Isana regarded him as though waiting for him to finish his sentence.

“Please,” Aquitaine added, his voice not quite a growl.

Veradis cleared her throat, and said, “I will wait outside, my lady.”

“As you wish,” Isana said. “But Araris stays with me.”

Araris came through the door at a pace that suggested he’d begun moving before Isana had finished the sentence. He held it open for Veradis, then closed it behind her as she left.

Aquitaine smiled. “You don’t trust me, lady?”

Isana smiled at him and did not answer.

Aquitaine let out a brief, rather harsh laugh. “There are few who would behave in such a manner toward me, Isana, and with good reason. I do not regard myself as an unreasonable man, but neither do I react well to discourtesy and disrespect.”

“If you were the First Lord,” she replied, “that might be a problem. But you aren’t.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t I?”

“Not yet,” Isana said in a tone that stopped just short of being belligerent. She met the man’s eyes calmly for a full minute of silence, then dropped her voice into a more conversational register. “Unless the Senate has already told you how the outcome of the hearing would fall out, I suppose.”

Aquitaine shook his head and responded in kind. “Valerius, of course, assures me that it will all happen precisely the way he intends. Lamentably, I am aware of the value of such promises.”

She gave him another sharp look, and his mouth spread into a leonine smile. “You thought I’d come here to gloat over your dismissal, lady?”

“The possibility had occurred to me,” she admitted.

He shook his head. “I don’t have the time to waste on such a petty gesture.”

“Then why have you come?”

Aquitaine crossed to the room’s sideboard and poured wine from a bottle into a waiting glass. He took it up and swirled it lazily around the inside of the glass. “The Senators are, of course, in a frenzy. They sense a chance to reduce the powers of the office of First Lord, despite the ugly realities before us. And, if they have their way—and Alera survives, of course—then they will succeed. And we already saw what happens after a weakening of the office of the First Lord of Alera. Regardless of how things play out in the future, you and I have a common interest in defending it.”

Isana studied him as he cautiously took a sip of wine. Then she said, “Let’s assume for a moment that I agree. What are you proposing?”

“Marriage,” Aquitaine said calmly.