Explain. Explain. Yes, if there were any sort of way to explain this, she craved it desperately. When he deposited her in the hard-backed chair, she immediately set her ankle over her opposite knee and cradled it with both hands. It was wholly unladylike, and she did her best to compensate by pushing at the bunched hem of her dress with her smallest fingers, but her hands were busy, and she was so, so confused. Modesty would have to wait. If someone saw her ankles, well, then, they did. Surely she wasn't a fetching picture with puffy eyes and a wet face. Shame to anyone who thought of a woman in distress as attractive!
She sniffed hard in an attempt to clear her air passageways. Crowley, he said his name was. Nothing more, nothing less. If she'd been any more coherent, any more lucid, she may have sensed a certain presence about him, a certain power that demanded more than the simple name he gave himself. But as it stood, she had only the single one he presented - with no title.
"Mister Crowley," she said, as if by rote - and it was, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance. "My name is Miss Honour Bellaforte -- but I am known as 'Beauty'."
And it would have been a very nice, very formal speech - as it was meant to be - except for the quiver in her voice and the watery delivery. After her words went quiet, she realized just how ridiculous she sounded, just how ridiculous it all seemed, and she laughed. A slow, dangerous, reckless laughter, devoid of any semblance of reason. She had to be going mad. She had to be going mad.