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House Hurrell must have once been mighty members of the Imperial bureaucracy.

They were masters of delay.

For two days, they had been dragging their feet with impeccable courtesy, from frittering away the afternoon with promises to produce the princess to airy assurances that she was just hiding by suppertime.

It was only after a six course meal—when it was too dark to mount a search of the grounds—that they confessed she was nowhere to be found, and that apparently it was her habit to go wandering off into the chilly March night.

Having located her himself, Remin was once more cooling his heels in the parlor, listening to Lord Hurrell burble about his children and feeling distinctly out of place.

Everything here was too clean, too delicate, and far too small.

Including the sofa, which was so low he felt in danger of hitting himself in the chin with his knees.

“You have records of the princess’s birth?”

he asked Lord Hurrell abruptly.

“Her Sacred Highness Ophele, daughter of the House of Agnephus.

The Emperor claimed her birth was witnessed and attested by a Prior of the Temple.”

Unfortunately, there was no way to prove that Rache Pavot, a lesser noblewoman whose House had been extinguished with Remin’s, had actually conceived a child by the Emperor.

He wouldn’t put it past the Emperor Bastin Agnephus to lie, but so long as there was iron proof that he had acknowledged the girl as his daughter, that was sufficient.

Remin would take whatever he could get.

Every last bit of it.

“Yes, Your Grace.

I have kept them safe since her mother died,”

Lord Hurrell replied.

He was a vaguely froggy gentleman with sagging jowls and a number of rings on his fingers, including one massive ruby that flashed as he pressed his hand to his heart.

“We were charged with her care, you know, and we have looked after her as our sacred duty these many years.

Those are the words of House Hurrell: faithful unto death.

Your Grace may know the history between our Houses?”

“Yes.”

Undaunted by the monosyllable, Lord Hurrell happily recounted it, pushing forward both his son and daughter as he spoke.

Nineteen year-old Julot was a promising young man, he claimed, trained in the management of a noble household but also eager to stand beside the Duke of Andelin as one of his men-at-arms.

Chewing on another tiny sandwich, Remin didn’t dignify this with an answer.

Julot Hurrell was a dandy in a velvet and silk jerkin, doublet, and garish red hosen.

It looked as if the nearest thing he’d ever held to a sword was table cutlery.

The lord was equally enthusiastic in advancing the young Lady Lisabe.

Over the next hour he had the girl sing, play a lap harp, and present samples of her embroidery, lovely and useless.

Unaccustomed as he was to noblewomen, or any women at all outside the camp prostitutes that marched with his army, Remin had the odd feeling he was being offered something, and it was not what he had come for.

How long did it take to heat a lady’s bath and clean her up? Lady Lisabe fluttered nearby as Remin waited with increasing impatience.

Was this another insult? What was the purpose of these endless delays? The Emperor had set up a number of traps and ambushes for him over the years, and anything might happen in this isolated place.

But perhaps the Emperor’s vengeance had taken another form.

Since the day of his parents’ execution, Remin had sworn that he would take back everything he had lost.

His House.

His name.

His birthright.

Remin did not care if the maidens of the Empire sighed for him; in practical terms, no one would give their daughter to a man so despised by the Emperor, no matter how she sighed. Anyone who extended a hand to Remin Grimjaw risked sharing his fate.

And yet Remin had set his sights on the highest woman in the Empire and gambled everything to win her.

He was fully prepared to check her for weapons every night and employ tasters for his food, so long as the children he got on her inherited the untouchable sacred lineage of the House of Agnephus.

The House he founded on the far side of the Brede could never be destroyed as his parents’ house had been.

And his descendants would be numerous as the stars.

But a simpleminded wife…well, that sounded just like Emperor Bastin Agnephus, who salted every gift with poison.

“More wine, Your Grace?”

asked Lady Lisabe, with another dimpled smile.

Even he could sense the invitation.

Silently, he extended his goblet.

“How much longer?”

he asked bluntly.

“I mean to collect the princess and leave immediately.

Get her things packed while we’re waiting.

I have a Prior ready to marry us in Celderline.”

“So soon?”

Lord Hurrell asked, glancing at his daughter, who rose and departed in a flutter of silk.

“If I may say, Your Grace, the Emperor’s daughter is as sweet a girl as one might wish, but she may be surprised at her good fortune.

To be blessed with such an excellent marriage so abruptly, when she is young and possessed of a most maidenly shyness, I would ask for your forbearance so we might introduce her gently…”

“You told her I was coming, didn’t you?”

Remin’s black eyes narrowed.

“I sent a message a month ago.

She’s had time to get used to the idea.

We are needed back in Andelin.”

“Of course, of course we told her,”

the lord assured him hurriedly.

“We fully impressed upon her what an honor it is.

Why, every maiden in the kingdom is in despair to know that so mighty a knight was already promised to the Emperor’s daughter…”

He kept saying things like that.

