"But of course!" He puts his hands on his narrow hips and turns sideways, giving her a look over his shoulder like he's a top model on a Vorbarr Sultana runway, pursing his lips and lowering his eyelashes sultrily. "Don't I look handsome? Dapper?" He turns the other way, like he's giving photographers a different angle. "I picked out this particular shade of ripped and dirty winter-wear specifically to coordinate with my frostbitten pallor."

He drops his hands, then, and arches his eyebrows at her. "You don't even have to be educated, either. Or urbane. There are plenty of rural impoverished nobility. Their status isn't diminished by their position in society. Well, or - it is, rather, inasmuch that the others do sneer at them, but I daresay that you won't be particularly concerned about the Vorhartungs and the Vordarians muttering about the fact that your family simply must feel disgraced by the way you showed up at this ball, not in-the-fashion at all."