"Your caring is not what most would make of it -- affection and kind words and courtesy. I had thought it was your own desires driving you. I was... wrong."

Admitting error didn't come easily to Meril. Then again, what did?

She had very few nervous gestures, which made her most blatant one all the more striking when she actually displayed it, as she did now: she tugged the end of her braid into her lap, fingers running through it.