She flashed a gaze at him, her chin trembling, then demurely cast her gaze to the floor. “Does the marriage bed not please you, Husband?”

He tensed. “You know it does. But that cannot sway me.”

“Sway you from what?” I asked.

“Beatrice went to visit you at your domicile yesterday,” said the prince. “She returned to the palace before evening. It was at that time I believe she heard my councillors speak of arresting you for the murder of the cacica. Here is the sketch she drew this morning.”

He showed me a sketch. Bee had drawn five people on a wide path. The path was spanned by a huge monumental archway hung with painted gourds in the Taino style. Seen past the arch, lying below the height, spread a splendid city and harbor, almost certainly Taino if one judged by the ballcourt and sprawling palace seen in the distance. Rory loitered at the back of the group with a jaunty grin on his face, as if he’d just gotten away with something he knew he ought not to have done, and certainly ought not to have enjoyed quite so much. A second man was sketched entirely from the back, but I could tell he was Vai. He wore a splendidly fashionable dash jacket printed in an outrageous pattern of flowers like bursting fireworks, and he was holding my hand. In the sketch, I looked as cranky and out of sorts as if I’d been having a discussion I didn’t want to have. Fortunately I was wearing a fashionable military-cut riding jacket with a split skirt and a jaunty hat.

In the sketch, Prince Caonabo leaned against the right-hand span of the archway as if he had been waiting a long time for us to reach him. Bee strode out in front looking quite spectacularly…

“Pregnant!” I cried.

“Pregnant,” agreed Caonabo. He snapped the sketchbook shut, and Bee flinched. “There you are, Maestra, you and your brother and your husband, alive and well in Sharagua. What man would not be moved by such a pleasing vision of his harmonious future?”

I hadn’t had time to examine the sketch closely, for there was one obvious thing that might have caused this puzzling tension between them. “That is you, Your Highness, is it not?”

Bee blushed mightily.

Caonabo did not look at her, only at me. “You wonder if I believe it to be my brother. Haübey and I are twins, shaped to the same mold. Few people can tell us apart. But Beatrice can tell us apart. It is evident to me by certain small signs”—none of which he was going to share with me!—“that the man in the sketch is meant to represent me rather than Haübey. The sketch might be described as a bribe, if you will.”

I grasped Bee’s hand. Her skin felt like ice. “What do you mean, Your Highness?”