“Not all of them are modest, of course. But to us, breasts are about as erotic as necks. It might be pleasant to kiss them, but there’s no reason to—”

“You go too far!” Lady Gyre said.

“On the other hand, a woman who shows her ankles is obviously hoping not to go below decks alone. Indeed, Lady Gyre,” he lifted an eyebrow and pretended to look at her ankles, though they were too far away and on the other side of table legs. “Sethi women would think you quite brazen.”

Catrinna Gyre’s face went ashen.

Before she could say anything, though, Logan laughed. “Ankles? Ankles? That’s so . . . dumb!” He wolf-whistled. “Nice ankles, mother.” He laughed again.

A servant arrived with the second course, but Solon didn’t even see him set it down. Why do I do this? It wouldn’t be the first time his sharp tongue had cut his own throat.

“I see that your lack of respect isn’t confined to striking Lord Gyre,” the duchess said.

Now he’s Lord Gyre. So, the men weren’t stupid; they weren’t babying Logan; she’d probably ordered them not to hit Logan in practice.

“Mother, he was never disrespectful to me. And he didn’t mean to disrespect you, either.” Logan looked from his mother to Solon, and found stony gazes on each. “Did you, Lord Tofusin?”

“Milady,” Solon said, “my father once told me that there are no lords on the practice field because there are no lords on the battlefield.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “A true lord is always a lord. In Cenaria we understand this.”

“Mother, he means that enemy swords cut nobles as surely as they cut peasants.”

Lady Gyre ignored her son and said, “What is it that you want from us, Master Tofusin?”

It was a rude thing to ask a guest, and not least for addressing him as a commoner. Solon had been counting on the Gyres’ courtesy to give him long enough to figure out that very thing. He had thought that he could watch and wait, dine with the Gyres at every meal, and be afforded a fortnight or two before he announced any intention of his plans. He thought he might like the boy, but this woman, gods! He might be better off with the Jadwin seductress.

“Mother, don’t you think you’re being a little—”

She didn’t even look at her son; she just raised her palm toward him and stared at Solon, unblinking.

So that’s how it is.

Logan wasn’t just her son. For all that he was only a boy, Logan was Catrinna Gyre’s lord. In that contemptuous gesture, Solon read the family’s history. She raised her hand, and her son was still young enough, still inexperienced enough, that he went silent like a good son rather than punished her like a good lord. In that contempt and the contempt she’d greeted him with, Solon saw why Duke Gyre had named his son Lord Gyre in his own absence. The duke couldn’t trust his own wife to rule.