All right. Enough. He had one task here, one simple task, and that was to welcome Ms. Delaney. Not one minute into his acquaintance with her, he was already faltering. But honestly, he’d had encounters with irate diplomats that had riled him less. He took a fortifying breath. “Shall we go collect your bags?”
She nodded at the small suitcase of doom she’d been pulling behind her. “This is it.”
“That is all you have for such a long stay?”
“I travel a lot. I have packing down to a science.”
“Mm.” She probably had everything reduced to “a science,” including how she planned to strip Eldovia of its identity and traditions. She was likely a card-carrying member of some efficiency cult or other that had a lot of Greek letters and/or acronyms in its name but really did nothing more than teach you how to write a to-do list and drill into you the discipline to carry it out. “Well then, shall we?”
“Sure.”
Here they went.