him and he didn't have any appropriate recourse left to actually talk to her and make amends. If he'd thought things were going to get any better, he could have just held off on half of those silly letters and tried to explain things in person. If Brannon Fisk would have just let him come and pay calls in the parlor like a normal suitor, he wouldn't have been in the garden at all.

But that didn't matter now — the whole point of today had been finding a way to move things forward, and he had to have confidence that they were going to start moving. There was going to be an end to all of this, because he was going to force it  — he was going to be so well-prepared to marry her that Brannon Fisk wouldn't be able to find fault with his proposal.

"Yeah," he said, with a wry smile that was only half-forced. "Hopefully soon." He'd said it with no real thought — it was hardly news to anyone that he wanted to marry Zelda sooner rather than later, and much less so to Ari Fisk after having just had the conversation they had. After he'd just brought up Friday night, though, it occurred to Alfred that his comment might have been taken to mean that he was looking forward to — a very particular part of marrying Zelda — which he was, but he wasn't going to tell her brother that. He certainly wasn't trying to imply that his agreement not to indulge in that type of behavior any more was contingent upon anything happening on any sort of timeline. Even if it took another six months, or a year, he wasn't particularly planning on sneaking into her garden at midnight again, and he didn't want Ari Fisk to get the impression that he was.

"Not —" he started, flushing again. "Er — I don't mean — I mean however long it takes is — uhm, you know," he said helplessly. "I mean — yes, patient, I can be patient. I'll be patient."

He needed to leave soon, he thought — he seemed to have used up all of the good luck it was possible for him to have during a conversation with Ari Fisk, and now the longer he stayed the further downhill it was going to go.