Worth Winning by Parker Elling

become quiet. They continued walking, Charles leading the mare, Julia leading Charles.
    “Have you been friends for long?” she asked at length.
    Charles grimaced. He would not, before this particular charade, have classified his relationship with Robeson as a “friendship,” and he doubted that these three months of enforced cohabitation would change that. “Yes and no.”
    Julia smiled widely, her eyes twinkling. “Not to encourage you and your perception of me as a decipherer of words and meanings, but an answer like that undoes centuries of formal logic.”
    “Formal logic?” He knew he sounded like a parrot, as she had said, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.
    “While we might disagree on how, exactly, to define the period of time quantified as ‘long,’ the question of whether you can be classified as friends is ultimately a yes or no question.”
    Charles rolled his eyes again. It might have just been the heat of the summer day or the distractingly appealing scent or a stomach that hadn’t been fed a well-prepared meal for too long, but he was almost starting to enjoy himself. She talked too much and liked to argue more than answer questions, but there was a certain logic to her madness. In some ways, her dialogue was almost . . . engaging, which was more than he could say for his own sorry efforts.
    He smiled, laying a hand briefly on her arm to stop her. Nothing sensual, nothing forward, just a light touch so that she was forced to stop and look at him. He said, “To answer your previous question: you’re the type of pedant who is minutely observant.”
    Julia grinned, an effort that had an almost blinding effect. Her eyes sparkled, her teeth gleamed, and her lips curved invitingly. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    Charles paused and finally said, “The letter w was initially written as what we would think of as two v ’s, for there were no u ’s in Latin. Thus the pronunciation for the letter, ‘double u ,’ was actually a literal reading of two v ’s, as the letter used to be written.”
    “If that’s true, when why don’t we call it a ‘double v ’?”
    Charles looked at her and chuckled. “You know, I’ve never thought about that. I’m fairly certain it’s true, as it’s what my Latin tutor told me. He said a lot of things, actually, though most of them didn’t stick. Trivia seems to have an adhesive quality, supplanting useful knowledge.”
    Julia placed both of her hands on her hips, and her eyes rounded a little, as if absorbing his words. “I did not know that,” she said finally.
    “The adhesive property of trivia?”
    Julia gave a short laugh. “About the w .”
    Charles smiled broadly, glad that the conversation was finally more firmly in his control. He started walking again, leading the mare, and for once, forcing Julia to follow his lead, though he had no particular idea where they were walking. “Ah. Well. Just trying to fulfill your request to tell you something you don’t know. I’ve found that you’re quite a literal person.”
    Julia smiled again, and they looked into one another’s eyes for a moment. None of the debutantes who had flirted coyly with him, none of the mistresses he’d ever kept, had ever flat-out grinned at him as Julia had. They’d always smiled in a reserved way or a seductive way—in ways that were calculated to entice or elicit some response from him. Julia seemed to smile because it was a natural extension of what she was feeling. She was transparent, joyous in a way that was truly infectious.
    She tapped her finger along her chin with exaggerated patience and said, “And still you have not answered my initial question.”
    “Ah, yes, add tenacious to the list.” He looped the reins around his hands and absently patted Robeson’s mare. He repeated her question: “Are Robeson and I friends?”
    Julia kicked at an unoffending rock that was lodged in the trail. “That’s a common delaying