"Another time, then," Ford said with an easy shrug. It would have caused quite a stir to have hijacked the orchestra for an unfamiliar dance number, anyway. It would have been even more disruptive than tossing peanuts at people from the balcony at the masquerade last month, and Ford didn't particularly want to get a reputation as the sort of person who was disruptive at parties. His protest about her teaching him had been less a serious offer and more just something intended to make her smile, which — well, he wasn't sure whether or not it had worked. She didn't look overtly sad at the moment, but it wasn't as though she were grinning either.

"Maybe if a quadrille comes up, we can take a practice spin," he offered, still in the spirit of being pleasant in the hopes of distracting her from whatever it was that was bothering her. "Though I probably ought to know your name first, if we do."

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This accidental, self-inflicted torture had lasted much longer than Daff had anticipated, but now she came to the crossroads where she may be able to excuse herself, but selfishly didn't want to. Nor did she want to be rude, so she continued to prolong the moment. It was a strange feeling, trying to cling to something she wasn't even sure existed anymore, but unable to even acknowledge as much to anyone other than herself.

"Certainly," Daff said in response to another time and to the possibility of a quadrille if it came up during the rest of their conversation. She hoped it didn't happen, she would certainly make a  fool of herself, but she would have hated to say no. "Daffodil Potts, it's very nice to meet you." It was, though she wished under different circumstances. She fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist for a moment before realizing what she was doing and folded her hands neatly before her again. Where were those drinks now?

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"Oh, Potts," he said pleasantly. He'd expected that he would probably know at least one of her siblings, if she had so many, and the familiar last name seemed to confirm it. "I remember a Miss Thistle Potts from school. And Daffodil is a lovely name," he continued with a quick smile. The same sort of thing that his parents had done, he expected, with a theme behind all of their children's names, but daffodil was pretty on for its own sake, too.

"That's a lot better than what my family did," he admitted with a wry smile. "We're all virtues, and some of them don't even sound like names to most people. I'm Fortitude, my brother is Noble, and my sisters are Verity, Grace, and Clementine," he explained. The girls most people seemed to understand — it was fortitude and noble that tended to raise eyebrows.

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Daff smiled and nodded, following along as if she didn't know all of this information already. She and Noble had the conversation of their more unique names more than once. Daff had secretly decided when they had children, they would get perfectly normal names. She felt better for keeping those thoughts to herself currently.

"I can relate." She chuckled. "We didn't get normal flower names like Rose or Hazel, but thank you, I am rather fond of mine." It suited her. Whether she had grown into it because that was what she had been named or because her parents had just happened to know, Daff wasn't sure, but it fit her. "My sisters are Amaryllis, Senna, Thistle, Zinnia, Dahlia and Calla." Several a mouthful and without a good nickname, but she hadn't really ever heard any of her sisters complain about it. "It could have been worse, one of my father's favorites are chrysanthemum flowers." Daffy chuckled again.

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Ford grinned. "I think girls can get away with a lot more when it comes to names," he pointed out. Some of the ones she'd listed off were just as out of the ordinary as Fortitude was, but when she said them they still sounded like names. Even Amaryllis, which was probably the worst of the bunch, in his opinion. (As an aside: why did the worst name in a scheme always seem to come first? Shouldn't it have been tacked on the end, when they'd run out of all the nice ideas they'd had about it? Ford definitely thought his own name was the least name-like of all his siblings. Maybe there was something to this connection — maybe it wasn't a theme at all, only that Mama had taken a shine to the word Fortitude and then felt she needed to justify it by rounding out a whole sibling set to match. The same could go for the Potts starting with Amaryllis.)

"Even a Chrysanthemum could work," he argued. "She could shorten it to Chrysa, and see? That's lovely. I'll bet men would be lining up to ask her to dance with a name like that," he teased lightly — as though this was a thing that anyone considered at all when choosing dance partners. He supposed it might be a thing to consider if you wanted to actually marry someone, particularly if they had strong ideas about continuing a particularly ridiculous naming scheme, but — well, there were worse things to know about your future spouse, he supposed. He got by just fine with Fortitude, and parents really couldn't do much worse than that.

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"Oh, if anybody could have made Chrysanthemum work, it would have been a Potts." Daffy chuckled in agreement. This was a little too easy and she was starting to realize just how it made her feel. As much as she was enjoying herself, this whole conversation was making her a little heartsick and though she had offered to take up a quadrille with him if the occasion arose, Daffy was fairly certain that she couldn't go through with it. Ford was a kind soul, but Daff only wanted dance with one Greengrass brother.

"Speaking of my lovely sisters, I think I've eluded them for long enough that it's suspicious." It wasn't too much of a lie, she was supposed to be hovering near Senna somewhere. "I enjoyed our conversation," She passed him another smile.  "I hope you have a wonderful rest of your evening." Daff was quite sure she was ready to head home and drown herself in her pillows now.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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Ford returned her smile, but hoped she was being hyperbolic when she said suspicious. After having landed himself in the pages of Witch Weekly opposite first Begonia Belby and then more recently but less spectacularly with Penelope Fawcett, Ford wasn't in any particular hurry to have anyone speculating on him and yet another young woman. Though this party didn't really seem to be fancy enough to attract the attention of Witch Weekly writers, he thought. Hopefully if they were here, they'd at least found something better to do for the evening.

"So did I. It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Potts," he said by way of farewell.

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Set by Lady!