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No one talked to Molly now. Granted, no one had talked to her when she arrived, but that was because no one knew her. Now they were doing it deliberately. Every once in a while, she saw the duke, in the center of a crowd of admirers, or seated in the front at a concert. And sometimes she fancied she caught his eye and he smiled at her. But that was very rare.
Far more often, she caught the eye of Duchess Carrine, and every time there were daggers in the glance. “I didn’t even do anything,” Molly thought. “I can’t be blamed for something I haven’t done.” But the duchess seemed to feel differently, and so did the other women at the palace.
Quincy had no idea what was going on, but he had noticed the sudden coolness, too. “I thought I had a place with Baron Eglund’s men,” he said, one day over breakfast, “but then the baron said he had enough knights. It was very odd.” Quincy speared a sausage with his fork. “One day he was saying he couldn’t find enough men, and the next day....” Quincy bit off half the sausage and gave a shrug.
“The next day he didn’t want you,” said Molly quietly. She looked across the hall and spotted Baroness Eglund. Her ladyship was staring at Molly and Quincy, and giggling with a group of other young ladies.
Molly didn’t have to hear them to know what they were saying. They were mocking her for being a country knight’s daughter who thought she could ensnare the greatest nobleman in Myrcia. They all wanted a chance in Lukas’s bed—she could tell that. But he hadn’t flirted with them. He had flirted with her. And they hated her for it.
She took her brother’s hand. “You know, Quincy, I think I may have done something wrong.”
“Oh?” He cocked his head to one side. “How so? The fellows I talk to all think you’re very pretty.”
“Um...yes. Here’s the thing, though. I think maybe I did something to make Duchess Carrine hate me.”
Quincy rolled his eyes. “Oh, her?” He lowered his voice. “No one much likes her, Molly. Not even the duke, from what I can tell. Everyone thinks she’s a prude and a spoilsport.”
That didn’t make Molly feel much better, though she could tell that was how Quincy meant it. Hearing that “everyone” hated the duchess made Molly feel sorry for the woman, and that made it harder to think of her husband as a romantic prospect.
“By the way,” Quincy said, “I’ve been asking around, and there’s an agent who might be interested in the Halloway house.”
“Interested? You mean interested in buying?” The Halloway house was one of three properties they still had left of their parents’ estates. Their mother had been born there, and they both had a fondness for the house—a gray stone affair with thatched roofs and a long, rambling garden. “Quincy, are we sure we want to give it up?”
He gave her an older brotherly sort of look. “Are you planning on living there anytime soon? No? Well, neither am I. I’ve heard we might get fifty Sovereigns at the very least for the place. Maybe sixty if we throw in the orchards and the river bottom land.”
When they were children, sixty Sovereigns wouldn’t have been much. But now, after both their parents were gone, it was a fortune. Two years ago, it had seemed so simple—go to court and find a wealthy patron. But there were far too many ambitious young knights in Formacaster, and far too many pretty young ladies, too. So they’d gone to Severn, instead. And now it looked like maybe they weren’t going to win any friends here, either.
Earstien, what would they do after this? Go to Haydon? Go to some ghastly foreign country? Go back home and work the land? Molly shuddered at the thought.
A well-meaning lady at the duke’s palace had told Molly that, “A well-bred girl can always fall back on her education and become a governess.” But Molly had barely any schooling, and Quincy’s education was limited to a year at Brancaster learning how to drink and puke in the properly genteel fashion.
From time to time, either here in Severn, or at the court in Formacaster, someone would drop some humorous reference to Claudius, or to Adler, or to Horatius, or some other old fellow who was dead and boring. She would laugh like everyone else, but she was always terrified that someone would ask her to explain what the joke was, because she never had any idea what was so funny.
So she couldn’t be a governess. And Quincy couldn’t be a schoolteacher. Neither of them had any sort of trade or skill. He was a knight, and she was a lady. But neither of those things paid very well, when it came right down to it. Those were occupations for people who already had money.