The many despairing maidens of the Empire, and the implication that something was amiss with the princess.

The sunlight made its slow journey across the floor, and Remin only halfway listened to the conversation, which carried on perfectly well without him.

He was thinking.

“Once again I must apologize for the delay, Your Grace,”

Lord Hurrell said, when Lady Lisabe returned to whisper in his ear.

“Can we offer you the hospitality of the house for another night? It takes some time to prepare a lady for the company of a duke, especially after such a…rigorous morning.”

“Do that.”

Remin stood.

“I will go inform my men.

Thank you.”

His knights were milling around the courtyard with the grumbling patience of seasoned soldiers, who knew that waiting was a vital part of life.

Remin ducked through the doorway of the manor and strode toward them, his heavy boots crunching on the gravel.

“Edemir.

Miche.

Go wander, and keep your ears open,”

he ordered, jerking his chin toward the house.

“Make friends with the maids.

I don’t mind if you get lost a few times.

Huber, go talk horses with the stablemaster.”

Huber said nothing; Edemir offered a courtly bow and headed for the front of the house.

Blond, beautiful Miche had already taken to vanishing, no doubt into the beds of various maids, and he sloped immediately off toward the kitchen.

It was thanks to Miche that they had found Princess Ophele at all.

The old lady in the kitchen had given him the enigmatic instruction to look in the trees when he had been filching sausage rolls that morning.

“We’ll be staying another night, then?”

asked Bram of Lisle, a pockmarked former mercenary who had volunteered for the legendary charge at Gresein Bridge.

As far as Remin was concerned, that excused him from noble courtesies for life.

“Yes.

Probably a few days more,”

he replied, glaring at the manor house.

Nothing in this world was ever simple.

“Nice beds and good food,”

Bram observed with a shrug, and whistled up a few lads to get the baggage wagons out of the way.

Did he dare refuse to marry the Emperor’s daughter?

Remin was considering it.

It wasn’t any more foolhardy than most other things he had done, and it was one thing to risk his own safety on the Emperor’s spawn, and quite another to risk the quality of his progeny.

The Andelin Valley was rich in resources, but it was also wild and dangerous, a blank spot on most Imperial maps.

Valleth had sacrificed thousands to their Lord of Tales over a century of occupation, then rounded out their depravity by summoning the devils in the latter days of the war.

Those creatures had proven sadly indiscriminate in their appetites.

It was no place for a wandering simpleton.

A few towns had survived.

Remin had undertaken a hasty survey after his victory that turned up a half dozen hamlets and a little less than two thousand people, clinging stubbornly to their land in spite of armies galloping about and ghouls creeping hungrily in the dark.

“It’s no place for a wife,”

Duke Ereguil had told him when Remin explained what he meant to do.

Laud Ereguil had always seemed as solid as a boulder to Remin, but he was a tired man after the long war in the Andelin and wanted nothing more than the peace and quiet of his own comfortable estate.

But still, he found time to concern himself with Remin, honoring the oath he had made to Remin’s mother.

“You would be kinder to leave her where she is until you can put a roof over her head, boy.”

Age twenty-four, more than six and a half feet tall, and Remin was still boy.

“I’m not giving that old snake time to wiggle out of his oath,”

Remin had replied flatly.

“I will have a noble wife.

The daughter of an Emperor.”

“Be patient,”

Duke Ereguil cautioned for the thousandth time.

“All men grow old. And die.”

It was a warning, and a promise.

No one was immortal.

The Emperor would not be Emperor forever.

And Duke Ereguil, Remin’s only defender, was growing old.

This was a different sort of problem than the ones he had faced in Andelin, but Remin knew he had to learn to unravel the twisted social puzzles of nobility, and this was his first test.

He would not fail it.

“I am afraid the lady has been taken ill,”

Lady Hurrell said apologetically at dinner, sliding into her seat.

“She has always had a delicate constitution; it makes it all the more frustrating when she slips away before nightfall.”

For some reason, this news did not surprise him.

It was certainly plausible.

Remin nodded slowly.

“Should I send one of my men to fetch a doctor?”

“No, we are accustomed to nursing our own, being so far away from town,”

the lady said, putting on a brave face.

“My Lisabe will look in on her after supper.

She is used to tending her, poor lamb.”

Of course, he would be a brute if he removed a sick girl from her home.

It would be an unpardonable insult if he demanded to see her and verify that she was really ill.

Remin shoved roast pork into his mouth and masticated thoughtfully.

Maybe he was too suspicious.

House Hurrell was no friend of the Emperor.

But meeting Auber’s eyes, he saw a reflection of his own skepticism.

In war, there were times that called for a reckless charge, brute force, shattering strength.

But other times called for patience and finesse, a slow and probing attack to find the enemy’s weak points.

“That is good of her,”

Remin remarked, mentally settling in for a siege.

“Loyalty is a rare thing.”

His black eyes focused on Lisabe, and the girl smiled until the dimples deepened in her cheeks.