"It is a surprise to me too, being here still," Ivan replied, glancing over to Katerina's beaming face. Over this past week, he had come to look upon it so fondly, looking forward to each day simply knowing that she would be in it. It's the first time he's ever experienced such a connection with another person-- that he's ever wanted to be so close with another person. But there were so many things about her, that he saw she was in every way his ideal partner. She had a quick sense of humor, and so his kind of sharp wit was not lost on her. She had interests of her own, not being a woman who was solely prepped for marriage, but still would obviously make a wonderful wife one day. She was intelligent, but not in the off-putting way, as women sometimes were in this day and age, the ones who felt like they really had something to prove and but more often than not hardly knew what they were actually talking about. But Katerina didn't just talk--she listened, too. When he told her about the sort of things he wrote about, she didn't simply compliment him for his own intelligence, as he was used to from women, but wished to hear why it was he'd taken such an angle. And when he'd ask for her own opinion, he found she knew how to stand by the things she really did believe in, even if they did not match up with his own, which was a trait he admired. Ivan did most of the listening though, but only because he asked her more things, and was somewhat limited in his own answers.
All of the intrigue of the mind aside, there was that she seemed to grow more and more beautiful to him with each passing day. Of course, he had noticed her beauty the moment he'd first seen her, but now, accompanied by what he felt for her, she was practically radiant. His heart felt light when she had good words to say about him... but, inevitably, their conversations would return to her good words for Dmitri. And those moments were like an anchor around those light-hearted feelings, roughly grounding them back in reality. Of course, he would not tell her about these things... he understood there was no point in vocalizing what he felt for a woman who'd already given her heart away. No reason to ruin what they did have between them, for now. "Katerina insisted that I stay until you arrive, and has been a most generous host." He smiled at her then, different from the look he'd given Dmitri.