A Brother's Price

Chapter 12

Jerin’s face was starting to hurt from smiling so much, but he couldn’t stop.

I’m betrothed to Ren and Odelia and Lyua.

All was not perfect, of course.

Princess Trini stayed on the edges of his awareness, watching him, wary like a horse broken with a heavy hand and now distrustful. Princess Halley remained a complete unknown; no one seemed willing even to talk about her. All he knew about her was that she, like all her sisters, was red-haired and strong-willed.

Summer sulked because, with Jerin fetching the hoped-for four thousand crowns, the family would definitely split at Corelle. Cullen would be the older sisters’ husband. Eldest and Corelle had already fought often over using futures on Doric to purchase a husband for the middle sisters. Worst of all, once Jerin’s brother’s price was in their hands, his sisters needed to buy Cullen and leave immediately; they had tickets for passage upriver on a boat that left at noon.

Still, he couldn’t stop smiling.

It was decided to sign both contracts at the same time. Ren came in the morning, while he was still damp from his bath, for the prenuptial inspection. It was difficult to tell which of them was more embarrassed-Ren, he, or Eldest. Despite her blush. Ren’s eyes glowed with an excitement that sent his heart racing and other parts of his body reacting.

“I’m satisfied.” With a grin, Ren picked up his dressing gown and helped him into it. “Everything seems to be in good working order.”

“But you knew that,” Eldest said.

“I would not be so cavalier,” Ren warned. “You have Cullen’s inspection yet, and you are more guilty of dalliance than I am.”

Eldest faked innocence. “Oh, I was talking about the sperm test.”

That only made Ren smile wider and Jerin blush more. Cullen’s report indicated that Jerin’s elder sisters could expect the normal number of boys from their new husband. The doctor hand-delivered Jerin’s report, fortunately hours later, just to see “the amazing specimen of male virility” herself. His sisters had been exceedingly smug about the report; one would think they had filled the small glass jar themselves.

Cullen, thankfully, did not take it as a personal slight on himself.

Ren apparently already had all the originals noted on his birth certificate researched and double-checked, so this visual check for inbred deformities was the last formality.

Betrothals are for women; marriages are for gods. While solemn, there was no mistaking the betrothal for anything but what it was: a purchase. Ren handed over Jerin’s brother’s price in four small strongboxes, and signed the betrothal contract. Eldest Whistler counted through the boxes separately, verifying that each contained a thousand crowns, then countersigned the contract. Eldest took Jerin’s hand, led him to Ren’s side, and gave his hand over to the princess. Ren clasped his hand tight, taking ownership.

Then it was time for Cullen’s betrothal. The Moorlands received two of the four boxes. Eldest Whistler and Eldest Moorland signed as the heads of their families. Eldest Moorland gave Eldest Whistler Cullen’s hand.

It was done. Cullen’s wedding would be in a month at Heron Landing. Jerin’s royal marriage would need an additional two months to plan. Hopefully, Princess Hal-ley would reappear in time for the wedding.

They had a betrothal lunch, and then, with lots of hugging and kissing, Cullen and the Whistlers said good-bye.

“Take good care of my little brother,” Moorland said.

“We will,” Whistler promised.

“These are the husbands’ quarters.” Ren said, unlocking the doors and pushing them open.

His new family stood around him. waiting for his reaction, and Jerin could only gasp. All previous splendor of the palace paled to this. His first impression was of vaulting ceilings, the flood of sunlight from a wall of windows across the room, the soft murmur of water, the smell of roses, a splash of cool green to his far left.

“Go on.” Lylia slipped around to the front to tug his hand gently. “From the balcony you can see forever.”

He entered the room, not sure where to look first, feeling doll-sized against the scale of the room. There was a fireplace he could stand inside. A massive grand piano sat dwarfed in one corner. Settees and lounges that would have crowded any room in the Whistler home littered the room like chains of islands, surrounded by great expanses of polished marble and shoals of carpets.

“There’s a private rose garden with a fountain,” Trini murmured from behind him.

“Over there is the bedroom!” Odelia pointed out double doors opened to expose another vast chamber and a huge bed on a raised dais.

