I’m no better than a Feenish shuckster, a cock-boy, spilling seed for coin with a stranger in a stinking alley, or a ditch.

He couldn’t even find comfort in knowing he’d done it for his father. For the Danfey name, the future and honour of his house.

Can a man purchase honour by selling his own? I don’t think he can. I think—

But it was best that he didn’t think. That way lay despair. So he checked to see if the corridor beyond the closet was empty, then stepped into its deserted silence as though he’d not a care in the world.

The house partyers and their hosts collected in the mansion’s conservatory for luncheon. Of the guests, Venette and her husband Orwin were the only mages Morgan knew or cared to know. Maris’s three cousins didn’t interest him, they were young and flighty, irrelevant to his purpose. As for the other two couples enjoying the Garricks’ hospitality, they were provincial mages with sufficient rank to be acceptable, but not enough mageworking talent to have made themselves known in Elvado. Which meant Venette had… exaggerated… to get him here. Another mark against her.

For this meal, Lord Garrick’s son Ehrig was playing the jovial host. Ehrig’s wife, quiet and colourless for all she was a strong enough mage, tended to their three children and left the talking to him. Apparently he’d married a copy of his mother.

“Wine, Councillor?” Ehrig said, lifting a bottle.

He’d happily dive into a vat of the stuff. Though she was demurely seated beside her mother at the other end of the table, he could feel the gloating heat in Maris’s glances. She’d changed out of her cotton dress into silk tunic and leggings for the afternoon’s lawn games. She looked the perfect model of a gentle, well-behaved and unbreached ranked family daughter.

Remembering her lush body, her urgent, pleasured whispers, the way she’d abandoned herself to him and screamed her violent climax into his mouth, he felt a wave of heat scorch through his blood.

“Morgan?” Seated at his left hand, Venette touched his wrist. “Are you well?”

“Of course,” he said, hiding curtness inside a smile. Be quiet, Venette. You’ve meddled more than enough. “A trifle weary, perhaps. No doubt due to all the fresh country air.”

Finished pouring icewine for his parents’ guests, Ehrig laughed. “Are you certain? Your estate’s in the country, isn’t it, Morgan?”

He’d not given Ehrig permission to use his given name. Maris’s horse-breeding brother had simply assumed the right, adopting a presumptuous demeanour within five minutes of their meeting. And what could he say against it? Both he and the Garricks knew why he had come. To insist that he should be addressed otherwise was out of the question.

So he endured.