Should a husband take umbrage with such barely constrained leering from his so-called friends? Gorlas seemed indifferent.

‘No thank you, Councillor Lim. I have just come to wish you all a good night. Gorlas, will you be much longer here?’

He did not look up from his wine, though his mouth moved as if he was tasting his last sip all over again, finding the remnants faintly sour on his palate. ‘There is no need to wait for me, wife.’

An involuntary glance over at Shardan revealed both amusement and the clear statement that he would not be so dismissive of her.

And, with sudden, dark perverseness, she found herself meeting his eyes and smiling in answer.

If it could be said, without uncertainty, that Gorlas Vidikas did not witness this exchange, Hanut Orr did, although his amusement was of the more savage, contemptuous kind.

Feeling sullied, Challice turned away.

Her handmaid trailed her out and up the broad flight of stairs, the only witness to the stiffness of her back as she made her way to the bedroom.

Once the door was closed she threw off her half-cloak. ‘Lay out my jewellery,’ she said.

‘Mistress?’

She spun to the old woman. ‘I wish to see my jewellery!’

Ducking, the woman hurried off to do her bidding.

‘The old pieces,’ Challice called after her. From the time before all this. When she had been little more than a child, marvelling over the gifts of suitors, all the bribes for her affection still clammy from sweaty hands. Oh, there hud been so many possibilities then.

Her eyes narrowed as she stood before her vanity.

Well, perhaps not only then, Did it mean anything? Did it even matter any more?

Her husband had what he wanted now. Three duellists, three hard men with hard voices in the Council. One of the three now, yes, all he wanted.

Well, what about what she wanted?

But… what is it that I want?

She didn’t know.

‘Mistress.’

Challice turned.

Laid out on the vanity’s worn surface, the treasure of her maidenhood looked… cheap. Gaudy. The very sight of those baubles made her sick in the pit of her stomach. ‘Put them in a box,’ she said to her servant. ‘Tomorrow we sell them.’

He should never have lingered in the garden. His amorous host, the widow Sepharla, had fallen into a drunken slumber on the marble bench, one hand still holding her goblet as, head tilted back and mouth hanging open, loud snores groaned out into the sultry night air. The failed enterprise had amused Murillio, and he had stood for a time, sipping at his own wine and smelling the fragrant scents of the blossoms, until a sound alerted him to someone’s quiet arrival.

Turning, he found himself looking upon the widow’s daughter.

He should never have done that, either.

Half his age, but that delineation no longer distinguished unseemly from otherwise. She was past her rite of passage by three, perhaps four years, just nearing that age among young women when it was impossible for a man to tell whether she was twenty or thirty. And by that point, all such judgement was born of wilful self-delusion and hardly mattered anyway.

He’d had, perhaps, too much wine. Enough to weaken a certain resolve, the one having to do with recognizing his own maturity, that host of years behind him of which he was constantly reminded by the dwindling number of covetous glances flung his way. True, one might call it experience, settling for those women who knew enough to appreciate such traits. But a man’s mind was quick to flit from how things were to how he wanted them to be, or, even worse, to how they used to be. As the saying went, when it came to the truth, every man was a duellist sheathed in the blood of ten thousand cuts.

None of this passed through Murillio’s mind in the moment his eyes locked gazes with Delish, the unwed daughter of widow Sepharla. The wine, he would later conclude. The heat and steam of the fete, the sweet blossom scents on the moist, warm air. The fact that she was virtually naked, wearing but a shift of thin silk. Her light brown hair was cut incredibly short in the latest fashion among maidens. Face pale as cream, with full lips and the faintest slope to her nose. Liquid brown eyes big as a waif’s, but there was no cracked bowl begging alms in her hands. This urchin’s need belonged elsewhere.

Reassured by the snoring from the marble bench-and horrified by own relief Murillio bowed low before her. ‘Well timed, my dear,’ he said, straightening. ‘I was considering how best to assist your mother to her bed. Suggestions?’

A shake of that perfectly shaped head. ‘She sleeps there most nights. Just like that.’

The voice was young yet neither nasal nor high-pitched as seemed the style among so many maidens these days, and so it failed in reminding him of that vast chasm of years between them.

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