In the afternoon, there was a thunderstorm, and Molly couldn’t stand the stifling, close air of the great hall anymore. She stood out in the grand courtyard under the eaves and watched the rain fall in great scattering waves. She wondered if it would really be so bad to die, and if maybe drowning oneself in a canal here at Severn would be a good way to go about it. She realized what happened to bodies when they drowned, and she shuddered. She wouldn’t give those bitches in the hall the satisfaction of seeing her all blue and bloated. Fuck them.
Suddenly a rider burst through the gate, his horse skidding and stamping on the gravel of the courtyard. The man jumped from the saddle and ran up to Molly, holding a leather message pouch in his gauntleted hand.
“For Earstien’s sake,” he said, “where can I find the duke at this hour?”
Molly didn’t have anything else interesting to do, so she showed the fellow over to the chamberlain’s office. And while the chamberlain went to find his grace, the messenger stood, dripping water on the tiles, and shifting nervously from one foot to the other. With his hat off, she could see he was a boy, with only a few tiny hairs on his chin. He was clearly dying to tell someone his news.
“So, what happened?” Molly asked, more from politeness than from any real interest.
“Oh, madam, you can’t believe it!” the boy gushed. “We’ve won the most fantastic victory! Keelweard has fallen to the army of King Broderick!”
“That’s enough of that,” snapped the chamberlain, coming back into the room. “With me, now, boy. His grace will see you.” He nodded to Molly. “Thank you, Miss Coburn.”
By the time she returned to the hall, there was already a general sense that something interesting must have happened. The bells at the cathedral rang over and over, like someone important had died, or like there had been a royal birth. All the girls, even the ones who had sneered at Molly an hour earlier, pressed her for details, and she reveled in the opportunity to break the news to them.
A few of the nastier women refused to believe it, simply because Molly was the one saying it. But ten minutes later, the chamberlain arrived in the hall to make an official announcement, and to order the servants to bring in five casks of old wine, so that everyone could drink the health of the true king, Broderick Gramiren.
Before the noon bell rang, Molly drank five mugs of wine, and she found she was suddenly the center of attention, as if somehow showing the messenger to the chamberlain’s office made her part of the victory, too. Girls who had never spoken to her offered her drinks now and traded gossip about the duke, and about the king, and most of all about the hated Sigors and Byrnes.
“Duchess Flora is the greatest whore in the kingdom,” one girl observed.
“No, she’s the oldest whore in the kingdom,” another girl said, to general laughter. “If you want to know who holds the crown for whoring, I’m pretty sure we all know who wins.”
Multiple girls cried out at once, “Princess Elwyn!”
Then they all tore the Sigor princess apart, from top to bottom, sneering at her clothes and her hair and her figure and her face. By the end of it, Molly was quite appalled, and would almost have wanted to give the notoriously prickly princess a hug, if she had been there. No woman deserved to be treated that way, even if she was a slut and the sister of a false king.
There was such enthusiasm over the victory among the ladies of the court that it wasn’t until that evening, when Molly saw her brother, that she realized some people in Severn weren’t quite so happy.
“It’s a military thing,” he said, as they shared a small supper of rice and beans at their inn. “There’s a northern army, you see. Or maybe you could call it the western army, too, because it’s got lots of Odelanders in it now, and more coming all the time. Anyway, that army is under King Broderick himself. And that’s the army that took Keelweard.”
“But Duke Lukas is the captain general,” Molly said, somewhat confused.
“Exactly!” Quincy said, pointing his spoon at her. “That’s exactly the problem. The duke has a huge army down here, but hardly any of the Severn men were part of the victory. Well, except the cavalry brigade of Sir Halvor, of course.”
“Who’s that?”
“One of the duke’s natural sons,” Quincy said. “People don’t think he counts somehow. Anyway, there are a lot of nobles around here who are sore that they got left out of the fighting, and they’re pressing Lukas to do something to top Keelweard.”
“Like what?”
“Like maybe capture Keneburg.” Quincy raised his eyebrows. “No one’s ever taken the city by storm, you know.”
“Of course I know that,” said Molly, tossing her hair back contemptuously. She had no idea if he was telling the truth or not, but it sounded like the sort of thing that might be true.
