“On dear Duke Reltheus’s estate near Tyborn Mountain. We out-rode the hounds and speared a boar together.” She lifted her chin proudly as she exclaimed softly, “He doesn’t treat me like a child. And he’s a wonderful archer, nearly as good as you are. And he’s a poet and an artist! He sends me poems, and the most amusing letters with funny little drawings in the margins.”

“He sounds like quite the suitor.”

She blushed again. “Yes, he is.”

“I certainly look forward to meeting him when he returns to the city. Only a few more months to wait, eh?”

“You make it sound like tomorrow. Have you ever had to wait for Lord Seregil?”

“A few times, yes—” In cages and cells, sometimes. “Though not as long as you have for Danos. But you must think him worth the wait, if you haven’t encouraged any other suitors. There must be others.”

“Oh, yes. Mostly Mama’s choices, and some I’ve met at balls and salons.” She looked up with a secret smile. “But none I like so much as Danos.”

Knowing what he did, the girlish confidence almost broke Alec’s heart.

After a few games Seregil excused himself and went to one of the diamond-paned terrace doors, pretending to look out over the rain-soaked garden as he studied the crowd behind him reflected in the glass. Across the room Alec had been pressed to sing, accompanied by one of the ladies.

The handsome commander was talking with Elani again, but the watchful Reltheus was nowhere to be seen. The door at the back of the room stood slightly ajar. It was an easy matter to wander over to the bookshelves and have a peek.

A paneled corridor lay beyond, and then the princess’s private rooms behind another ornate door. Several other doors let onto the corridor—the rooms of the princess’s ladies and workrooms of various functionaries, no doubt.

Seregil heard men talking in low voices, one of them recognizable as Reltheus. He waited until no one was looking and slipped through the door into the corridor.

The voices were coming from a half-open doorway on the left. Seregil crept silently closer, until he could peer through the crack between the door and frame.

As he’d guessed, Reltheus was speaking with a middle-aged scribe, recognizable in his silver-trimmed green robe. As Seregil watched, the man handed Reltheus a packet, which the duke tucked away into the front of his coat. Money changed hands.