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“No? No tales of past heartbreaks?”

“No heart to break,” said Osric. “I’m safe.”

Fairhrim sipped at her drink. She touched her neck, tense jawed. “Wise of you.”

“What happened between you and Perfect Aedan?” asked Osric. Before Fairhrim could snarl at him for his continued curiosity, he made a sweeping invitational gesture towards himself. “And yes—you may pry at me in return. You may even go first.”

“May I? So kind.”

“Ask me whatever you’d like.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

Fairhrim pondered her question, one finger running up and downthe stem of her champagne flute. Osric prepared to discuss the details of his most lurid affairs in such a way as to spotlight his prowess as a lover.

Then Fairhrim asked: “Why did you kill your father?”

Which was not at all where Osric had wanted this to go.

“I had hoped,” said Osric, “that we could confine the conversation to our lovers.”

“You saidanything,” pointed out Fairhrim, as though Osric weren’t suddenly and acutely aware of his strategic misstep. “But we needn’t see this through. We can withdraw our pryings by mutual agreement.”

“My father was a bastard,” said Osric.

“In which sense of the term?” enquired Fairhrim.

“Metaphorical. I, however, am a bastard in the literal sense.”

Fairhrim was strong; he offered her an overture to indicate that she thought he fit both definitions quite neatly, but she made no comment.

“My father, of the great Mordaunt line, refused to marry my mother when she fell pregnant. Said I wasn’t his. Her family—minor nobility, Wessexian—disowned her. We lived in absolute poverty while father had thirty rooms at Rosefell in which he got drunk every night. His lowliest under-housemaid ate more in a day than we did in a week. The housekeeper snuck food to us on her off days.”

“Mrs.Parson?” asked Fairhrim.

“Yes. My mother brought me to my father every few years to ask him to recognise me as his son—he never did, even as I grew into his spitting image—and to get a few thrymsas out of him. He gave us beatings along with the thrymsas. The very last time he tried to beat us, I had begun to apprentice with Tristane. He didn’t know. Neither did my mother, for that matter. I hadn’t yet earned my blaecblade or my tacn, but I had learned to handle a knife. He had just thrown my mother into a wall. He went for my throat; I went for his. Mother never woke up. Father died by my hand. I was fourteen years old.”

Fairhrim studied Osric for a long time in silence. “I suppose I didn’t expect it to be a happy story.”

“Does the tragedy of it all absolve me of my sins?”

“An explanation isn’t an excuse.”

Classic Fairhrim rationalism. “Itisa happy story, anyway,” continued Osric. “I’m happy now.”

“Your poor mother.”

“Avenged and not forgotten.”

“This explains why some of your scars are so old,” said Fairhrim. “Old enough to precede your career, I mean.”

“He did have a knack for decorating us both,” said Osric.

“How did you end up with Rosefell Hall if you were a bastard?”

“Terrorised father’s legal man into forging documents legitimising my birth. Killed him later to be safe. Hired tutors and masters to learn how to be a nobleman’s son—whatever my mother hadn’t been able to teach me. Father had pissed away most of the family fortune; I’ve been rebuilding it ever since. Until you. Now I’m basically destitute.”