At times like this love was hard to find. “If I answered that charge as it deserved, my lord, then you would have cause to accuse me of disrespect.”

A flicker of shame in the old man’s eyes, quickly extinguished. “If you’re so shy of facing facts then it could be I’m mistaken and you’re not fit for marriage.”

“And it profits us how, my lord, to bandy words of your dying?” Morgan retorted, uncoiling to his feet. “You might chafe me with this carping on marriage and sons but the fault isn’t so great that I’d repay it by describing your funeral long before you’ve drawn your last breath!”

“Carping?” His father slapped the table. “What right have you to throw such a word in my face?”

“And what right have you, my lord, to call into question my duty to you and this family? There is time for me to sire a son. I am not a dying old man!”

“So you admit my decline at last.” His father smiled, revealing loosened teeth and pale gums pinpricked with blood. “That’s progress, of a sort.”

Pained by the words, by his father’s grotesque physical decline, Morgan retreated to the dining room’s wide windows and stared across his family’s estate toward distant, sun-glittered Elvado.

“Why are we wasting precious time with harsh words?” he said at last. “Have I ever said I wouldn’t marry? Have I ever said I would let this family die when I die?”

“No,” his father admitted. “But Morgan, who knows better than you that life is unpredictable? If it weren’t you’d be a husband with sons enough to carry their grandfather’s body in solemn procession to the family crypt.”

“Yes, my lord. I would,” he said, and thought he heard the ghost of Luzena’s sweet laughter. “But I had a wake, not a wedding. How unnatural a man your son would be if he did not grieve the loss of his unconsummated bride.”

“Grieving for one year is natural. Grieving for fourteen is unbecoming. Morgan, it’s unmanly. And yes, it is disrespectful to me. It is past time that you chose another bride.”

He turned away from the window. “You think because I don’t speak of this that I’ve given it no thought. You’re wrong. But the plain fact is, my affections are not engaged. You’d have me court an eligible young woman with false coin?”

“Affections are like the moon!” said his father. “They wax and they wane. You fancied yourself in love with Luzena Talth and perhaps you were, greenly. But had she lived you might well despise her today. It happens. Affections have no place in this business. When you choose a wife you do not ask Do I love this girl? You ask Is she born of a First Family? Can her bloodline strengthen our own? Has she enough to recommend her that I’ll stiffen when it’s needful she be planted with my son? Those are the questions you must ask. Tell me that love answers any of them and then I’ll listen to talk of affections.”