“If there is anything you don’t like, we can have it changed,” Ren stated, unlocking the door to the balcony. It was deceiving, that door. Wrought iron twisting and curling, painted white, backed by glass. It looked bright and open, but it could keep out an army.

The sunbaked balcony of dressed stone looked out over the cliffs-in essence, protected by the sheer drop. Below, the sprawling city, the glittering river, and then the green roll of fields went out as far as the eye could see. He stared out, feeling suddenly small and lost.

Ren sensed his distress, and touched his shoulder, concern in her eyes. He reached out for comfort and she came into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered for his ears alone. “I know it’s confining after the freedom of your farm, but it’s to keep us all safe.”

“When we were little,” Odelia called, oblivious to his distress, skipping and hopping on the wide paving stone, “we ate breakfast with Papa out here, and then played hopscotch. This is the best place for hopscotch in the whole palace.”

Jerin turned his back on the open sky and found the vast room transformed by the very presence of his new family. The Queen Mothers had followed them into the room, but stopped midway, taking up residence on the settees. His child brides darted about the room, exploring, laughing, and calling to one another. The huge room contained them comfortably, keeping them together without making them feel in each other’s way.

Ren gave him a sad smile, so he hugged her.

“Was this a good place when your father was alive?” Jerin asked.

“It was my favorite part of the palace.”

“I’ll have to work on making it so again.”

The husbands’ quarters were very much a place of history. The rooms had been cleaned and aired, but layers and layers of the generations remained. A cabinet of board games. A jeweled collection of kaleidoscopes. A sewing stand filled with musty supplies. A knitting basket with a half-finished baby blanket. A collection of music boxes. Even the massive wardrobes in the dressing room brimmed with clothes.

“After our husband was killed,” Queen Mother Elder said with slight bitterness, “Keifer wanted some of his nicer clothes. Then, after the explosion, none of us could stand the thought of dealing with them. We should have removed them before today.”

Jerin lifted down one floral dressing gown, the silk floating in his hands. “It seems a shame. They’re beautiful.”

“Many of them have memories attached,”‘ Ren said, taking the gown from him. “Not all of them good.”

Even the good ones, Jerin reflected, could be painful. “What will you do with them?”

“Sell them to a ragpicker,” Odelia said.

“I’d rather see them burned,” Ren said, “than to have strangers going over Papa’s things.”

An idea occurred to Jerin, and he started to speak without thinking it through. “We could-” And then the thought reached its logical end. He was about to suggest sending the clothes to Cullen; his sisters could never provide such a rich wardrobe. Then he remembered the fate of the fine clothes the Queens had provided to his sisters; they were to be sold on the racks of his sisters’ new store. He winced at the realization that his sisters would be equal to ragpickers.

“We could what?” Ren asked.

He considered saying, “Nothing,” but in truth, he couldn’t be sure that his sisters would sell them at the store. “We could send them to Cullen. My sisters could never afford the type of clothes he is used to.”

Odelia laughed. “Cullen is probably withholding sexual services until he’s allowed to ride horses. These are barely clothes you could wear outside.”

“You could make holiday shirts for the little ones out of these,” Jerin pointed out. “Or curtains, or slipcovers for chairs.”

Odelia and Lylia laughed.

Trini frowned at them. “Jerin’s right. It would be a horrible waste to burn them. There’s hundreds of crowns here in silk. The cost of one outfit probably could feed a poor family for a month.”

More likely a year, but Jerin didn’t correct her. He smiled instead at the stray thought that one obscure corner of Queensland was going to be suddenly much more gaily dressed.

“We’ll pack them up and send them,” Ren said.

“Really?” Jerin asked.

Ren touched his face softly. “For another smile like that last one, I’d send my clothes too.”

He could do naught but kiss her. Odelia and Lylia then claimed their share of his affection, so it was quite a while before they moved on. The bed, dressed in goose down and layers of softest linen, proved to be able to hold them all at once-blushing husband, affectionate wives, and giggling child brides. The Queen Mothers looked on, smiling indulgently, while the youngest princesses romped innocently on the bed. Jerin wondered what the Queens were thinking. Did they recall a similar moment from their marriage on the same bed? Or were they remembering how these laughing girls were conceived between these sheets? Or were they looking forward to grandchildren yet to be born?

