“Know what?” Miriam staggered slightly, dizzy from the adrenaline rush of facing Olga’s rage. “What on earth are you talking about, woman? Jesus fucking Christ, I’ve just admitted I’m having an affair with the man you’re supposed to be marrying and that isn’t why you’re threatening to kill me over some matter of honor?”

“Oh, this is insupportable!” Olga stared at her. She looked very uncertain all of a sudden. “But you sent your man last night.”

“What man?”

Their eyes met in mutual incomprehension.

“You mean you don’t know? Really?”

“Know what?”

“A man broke into my bedroom last night,” Olga said calmly. “He had a knife and he threatened me and ordered me to disrobe. So I shot him dead. He wasn’t expecting that.”

“You. Shot. A, a rapist. Is that it?”

“Well, that and he had a letter of instruction bearing the seal of your braid.”

“I don’t understand.” Miriam shook her head. “What seal? What kind of instructions?”

“My maidenhead,” Olga said calmly. “The instructions were very explicit. What is the law where you come from? About noble marriage?”

“About—what? Huh. You meet someone, one of you proposes, usually the man, and you arrange a wedding. End of story. Are things that different here?”

“But the ownership of title! The forfeiture. What of it?”

“What ‘forfeiture’?” Miriam must have looked puzzled because Olga frowned.

“If a man, unwed, lies with a maid, also unwed, then it is for him to marry her if he can afford to pay the maiden-price to her guardian. And all her property and titles escheat to him as her head. She has no say in the matter should he reach agreement with her guardian, who while I am in his care here would for me be Baron Hjorth. In my event, as a full-blood of the Clan, my Clan shares would be his. This commoner—” she pronounced the word with venomous diction—“invaded my chamber with rape in mind and a purse full of coin sufficient to pay his way out of the baron’s noose.”

“And a letter,” Miriam said in tones of deep foreboding. “A letter sealed with…what? Ink? Wax? Something like that, some kind of seal ring?”

“No, sealed with the stamps of Thorold and Hjorth. It is a disgusting trick.”

“I’ll say.” Miriam whistled tunelessly. “Would you believe me if I said that I don’t have—and have never seen—any such stamp? I don’t even know who my braid are, and I really ought to, because they’re not going to be happy if I—” she stopped. “Oh, of course.”

“‘Of course,’ what?”

“Listen, was there an open door to the roof in your apartment last night? After you killed him? I mean, a door he came in through?”

Olga’s eyes narrowed. “What if there was?”