“We were seven. We called it training for the melee!” Bear protested. His blue eyes laughed inches away from where I leaned on my elbows, my forearm brushing the sleeve of his dinner jacket, my insides soaked with a drunken, delirious warmth.

A servant reached around me, setting a pie on the table. I gasped as I reached for a slice.

“Something wrong?” Skop frowned, poking at it. “Looks fine to me.” He licked his finger, dark eyes lighting up. “Tastes better than fine.”

“Nothing.” I smiled at Bear, nodding at the pie. “It’s pecan.”

“Technically, I believe it’s walnut.” Bear arched his eyebrows, smug. “Still. Seems as though you’ve made an impression on someone.”

I swallowed, not able to break from his gaze. “Seems so,” I agreed.

But at a voice behind us, we both sat up straight. “Seneschal-elect . . . ?”

I turned to face Prince Bertilak, hoping I didn’t look as guilty as I felt. He waved a courteous hand at the dance outside. “Of course,” I stammered.

My unsettled insides felt wrong among the straight spines and graceful arms of the dancers as we joined the minuet. But Bertilak fit perfectly among them, voice as crisp and civil as it was every night at dinner. “Did you have anything to contribute tonight, Your Grace?”

I mustered a smile. “I had a very good chicken pie today for lunch. But then,” I added, “so did you. So it would seem we had identical days.”

Eyes like candles in a darkened hallway.

A tie around a neck, fingers grazing a pulse.

I was lying through my teeth.

Bertilak laughed politely, a superficial sound that came from his mouth and nowhere deeper. When the dance ended, he gave a chivalrous bow and moved on.

Perfectly cordial. Perfectly disinterested.

Bertilak was handsome, and kind. And we might as well have existed on separate planets.

Alessandra would have been furious. The Council, too. But I gave a sigh of relief as I watched his retreating back.

Courtiers flitted around me like butterflies when he left. My throat grew hoarse, my cheeks tremulous from smiling at the noblewomen eager to know if I’d stay to spend the autumn at Windsor and Christmas at Sandringham, at the noblemen hoping to dance.

I fumbled through a jig early in the evening with Lord Geraint, the friendly young victor of the joust, but the crowd had thinned substantially before the melee’s winner finally approached, bowing low and baring his long teeth in a smile. “Seneschal-elect.”