The dinner gong tumbled them out of the bed. The youngest claimed him first, all but dragging him away, until Trini rescued him. She freed him, shooed the girls on, then shyly took his hand.

“Betrothed.”

The single word shot a bolt of happiness through him. He smiled, giving her hand a squeeze.

“Betrothed,” he said.

He’s charmed Trini. Ren nearly cheered. She put a hand over her mouth to cover the huge grin on her face. Her mothers had noticed the exchange; Mother Elder waited to walk with her down to dinner.

“What do you say now?” Ren struggled not to be smug.

Mother Elder tilted her head, considering. “He’ll be good for this family. Eldest.”

Eldest. The title sobered Ren. There seemed to be something implied in the straightforward comment.

“But?”

“The common people barely grasp how this family suffered since your father died; Keifer wreaked such damage, alive and dead. With Jerin’s background, perhaps it will be wise to educate them.”

Let the tarnished truth be known. Ren nodded, feeling guilty for agreeing. It seemed a betrayal to let the world know how badly Eldest had chosen their first husband. Surely she had chosen more wisely than her older sister, or was she just as blinded by love? No, Mother Elder agreed that Jerin was a better man. But if Ren questioned her own judgment, then there could be no doubt that others would question it too.

It would be a delicate path to walk.

Later that night, Ren realized that she had forgotten about the bolt-hole. She was so used to Raven handling security issues that the secret hiding space and passage out of the palace had slipped her mind.

The husbands’ quarters, however, were off-limits to the entire palace staff, Raven included. It was up to Ren, as Eldest wife, to make sure the passage was clear, the doors worked, and that Jerin and her adult sisters knew all its finer points.

If by showing Jerin his secret escape route, she also received some late-night cuddling, then all the better. She stripped off her shirt, did a sketchy sponge bath, changed into a clean shirt, and tried for a casual stroll down the hall to the husbands’ quarters. The door guard came to attention as she walked up, but kept their faces carefully emotionless as she nodded to them and rapped on the door.

The second rap got a “Who is it?” muffled by the iron-reinforced door.

“It’s Rennsellaer, Jerin. Let me in.”

With various clicks and clangs, the door was unlocked and Jerin cracked it open to peer at her, his eyes stunningly blue.

“Should you be here?” he asked.

“Yes.” She slipped into the room and locked the door behind her.

“I need to show you the bolt-hole. I didn’t show you while the little ones were here this afternoon; they don’t know not to talk about such things. When they’re older, we’ll tell them.”

He smiled shyly. “I like the sound of ‘we.’ ”

So did she. He wore a sheer nightshirt, a deep blue that caught the color of his eyes, the silky fabric warm with his heat. After several minutes of bliss she managed to restrain herself and lead him to the dressing room.

“It’s in here so that both bedrooms have access to it,” she explained.

“I didn’t notice the smaller bedroom this afternoon. It surprised me when I found it tonight. Was it Keif-er’s room?”

“While Papa was alive. Keifer moved into the larger bedroom after Papa was killed.”

She saw his curiosity and his reluctance to ask. Because it seemed unfair to keep him ignorant of what even the baby sisters knew, because his reluctance reflected his hesitancy to hurt her, because she loved him, she opened herself to the pain that talking about her father’s death always brought. “Papa was poisoned about six months before the explosion. It was a beautiful summer day, and we decided to take carriages out into the country for a picnic.” Keifer decided, and they were already learning it was easier to give in than to fight with him. Easier. Deadlier. “Papa was barely thirty-five at the time. The five youngest were learning to walk, and he was so happy. Later than night, when Mother Elder came to him for services, he was vomiting, dizzy, and weak. Within minutes, he collapsed into a coma and died. They say he died of arsenic poisoning-but we don’t know what the poison had been in.”

“I’m sorry,” Jerin whispered, hugging her, wrapping her in his warm comfort.

She held him, finding peace within his arms. “At the time, we were so bitter about his death that we never thought how lucky we were that he was the only one killed. The explosion at the theater taught us to count the small blessings.”

They stood for a while, hugged close. Finally, she resolutely set him aside. He had to know how to keep himself safe. She showed him how the dressing room doors bolted. The locks were simple bolts, but disguised within elaborate woodcarvings to hide the function of the room.

