Daemon climbed the stairs to the nursery wing. The only thing that eased the ache he’d felt since Kartane had told him about Lucivar was being with Jaenelle.

The music room door stood open. “No, Wilhelmina, not like that,” Jaenelle said in that harried, amused tone.

Daemon smiled as he looked into the room. At least he wasn’t the only one who made her sound like that.

The girls stood in the center of the room. Wilhelmina looked a bit grumpy while Jaenelle looked patiently exasperated. She glanced toward the door and her eyes lit up.

Daemon suppressed a sigh. He knew that look, too. He was about to get into trouble.

Jaenelle rushed over to him, grabbed his wrist, and hauled him into the room. “We’re going to attend one of the Winsol balls and I’ve been trying to teach Wilhelmina how to waltz but I’m not explaining it well because I don’t really know how to lead but you’d know how to lead because boys—”

Boys?

“—lead in dancing so you could show Wilhelmina, couldn’t you?”

As though he had a choice. Daemon looked at Wilhelmina. Jaenelle stood to one side, her hands loosely clasped, smiling expectantly.

“Yes, men,” he said dryly, putting a slight emphasis on that word, “do lead when dancing.”

Wilhelmina blushed, instantly understanding his distinction.

Jaenelle looked baffled. She shrugged. “Men. Boys. What’s the difference? They’re all males.”

Daemon gave her a calculating look. In a few more years, he’d be able to show her the difference. He smiled at Wilhelmina and patiently explained the steps. “Some music, Lady?” he said to Jaenelle.

She raised her hand. The crystal music sphere sparkled in the brass holder, and stately music filled the room.

As Daemon waltzed with Wilhelmina, he watched her expression change from concentration to relaxation to pleasure. The exertion brought a glow to her cheeks and a sparkle to her blue eyes. He smiled at her warmly. Dancing was the only activity he enjoyed with a woman, and he regretted that court dancing was no longer in vogue.

If you want to bed a woman, do it in the bedroom. If you want to seduce her, do it in the dance.

It was hard to imagine the Priest saying that to a small boy, but it was like so many other things that had come to him over the years in those moments between sleep and waking, and he no longer questioned whose voice seemed to whisper up from somewhere deep within him, a voice he’d always known wasn’t his own.

When the music faded, Daemon released Wilhelmina and made an elegant, formal bow. He turned to Jaenelle. Her strange expression made his heart jump. The crust of civility he lived behind, all the rules and regulations, cracked beneath her gaze. Her psychic scent distracted him. His mind sharpened, turned inward, and he reveled in the keen awareness of his body, the smooth feline way he moved.

The music began again. Jaenelle raised one hand. He raised the opposite hand. Stepping toward each other, their fingertips touched, and the court dance began.