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"He's doing so much better," Falco Vorpatril observed, genially smiling at Alys. "Nowhere near as witless as he was right after it happened. You must be a good influence."
Even for a man not noted for his tact, that was inexcusable: Simon was standing right next to her. Alys didn't slap Falco or give him the cut direct, but in the second that it took her to come up with a response that was both impeccably civil and poisonously rude, Simon answered for her. "Lady Alys has been helping me a great deal with the memory drills my doctor has me doing." His tone was friendly and impassive, but a spark of mischief flared briefly in his eyes. "Memorising poetry, describing events, remembering instructions in order, things like that."
Alys swallowed, didn't blush, and said, "Indeed. It's a pleasure to be able to help." She put her arm through Simon's. "We must go and have a word with Lisette, excuse us."
As soon as Falco was out of earshot, Alys pressed her face against Simon's arm to muffle the giggle that had been threatening to escape. "You," she murmured, "are a truly evil man."
"You looked like you were going to challenge him to a duel," Simon said. "I want people to underestimate me, you know."
"What if he'd asked you to recite one of the poems?" She rose onto her toes and whispered into his ear, "As I prepare to make the jump into your glowing wormhole tunnel of love..."
At that, Simon's annoyingly poker face cracked, and he turned a chortle into an unconvincing cough. Proof, Alys noted, that he still remembered the rest.
Dr Ruibal had come up with a list of activities to help Simon improve his memory. Memorising poetry had been the first item on it, which Simon had looked at dubiously when he'd shown the list to Alys. Two days later, Alys had arrived at Simon's apartment with a couple of volumes. The Silica University Press Compendium of Erotic Verse had been the first they had sampled, and had nearly laughed themselves sick over some of the more absurd examples of the modern Betan scientific school of poetry. But as it had turned out, Simon had been better at memorising the ridiculously bad verses than the much steamier and more satisfactory ones from the Escobaran volume, and not even Alys did well at memorising the elliptical and self-referential Cetagandan ones.
And memorising poetry in bed--with occasional pauses to determine the answer to the question 'is that even possible?' to their satisfaction--had led to Alys coming up with other games that fulfilled Dr Ruibal's requirements whilst also being much more entertaining than any of the medical suggestions. And Simon was going back for another check-up next week. Alys wondered what he was going to tell Ruibal about how he was getting on with the exercises.
"Perhaps," Simon said, his eyes glinting, "we'd better go and practice some more."
Leaving a party early had never seemed so attractive.