“Keep the doorways clear of clothing or chairs.” She recalled the instructions her sister had given her six years ago when she was judged old enough to know the family secrets. “You might want to keep the smaller bedroom’s door bolted at all times. This is the bolt-hole’s door here, behind this wood paneling, so you want to keep this clear too.” She showed him the catch hidden in the carved trim, and had him trigger it himself.

The door creaked open; the chamber beyond was musty from disuse. “The dressing room doors give you time to get here and shut this door after you. There’s a lamp here with a box of matches.” She grimaced as the cobwebs on the lamp clung to her hand when she set the glass chimney aside. “Don’t waste time lighting them until you’ve got the door barred solid. There’s a light well here, so during the day you’ll see even with the door closed and locked.”

He nodded, so solemn. Locks of hair were escaping his braid, spilling onto his face, and he brushed them back absently. Distracted by him, she dropped the matchbox after lighting the lamp.

“Oops!” She bent down, lantern in hand, to scan the floor for the box. It sat on a pile of burned discards. She frowned at the blackened matchsticks, picked up the matchbox, and glanced into it. Five lone matches rattled about the box, while their spent sisters lay on the floor, covered with dust. The lamp, she noticed now, was almost empty too, the chimney black with soot, the wick badly trimmed.

She, Halley, and Odelia had been shown the bolt-hole shortly before her father’s death. Eldest made them spend the day taking care of the secret route-a rite of passage, Eldest called it. Together, they secretly cleared the outside door, swept the floor clean, counted the crowns in the emergency purse, and replaced the unused matches and lamp with new. Trini would have been the next to do maintenance on the passage, but by the time she turned sixteen. Keifer was dead.

There had been no attacks on the palace. No attempted kidnappings. The lamp should be clean and full.

The matches unused.

Keifer had used the bolt-hole.

Cursing, barely aware of Jerin now, she hurried down the secret passageway. A straight shot back, down a tight flight of stairs, and through a series of sharp turns, she hit the end.

The door was bolted, but dropping down with the lamp, she could read old evidence of a betrayal that went beyond words. Tracked in from a muddy garden, dusted now with six years of disuse, footprints of various sizes led in toward the sanctity of the husband quarters.

“Oh. Gods, how could he have done this?” she moaned, sick, sick. She fumbled with the door, stumbled out. and threw up in the sweet, sharp profusion of roses. Jerin followed her out, held her head as she was sick.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Keifer! Gods damn the crib bait slut! He was bringing women into our husbands’ quarters! Oh, gods, night after night, he turned us out, refusing us sexual services while he was whoring himself with someone else.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” She thought of all the spent match-sticks, far outnumbering the number normally found in a box of that size. “Perhaps half the guard by the count I can figure.”

He nodded, then glanced about the garden. “We should go in, before we give away the door.”

The door is given away, she almost snapped, but swallowed it. He was right. She followed him back inside and bolted the exit carefully shut. Jerin was silent the whole trip back. It wasn’t until they were in the dressing room that she realized he was holding something back from her.

“What is it?”

He refused to look at her. “Ren, you were with Keifer, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” She was puzzled.

“Odelia too?”

“Yes.”

He whispered so softly, she almost didn’t hear him. “Ren, you two should be checked, before the marriage, so if Keifer passed-if Keifer had-who knows if his lovers were clean? We should be sure.

For the youn-gest’s sake, for Lylia’s sake, we should be sure.”

“Ren! What’s wrong?” Queen Mother Elder asked as Ren stumbled into her room and collapsed into the chair before the fire.

“Keifer betrayed us.” Ren gazed numbly at the fire. Had Keifer died instantly in the explosion, or had he been pinned and burned alive? “When he was refusing Eldest and others services, he was servicing strangers he brought in through the bolt-hole. Jerin-Jerin thinks it would be wise if Odelia and I were checked, since we can’t be sure we’re clean.”

“Oh, dear gods in the heavens,” Mother Elder whispered.

“Halley will have to be checked, if we ever run her to earth. And Trini-sweet Mothers-he could have infected her too.” She pressed a trembling hand to her eyes as she realized the true depth of the danger.

