His frozen visage cracked, just a sliver and for just a heartbeat, as he blinked at her last statement.  "I-...kha-...boud?"  He said, pronouncing the word strangely, as though part of a wholly different language.  Then the mask shattered as he reared his head back and barked a roaring, rumbling laugh that left the window trembling and the carpet a their feet subtly askew from the shaking of the floor beneath it.  "They would have named you for the Winterman himself?  As well name you Eingeir Unstadt!"  He snorted brusquely, leaning back into his seat, one ankle coming up to rest on the opposite knee as he regained his stolid composure after that long instant.  "It..."  He looked at her again, his eyes less piercingly analytical and more... not soft, but humane.  As though he was looking at her for<span style="font-style: italic">her</span>, and not the problem she presented.  "It has been a very long time since I laughed.  Pardon me."<br/><br/>"As for protection..."  He snapped his fingers, and the very atmosphere surrounding them drove itself nearly to absolute zero, forming a wall of ice inches thick and perfectly clear around the two of them with a sharp<span style="font-weight: bold">*SNAP!*</span>, "You are not far amiss.  Of course, if protecting you ultimately falls to my hands we may have larger problems than mere assassins."  A thump of his heel against the floor, and suddenly the ice disappeared, leaving behind only a faint sparkling dust where it once had been that danced in the whorls and eddies of the air in the room before dissipating.  "Though I believe, for the second time in my life, I may have lost a battle.  Debate never was my strong suit."  He stood, returning the covered spear to the corner as he spoke.  "If you truly insist, then I suppose attempting to avoid this marriage is futile.  Though the 'why' yet eludes me because of your avoidance to the question."