[b]"Must've been real torture,"[/b] Colette assented. She liked this Lord Valentine, she decided. She often liked a lot of socialites- not the kind with ramrod straight backs and a habit of scoffing and sneering if you so much as set your spoon in the wrong place, but the more...detached was probably a good word for it. Yes. Detached, from the world of your every-day worker and zailor and honest-to-goodness tradesmen. Their world was ages away from where Colette herself lived, and she found them all the more delightful for it. It added variety to the world, and the people she usually associated herself with. And what was variety, if not the spice of life?

Colette returned Avernius' bow with one of her own, sweeping her hat from her head and holding it for a moment to her chest. [b]"Captain Colette Lovette. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, m'lord."[/b] The hat was promptly returned to its rightful place as she straightened, and then offered a gloved hand for the man to shake. It was a gamble on whether he'd actually [i]take[/i] it or not, but however he reacted, it'd tell her a lot more about the type of noble Mr. Valentine was. 

She was well aware of the din that was growing around them. Once she'd wrapped up her introductions with Valentine, she was half-tempted to plant a few rumors of her own, here and there. Nothing major, of course. Maybe something about Devils, or the Masters. Both were mysterious enough that people believed just about [i]anything[/i] you had to say about them.

But that would come later. The present came first. 

[b]"Looks like there's gonna be a lot of competition,"[/b] she noted. [b]"You planning on working with a team, or are you gonna try and go it alone?"[/b]