“I don’t know about these diseases. Mother, how intimate you need to be to pass them. I might have already infected Jerin. There was no joining, but otherwise, we were extremely intimate.”

Ren stared numbly at the fire, trying not to think of all the horrible ramifications. Keifer had died six years ago. Surely, if they were infected, at least one of them would have fallen sick by now.

Gods, she hoped Keifer hadn’t been killed immediately by the explosion. She hoped he burned slowly.

The doctor was a thin, old woman, part of a family that had treated Ren through sore throats and broken arms. She examined Ren with dry, cold, dispassionate fingers, then asked a myriad of questions, reminding Ren often to think carefully and to hold nothing back. With a growing sense of relief, Ren could truthfully say that she never had a sore on her vagina or rectum. She had never lost patches of hair. Her eyebrows had never thinned. She never had rashes on her body, and especially not on the bottoms of her feet or the palms of her hands.

“You know if you’re lying, you’ll give any child you conceive this awful disease while it’s still in the womb. It will be born dead, or so damaged you’ll wish it had been.”

“No. I’m not lying. It would be stupid to lie,” Ren said.

“Yes. but it never seems to stop people from doing it,” the doctor said. “It would be helpful to have Princess Halley here as well, but so far, I see no sign of disease. Recently, they’ve developed a test. A device has been invented that allows one to see things so small they’re invisible. We actually have small organisms living in our blood.”

“I know. I’ve worked with a microscope.”

“Oh. Well, they couldn’t see syphilis for a while.

Turns out it’s white. On a normal slide, you can’t see it. Recently, they found a way to examine things on a black background. The syphilis shows up. It still isn’t very accurate in the early stages of the disease, but if you were exposed six years ago, it should be fairly simple to spot.“

“How soon can we have it done?”

“I’ll come back in an hour or so with equipment to take your blood and have it tested.”

Jerin attacked the mystery of Keifer’s lovers. Surely, somewhere in the husband quarters, well secured and untouched these last six years, there had to be clues. No one outside the family, not even the Barneses, were allowed into the husband quarters. Once Ren’s father died, Keifer could have kept lovers’ mementos with no fear of discovery. Since Keifer died suddenly, any damning evidence should have remained.

Jerin tore through the accumulation of the ages. He carried armfuls of objects out to the balcony, examining each piece carefully before setting it aside. When shelves, dressers, and closets were empty, and the balcony was overflowing, he attacked the furniture itself.

The massive bed in his bedroom yielded up an earring, a bold hoop of gold, with strands of golden hair caught fast in it. Had the earring been Keifer’s? Certainly the rest of the Porters were blond. He checked the well-stocked jewelry boxes and found no mate; in fact there were no earrings at all. Keifer, it seemed, didn’t follow the recent fashion of men’s piercing their ears. Jerin placed the earring carefully in the center of a piece of paper, and then tackled the smaller bedroom.

Tucked up under the support boards of the bed, he found a box wedged onto the shelf made by the bracing. He pulled it out. It was six inches square, and locked.

Resisting the urge to beat it open, he got his lockpicks and sat tailor-fashion, amid the wreckage he’d caused, to tweak it open. At first his find seemed disappointing, a handmade book, containing hundreds of small yet in-credibly detailed pictures. The first pictures were portraits of the Queens, then women that must have been Ren’s older sisters, and finally Ren and the others, the surviving sisters, almost unrecognizable in their youth. Detailed drawings of palace rooms followed. As he reached abstract pictures-a dining table set for dinner, a ballroom filled with dancers, a theater with actors on the stage and a crowd of people watching-he noticed the cant. Beside each detailed drawing was a small cant symbol. The dining table was represented by a circle in a rectangle, crude knife, fork, and spoon. Two stick figures with a line joining them indicated a ball. Jerin flipped back to the beginning. A crown and a counter marked the Queens. A crown under a bar and a counter ticked off princesses.

It was a lexicon, he realized, of someone’s personal cant. Keifer’s lovers must have given it to him so they could communicate with him. Under the book, little scraps of folded paper contained Keifer’s secret messages.

Jerin unfolded one: a ball. Heraday, a cant name, talk. Despite the unknown symbol, the meaning was fairly clear. At the ball on Heraday, talk to cant-named person.

