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stopped, released her, and held up his hands. He gave Hollingshed a wounded look at his barely contained laughter and shook his head.
    “You’re a bloody menace!”
    “I did warn you,” Alexis said, resuming her seat.
    Nesbit limped back to the table. “It’s dance, Carew, not bloody wrestling!”
    Alexis poured him a fresh glass of wine and slid it across the table to him. “I’m not at all certain why I have such trouble with it.”
    Nesbit drained his glass. “If a simple dance is such a struggle, I shudder at the thought of what an effort bedding you would be …”
    He froze, glass halfway to the table, and blanched. Hollingshed was equally silent, staring from Nesbit to Alexis.
    “Oh, hell, Carew, I’m sorry for that.” He set his glass down and spread his hands. “I wasn’t thinking —”
    Alexis cut him off hurriedly. “I’m not one to take offense at what’s clearly a jest, Nesbit,” she said, “even a crude one.” She laid her hand on his arm. “I know the sorts of jests young men make amongst themselves, at least those of an age.”
    She nodded at Hollingshed who was only a year older than she and Nesbit. She didn’t include Lieutenants Barr and Slawson, the first and second lieutenants in that. They were both much older more properly restrained. But Nesbit and Hollingshed, even Brookhouse to a certain extent, were only a little ways from midshipmen themselves, and no matter their upbringing they had little more couth than the village youths when their elders weren’t around.
    “And I’d rather you made them,” she continued, “rather than being forever on your guard to avoid offending me.” She squeezed his arm. “I’ll draw my own lines, if you please, and that was nowhere near one. In fact, I think that may be the first time you’ve given up playing the gallant and simply spoken as yourself and, dare I say, a friend?”
    “In my tongue-tied colleague’s defense,” Hollingshed said, holding the wine bottle to the light before pouring, “we’ve only seen a little of you off-watch. Difficult to know someone that way.”
    Alexis nodded.
    Damn Eades for that as well, she thought. She’d been aboard Shrewsbury for nearly two months, but he’d taken so much of her time that she’d truly not had the chance to know the other officers, and that was good for neither herself nor the ship. They’ve seen me on watch and may trust my skills, but they don’t truly know me.
    “Well now you know, and I’m quite able to tell you if you cross a line, without it becoming some sort of dire event.”
    “That’s good to hear,” Hollingshed said. “We were a bit unsure what to think when you came aboard. Shrewsbury’d just come from the Core, you know, and we’d had several women aboard there, but we’d heard the Fringe was, well, different, I suppose.”
    “The Fringe or Fringe women?” Alexis asked with a smile.
    “Both, to be honest,” Nesbit said, finally speaking again. “I’d expected all the girls out here to be locked away in cloisters.”
    “Skirts never above the ankle,” Hollingshed added.
    Nesbit nodded. “Veils.”
    “Virtue guarded every moment.”
    “And none too bright, truth to tell.”
    “Vaporish,” Hollingshed said with a gleam in his eye.
    “Prone to hysteria.”
    “Not to be bothered with such things as voting or finance or property matters, of course.”
    “Horrid dancers.”
    Alexis had been looking from one to the other as they’d laid out their expectations, sad that, much as they were teasing her, there were plenty, if not most, of the Fringe Worlds that were exactly like they described. Perhaps not all of them, nor all the same, but of all the prejudices on the Fringe Worlds, women tended to be the most universal target.
    Part of that was due to the natural divisions of work in a developing colony, she knew, and part to a certain over-protectiveness when a new colony’s limited medical care made childbirth a surprisingly dangerous proposition