“I knew Sheerside House’s reputation,” Rian said, “but this is exceeding my expectations by an order of magnitude. I didn’t realise one of the Suleviae was here.”
Her tone was light, but ghosts from Rian’s childhood stirred, conjuring the shadow of seemingly-insurmountable walls, that sense of standing at the bottom of a well, ankles sunk into mud. Here she was at the same table as royalty, including one of the three living avatars of the goddess Sulis, and no-one considered her out of place. So why could she not keep herself from remembering an impossibly embarrassing conversation? Why did her mind dredge up that terrible realisation of inadequacy?
Perhaps it was because she was back in Prytennia, where strangers would not first and foremost position her as ‘foreigner’, and could instead reduce her to an ignorant village girl with a notable mother and no worth of her own. The imposter at the table.
“Not quite an ordinary day,” Evelyn was saying. “And unsurprising that Princess Leodhild would be particularly concerned with these events.” He shot a quick smile past Rian to Lyle. “And Prince Gustav, of course, is always ready to find himself necessary.”
The Alban’s professional aplomb was unshaken. “Alba is suffering along with the south, so naturally His Highness is anxious for a solution to be discovered.”
“Invited himself along,” Evelyn translated. “How are you enjoying being run ragged, Lyle?”
“It’s fulfilling.” The blond man’s voice deepened on a note of sincerity.
“I didn’t expect you to enjoy all that Swedish energy.”
“Neither did I, truly. But—” Lyle glanced toward the end of the table as a golden prince threw back his head in a gust of laughter. “Don’t be fooled by the bluff and bluster. There’s a mind there worth following. And if I can steer the Swedish ship in Alba’s favour, all the better.” He added a hint of a smile to Rian: “Though, of course, I didn’t say that, Dama Seaforth.”
“Please, call me Arianne. And steer away. I take it you two know each other well.”
“I went to school in Alba,” Evelyn explained. “Lyle was my nemesis.”
“We competed endlessly for various honours,” Lyle said. “All the traditional Alban-Prytennian rivalry, but eventually I began to appreciate the spur to excel.”
“More to the point, one of our tutors stepped in and assigned us an unwieldy shared project,” Evelyn said. “We had to make peace or fail.”
“And almost ran into disaster trying to find a third option. Long story.”
“Involves a donkey,” Evelyn said.
“An ass.” Lyle’s utterly correct expression slipped, and he laughed, then shook his head. “Enough. I’d far rather talk about you, Arianne. What would you call the colour of your hair? Caramel?”
“In this light, that’s not a bad description.”
“Evelyn told me you’re here in order to support your brother’s children?”
“That’s right. Eiliff and Aedric’s estate…well, I managed to settle it without leaving any outstanding debt, but nothing remained beyond a handful of keepsakes. The children are all at Retwold—the youngest, Griff, had just started there before the accident—and even one set of that school’s fees was enough to make me blink, let alone three. The twins are nearly sixteen, and all three are…” She paused, thinking of the automaton upstairs, the workings delicate and exact. “It would have been shameful, to not give them every opportunity.”
“To do this, for your brother’s children.” Lyle’s gaze swept briefly past her, before he added: “You are remarkable to make such a sacrifice.”
“Lyle…” A note of reproach shaded Evelyn’s voice.
“Whatever one thinks of blood service,” Lyle added.
“My brother meant a great deal to me,” Rian said neutrally. “So I don’t think of it as a sacrifice. Though the routine here will certainly be an adjustment.”
“Arianne comes to us from a most distinguished family,” Evelyn said, firmly shifting the topic. “You’ve probably seen at least one of Henri Bordonne’s paintings, and Prytennia might never produce another sculptor to equal Charlotte Seaforth.”
“I should have recognised the name!” Lyle said. “I only yesterday was studying your mother’s statue of the Suleviae at the palace. Incomparable.”
“I’ve never seen that one,” Rian said. “Or, at least, not all of it at once. I remember her working on the individual parts, for years, but they were all shipped off as soon as they were done.”
“Are you an artist yourself?”
“No. I was thoroughly trained, of course, was given every opportunity to follow in my parents’ footsteps, but I had neither the talent nor the passion. Aedric was the creative child, and I the phlegmatic one. I organised my father for several years, then travelled.”
“Organised? Was he in such disarray?”
“When my brother was preparing for college we found that my father had allowed the family finances to descend into chaos. It didn’t help that his agent was shamelessly cheating him out of most of the profit for his work. Father—he was much older than my Mother—had begun to decline, and even at his best he never could interest himself in anything but art.”
Rian briefly reflected on those last years, when her father had displayed increasingly childlike behaviour but had produced some of his most innovative work, then shrugged and passed on to entertaining the two men with descriptions of her travels, of grape-picking in Aquitania, and untangling the Dacian Proconsul’s archive.
“You travelled alone so freely?” Lyle said, with faint surprise, then added quickly: “I mean—” He flushed.
“Oh, I had friends and relatives to keep me company,” Rian said lightly. “And fortunately I’d returned to Lutèce and sent a note of my new address before the accident happened. My family is scattered across the Continent, but on Eiliff’s side there’s only a thoroughly cantankerous great-uncle up in the Lake District.”
One of the servants leaned in at this point, to place a concoction of strawberries and cream in front of Lyle and Rian, and a sugared pear before Evelyn.
“The clean menu for Dama Seaforth, Tessa,” Evelyn said, and the girl murmured an apology and removed the strawberry dish, returning a few moments later with a second sugared pear.
“To never eat strawberries again,” Lyle murmured.
“Well, not for ten years,” Rian said philosophically, and picked up her spoon.
An evening enjoying the mildly competitive flirtation of two attractive men left Rian reflecting on Delia Hackett’s reasons for leaving. Both her dinner companions were perhaps ten years Rian’s junior, and in other circumstances Rian would merely be deciding whether and which. But even when she had cleared away the small matter of suspecting everyone of murder, Rian would not be able to ignore the complications of the workplace, or taking lovers who aged when she did not.
It was a not insignificant problem, and reoccurred to Rian after the meal had broken for an early night in consideration of London visitors who had risen before dawn to beat the morning gale. Pausing in the hallway, Rian was caught by a scene on the stair leading to the next floor.
In her early forties, Princess Leodhild cut a magnificent figure. Her curling black hair cascaded over shoulders left bare by a daring modern inversion of traditional Prytennian evening dress, the criss-crossing gold laces displaying her warm brown skin and full figure to great advantage. Prince Gustav had spent the evening mesmerised by her generous décolletage, and was now apparently determined to fall into it.