The second message sickened Jerin: Claireday. a clock showing midnight, a simple drawing of a bed. a key unlocking a door. Unlock the door to your bedroom Claireday at midnight.

The third message sent Jerin to the lexicon for the first symbol. Picnic. Food was the second word, though he checked the lexicon to be sure. The third symbol couldn’t be found in the lexicon. Jerin’s grandmothers, though, had carefully taught it to him: an X with an oval drawn over it-to stand for skull and crossbones. Poison.

The husband quarters looked like Keifer still lived there, throwing his fits, wreaking his anger on anything at hand. Ren stopped just inside the door, shocked.

Surely Jerin wasn’t like Keifer! Surely Jerin didn’t turn his anger on everything and anything.

The rooms were strangely quiet. No howls of anger. No screams of ugly, yet childishly simple names.

Was Jerin even here?

She walked to the bedrooms, noting with some relief that nothing seemed broken. No shards of glass.

No splintered, battered furniture. In fact, there seemed to be a strange order to the chaos.

Jerin wasn’t in the big bedroom, with the bed stripped down to the frame, nor the dressing room, where not a stitch of clothing remained. It was the stark emptiness of the dressing room that turned her annoyance to concern. This was far too orderly and systematic to be compared to Keifer’s random acts of destruction.

Jerin sat tailor-style on the floor of the little bedroom. He sat silent, statue-still, a box and a book both open on his lap, a scrap of paper dangling in his hand, nearly slipping from his fingers.

“Jerin?”

He looked up, pale, his eyes wide with shock. He gazed at her, seemingly too stunned to move or speak.

“Jerin? What’s wrong?”

“I-I thought I might find out who Keifer’s lovers were.” He held up the paper and book to her. “I was searching for clues.”

It was thieves’ cant, written out on a piece of good stationery. Three neat symbols. There was also a lexicon for translating it, the simplified symbols expanded into pictures a child could understand.

“ Keifer’s stupid, Ren. He’s a cow!” Trini had sneered her contempt of their husband. “ I know you don’t marry men for their brains, but there’s a limit!”

Keifer’s lover had apparently known his mental limits as well as Trini had. The book left little chance for misunderstanding. Ren looked at the quality of the stationery and the lexicon with its careful renderings of the palace, its occupants, and the daily life of gentle society and realized the truth. ‘This isn’t thieves’ cant. This is the personalized cant of the cannon-stealing gentry that nearly killed Odelia.“

The color drained out of Jerin’s face. “The ones that killed Egan Wainwright?”

Ren flinched in memory of the mutilated, raped man. Had Jerin’s sisters told him about that? “Yes.

Them.”

“How could they get into the gardens to get to the bolt-hole door?”

Ren knew that the gardens weren’t perfectly secure despite the wall and the guards. It was unlikely, however, that such a vast number of women scaling the wall could go unnoticed. The Barneses? They had access to the gardens. No. The Barneses never left the palace in any large number-they couldn’t have been the ten women escorting the cannons on the Onward. Nor had one of the Barneses vanished mysteriously when the red-hooded thief had been killed.

Only palace guests could have been in the garden unobserved.

And the only women invited to the palace, prior to the Whistlers, were from noble families. During Keifer’s short time in the palace, the royal family entertained often. He liked parties where he was the focus of powerful women. Keifer flirted with everyone; those who had the decency not to return the attention were never asked back.

Ren flipped through the lexicon, hoping for a clue to the family’s identity. There was the picture of the executioner’s hood, and a translation for colors, but nothing as damning as a woman’s face with “black hat” transcribed beside it. She cast the book angrily aside and looked into the nearly empty lockbox. All that remained was a small square of fine white paper, folded carefully into an envelope, as you might receive from an apothecary- Powder shifted inside the envelope, creating sand dune shadows as she held it up to the light. A circle overlaid an X to obscurely label the substance. Ren started to unfold the envelope, only to have Jerin catch hold of her hands with a yelp, squeezing until she stilled her fingers.

“It’s poison!” Jerin cried. “Don’t open it! It could kill you if you breathed it in or got it into your eyes.”

She froze. “Poison? How can you tell?”