As a measure of her sudden popularity, Molly received an invitation to a party at the house of Baron Polness that evening. It was the first private party she’d been invited to in almost three weeks, and she was desperate to make a good impression. She pulled apart three of her costliest dresses and put the parts together into a single, grand design: white lace at the neck, a gold bodice, and a dark blue skirt. She had never been particularly good at sewing, but she was confident the seams would hold through one evening, at least.
When she got to the party, she was excited and enthusiastic. At least for the first hour or so. Then, after she’d related her story of meeting the messenger to the third group of old spinsters and widows, she remembered why she never liked this sort of affair. In her mind, a party should include only people near one’s own age, and a good orchestra for dancing, and a lot of alcohol.
After an hour, she went and hid in a conservatory filled with ferns, where at least she could drink in peace. But even there, eventually, she was discovered.
“So, there you are,” a low masculine voice rumbled. “I hear you’re the brave girl who met the messenger at the courtyard and, despite all odds, valiantly showed him to my chamberlain.”
She turned to find Duke Lukas looking down at her. With her face suddenly burning, she jumped up and curtsied. “Your grace, I’m so sorry. That story has gotten out of control. I hope you don’t think I’ve been telling secrets.”
“Every good story is exaggerated a little bit,” he said, chuckling. “Please, Miss Molly Coburn, have a seat. Let me get you another drink. I see yours is empty.”
He brought her wine and then sat next to her on an overstuffed settee. “Are you enjoying your time in Severn?” he asked.
How to answer that question? “I’m...enjoying it now, your grace.”
“Call me Lukas.” He put a hand on her knee. “This is a lovely dress.”
“Thank you, Lukas. I...I had it made for the occasion.”
His hand slid up her thigh, and then he leaned in to kiss her. At first his lips only brushed hers. Then he became more forceful, and she could feel him now, hard against her hip. He reached further into her dress, until suddenly there was a tearing sound, and they both looked down to see that the stitches she’d put in the skirt hours ago were coming undone.
“I’d have a word with your seamstress about that,” said the duke.
“I’m so sorry. I did the stitching myself, your grace.”
He took her hand and kissed it. “Then you have made your dress exactly to my tastes.” Then he slid his fingers up between her thighs, and she started to shiver uncontrollably when his fingertips slipped into her underclothes.
"Are you cold?” he asked, his hand frozen in place, fingertips brushing her.
“A bit,” she confessed.
He pulled his hand away, and it was all she could do not to grab it and force it back up there again.
“I will be leaving on campaign soon,” he said. “And if you don’t have anything else to do this winter, I thought we might keep each other warm.”
“You mean.... Wait, what exactly are you asking?” She was still a bit giddy, but she knew she needed to be sure about this.
He laughed. “I want you to be my mistress, obviously. It’s up to you, of course. But there’s something intoxicating about you, and I’d love to indulge myself a little while.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Have you ever had an orgasm?”
“Me?” she squeaked. “Um...not, er...with a man.”
That made him almost double over with laughter. Then he took her hand, kissed her fingertips, and said, “I hope I can do better than these. I promise you I will try, at the very least.”
There was a long pause, in which Molly considered how she would say “yes,” and then she remembered her brother, and why they had come to Severn. “My lord, if you don’t mind, my brother is looking for—”
The duke sat back, laughing. “Oh, Earstien, is that all? My dear, simple girl.” He shook his head. “Yes, of course, Quincy can be one of my knights. With all the privileges pertaining to that, et cetera. I can give him an estate, too, if you’d like.”
She clutched his hand. “Really? You’d do that?”
He ran his other hand over her shoulder, and then down across her breasts. “Yes. I think I would. What do you say?”
She wanted to say “yes,” but at the same time, she knew she ought to tell Quincy. Or at least give him some idea of what was coming. Would it hurt his pride to win a position with his sister’s body? Or was he more practical than she suspected? In any case, she’d better think this over a little. This wasn’t the sort of thing a girl should rush into. Not without knowing exactly what she could get, at least.
“Can I have time to consider your offer, your grace?”
“It’s Lukas, please. And you may have as long as you want.” He stood up and started away. But at the door, he turned and added, “Don’t take too long making up your mind. Or I will be obliged to go to Keneburg with a different lady. And with a different young knight.”