“The cant. It’s marked poison. Skull and crossbones.”

“What was Keifer doing with poison?”

Jerin picked up one of the abandoned slips of paper. “Ren, I think he killed your father.”

She found Kij and flung the note into her face. “Look at this!”

Kij took the note, unfolded it, gazed at it for a long time, and then asked carefully, “Am I supposed to understand this?”

“This is the note that your brother received along with a packet of arsenic to kill my father!”

Kij forced a hollow laugh. “Oh, be serious. Keifer would never do anything like that!”

“Keifer was a whoring, murdering slut!” Ren snarled. “After murdering my father, he fucked women in our wedding bed!”

In a fiat, emotionless voice, Kij asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes! The evidence is everywhere, once you start looking!”

Kij sat still, controlled. “What do you want me to say, Ren? ‘I’m sorry’ does not seem to be large enough for this.”

“You can tell me who!” Ren shouted. “Who killed my father? Who laid waste to the Wainwrights, nearly murdered Odelia, and butchered forty of my troops with grapeshot? Who was fucking your brother?”

“I don’t know!” Kij cried, spreading her hands. “He flirted with everyone. I don’t know who could have seduced him to that level. Even if Eldest knew that he was being unfaithful, which I’m sure she didn’t, who could have guessed that anyone was using him for treason? Keifer? He wasn’t intelligent, Ren!”

Intelligent, no, but cunning, yes. He should have been on that stage that night. What a performance he wove for such a young man. During the courtship, he pretended to be blindly in love with Eldest. He fooled the Queens into thinking he would make their daughters a fine husband. His fits of anger were just illusions to cover his infidelity.

“I need to know who was using him, Kij. He might be dead, but they’re continuing their treason.”

“I don’t know. It was six years ago, Ren, and I wasn’t Eldest at the time. I tended family business. I was always either on the Destiny or at Avonar. Eldest stayed here in Mayfair, but she couldn’t have known.

Do you think she would let him chance destroying our connection with the crown? We gained so much influence when we became your sisters-in-law; we’d have lost it all if you returned him to us.”

Ren sighed. If Keifer had kept his secrets from her own sisters, right under their noses, she supposed that his sisters could have been just as fooled. They would have seen him only at social functions and occasional joint family dinners. “Raven will be by to interview your staff and sisters. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to make this public in hopes of information surfacing. We need to track down my father’s killers.”

Kij frowned. “Is that truly wise? There will be rumors that Keifer picked up something and spread it to you. I know what that’s like, Ren. People don’t want you sitting on their chairs, afraid they’ll catch something.”

“If rumors are all I have to deal with, Kij, I’ll be happy. It has yet to be seen if Keifer has left death behind him. But I will find these women, and then, heads will roll.”

The thunderstorm started with the longest thunder Jerin had ever heard, as the cloud boiled off the plateau and struck the river valley. It went on and on. and finally died. He went to the window and watched as the thunderclouds claimed the sky until only the farthest horizon remained clear, a slice of gold in a sky of rolling gray. Raindrops began to fall on the gray flagstone of the balcony, a splattering of dark spots. And then the rain started in earnest, in driving sheets.

I was so happy. Jerin opened the door and walked out into the pounding rain. It was too good to be true. Keifer was probably diseased. Ren and Odelia and Trini are going to die.

If they did, he couldn’t bear going on too. It would be more than just the grief of losing them. No one would think him clean, not even his own family, who knew of his indiscretions with Ren. Everything balanced on an edge of cascading disaster. If Ren was infected, the Queens couldn’t allow him to marry Lylia and the younger princesses. If his family had to give back the four thousand, they would lose the mercantile, and would have to pay the penalty.

His sisters had planned to stop in Annaboro for a few days before going on to Heron Landing. With a quick boat, the Moorlands could fetch back Cullen with his reputation fairly intact. With four brothers, why would his sisters need to visit a crib? The public opinion would be that, unlike Ren, his sisters were clean and thus Cullen was safe, regardless of any dalliance.

But Jerin’s brother’s price would be worthless forever. The betrothal notice had gone to the newspaper before his sisters left. His return to his sisters-and the reason why-would be equally public. Returning the four thousand crowns would be a crippling blow to his family. Much as his sisters loved him, they would have no choice but to set him up in a crib, servicing strangers for ten crowns a night.

He stared down at the bleak drop below the balcony, a storm of dark emotions raging through him. My life has been ruined by a man already dead.

“Jerin!” Ren dashed out into the cold pounding rain and caught his arm. “What are you doing out here?”

“If he was alive, I would hunt him down and cut out his heart!” Jerin trembled with the desire to do violence. Never before had he wanted to hold on to someone- preferably by the throat-and squeeze the very life out of him. Nothing would be slow and painful enough to ease the pain inside himself. “Why did he do this? He had everything!”

“Jerin, we’re clean!” Ren shouted over the roll of thunder. “If Keifer had anything, he didn’t pass it to me or the others!”

He blinked the cold rain and the hot tears out his eyes. “Clean?”

Ren smiled at him, oblivious to the rain. “There’s not a single trace of anything! Keifer’s noble lovers must have been clean. Nobles don’t visit cribs!”

It sounded so sane and reasonable. Of course, nobles were never pushed to desperation-they had money to buy the pretty son of a poor farmer if they had to bend that low. Surely if the women slept with Keifer, it was part and parcel of using him to commit treason. Had sex and the lure of doing something forbidden been simply an easy leash to control Keifer with?

The darkest and bleakest of Jerin’s emotions drained away, leaving him feeling bruised.

“Come on.” Ren tugged him back toward the suite. “Come out of the rain, and take off those wet things before you catch a cold.”

Numbly he followed. She pulled his nightshirt up over his head. She was soaked to the skin and shivering herself.

“You need to get dry too.” He reached for the buttons of her shirt.

Ren toweled his hair as he undid her clothes, dropping them into damp piles at their feet. All at once, it seemed, they were naked, pressed close together, kissing. All the fear and anger and hurt twisted into a desperate, consuming need to be together.

Two steps, and they were on the bed. Ren reached between them, took hold of him, and guided him into her. One smooth warm stroke, and they were joined as one.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Jerin murmured much later. “Not yet.”

“We’re wife and husband minus a large circus act called a royal wedding. It’s only a show for the common folk. The betrothal contracts are the true binding word, and those are all signed and legal.”

“We’re married,” he whispered, barely believing it. A few weeks ago he was a simple landed gentry’s son, without a title, in an obscure part of the realm. “I’m Prince Consort.”

“Yes, my love, you are.”

“You love me?”

“With all my heart.”

“I wanted to tell you, before you left the Whistler home, that I loved you, but there didn’t seem to be a way. I never dreamed you would want me for a husband.”

“A hundred years ago, and I would have carried you off that first night, Odelia and your sisters be damned.”

She brought a basin and a towel to the nightstand. Dampening the towel, she washed him clean, the warm nubby fabric rubbing gently against him.

“That’s nice,” he said sleepily.

“Go to sleep,” she murmured, drying him. “You’ll need the rest.”

He fell sound asleep, wondering what she meant by her remark, and woke to find Odelia joining him in the bed. Under the loose wrap, Odelia wore nothing. She was fuller in the chest than Ren, broader of hip, and wanted to try positions she had read about. Like Ren, she washed him before tucking him in.

“I wore you out,” she laughed as he yawned.

“I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“They should make it a tradition. No one ever waits for the wedding night.”

“Someone must.”

Trini woke him with a tray of food and a session that was mostly eating, talking, and tentative cuddling.

He thought that they wouldn’t consummate their marriage until later, but then Trini, in sudden silent resolve, held him down and mounted him from the top. Afterward, she lay on top of him, listening to his heartbeat until they both fell asleep.

Lylia woke them, impatiently scooted her older sister out, and allowed him to clean himself for her. She was nervous, awkward, curious, and eager. He felt like a mountain range, being explored, climbed, and conquered. Yet when she fell asleep tangled in his arms and sheets, he watched her breath, her so-kissable lips parted slightly, and felt deep, moving love for her. He loved them all. Ren’s strength.

Odelia’s whimsy. Trini’s passion despite her shyness. Lylia’s determined struggle for justice.

He kissed Lylia’s lips, and cuddled her close, and fell asleep happy.