“Yes.” Out of habit, he avoided giving out too much family information.
Kij seemed annoyed by the evasive answer. “He lived to be very old?”
“Nearly seventy.” Jerin reminded himself this wasn’t a country fair; it would be safe to discuss family here. “He was fifteen when my grandmothers . . .” He swallowed the word “kidnapped.” With the Queens’ coaching, they had come up with a “sweeter” version of his family’s history. He substituted in the word “. . . found him. We lost him to a fever three years ago.”
It was an important breeding point that none of his family had died of a weak heart, stroke, or other inherited illness. Only disease and accident had winnowed their ranks.
“I see,” Kij said. “Why didn’t he ever try to contact the Queens?”
“After the public executions of his mothers and sisters, he didn’t see any point.”
“Ah. Yet you saved Princess Odelia’s life. Wasn’t that a betrayal to his loss?”
Jerin blinked in surprise. “Betrayal? No.”
“He was said to be trained in the ways of k’lamour,” Kij said.
Jerin blushed and ducked his head.
“You know what that means?” Kij asked.
“It’s not really a proper thing to talk about,” Jerin murmured, glancing to see where Eldest was in the shifting couples.
“He passed this to you?” Kij pressed.
“The paths of pleasure?” Jerin whispered, to quiet her. The music was coming to an end, and he didn’t want be overheard. “Yes, he and my father told me. Please, talking about sexual union isn’t the proper thing to do.”
“On the contrary. A woman should know what she’s getting,” Kij all but purred, taking firmer hold of his hand.
The dance, though, ended with bows. He spotted Corelle coming toward them to claim him back. He gave Kij a false smile, tugged free his hand, and met Corelle halfway. Kij, infuriatingly, trailed alongside him.
“I would dance with Jerin again,” Kij stated, putting out her hand to him.
Corelle took Jerin’s right hand with her own, blocking any move to claim him. “I’m sorry, but we need to spend Jerin’s time wisely. A second dance would be impossible.”
“I don’t know if you realize, little mushroom, how important my family is and how much you would gain by courting us.”
“Your family of old controlled the portage over Hera’s Step,” Corelle said in a bored tone. “Your grandmothers bankrupted your family building the lock to replace the portage when it was destroyed by sabotage during the war. Through marriage and other means, you’ve reclaimed a controlling interest in the lock. Second to the royal family, you are the oldest recorded family, noted when a brother was married to the second generation of the royal princesses. You are not considered, however, the oldest noble family, as you gained your title through service to the crown—lending money—and not by marriage. In fact, you are one of the few noble families that never married a royal prince.” Corelle flashed a grin. “Unlike ours. Good day.”
With that, Corelle turned Jerin away from Kij and led him across the room.
“That was rude,” Jerin whispered after he got over his shock.
Corelle still smiled smugly. “Perhaps. I’m not going to have any sisters-in-law looking down their noses at us. They’ll see as equals, or not at all.”
“We’re not going to get four thousand crowns if you insult everyone that dances with me.”
“Perhaps.”
“How did you know all that, anyhow?”
“Her sister Alissa told me most of it. She went on and on like I cared. Eldest and I asked around to dig out the dirt.”
“It was still rude.” Jerin bowed his head in embarrassment.
“Yes, but I thought you might want to dance with someone else.” Corelle came to a stop, loosing her hold on Jerin’s hand. “Your Highness, you asked for a dance?”
Jerin looked up in surprise at Ren’s smiling face.
“Your sister has given me permission for this dance,” Ren said.
Jerin ducked his head again, this time to hide the grin that bloomed uncontrollably across his face. He slipped his hand into the princess’s, and she squeezed it slightly before leading him out onto the floor, where Summer was partnered with Cullen.
There would be, Jerin reflected, a profound lack of things to do in his new life. True, they had slept in after a late night dancing, but after brunch, as rain started to drizzle down, there was nothing to do. No dishes to clean up. No dinner to get ready. No clothes to wash. No knitting or mending to be done. No children to keep entertained.
The suite had several musical instruments, none of which they played. It was also devoid of reading materials, except the newspaper and a score of books on profoundly dry subjects such as Land Improvement via Introduction of Fertilizer, and Primer of Livestock Breeding Practices. Either the royal family didn’t know about the existence of novels, or had formed an undeservedly high opinion of the Whistlers’ intelligence level.
The siblings took turns swapping newspaper pages between them, occasionally murmuring, “Did you see here that it says . . . ?” and getting their fingers black from the ink. One by one, they finished the newspaper and then hunted through the loose pages, hoping for something they’d missed, something more to read.
Jerin was beginning to understand why Cullen had been so bored.
They had hunted out writing paper to play code breaker, devising quick cryptograms and handing them off to the next person to break. Corelle had just won the first round, as usual, when a knock at the door provided a welcome distraction. It proved even more welcome when it turned out to be Cullen and Lylia.
“We’re bored,” Jerin told them. “We just read the Herald to death.”
“Yes, yes, that’s a dead newspaper.” Lylia nudged a rumpled page aside with her foot. “You can read? How wonderful. I’ve tried to teach Cullen in the past, but he refuses to learn.”
“You’re a lousy teacher.” Cullen pouted. “Besides, what’s the point? My wives probably won’t let me read.”
“Why not?” Eldest asked. “Whistler men all read—doesn’t make them cross-eyed or sterile or anything.”
Lylia shrugged. “I guess it’s like the poor who don’t want their daughters going to school. The girls make more money by working alongside their mothers.”
“Oh, like you see noblemen out weeding fields every day,” Cullen said.
“I didn’t say it made sense,” Lylia murmured, tweaking him gently with her thumb and forefinger. She turned back to the Whistlers and gave them a bright smile. “How about a tour of the palace?”
The palace proved to be more rambling than Jerin had imagined. The tour ended in a suite of rooms that his youngest sisters would kill for. Called the nursery, it held a room of fanciful beds, a well-stocked schoolroom, and a playroom. One wall of the playroom contained windows, and the rest of the walls had shelves to the high ceiling, filled with toys. Baby toys were put up, and the floor was now littered with toy soldiers. Tiny cannons, a fleet of warships on a blue painted river, even supply wagons, accompanied the soldiers to war. The five red-haired, youngest princesses, Zelie, Quin, Selina, Nora, and Mira, were just settling down to battle.
Lylia introduced Jerin to the five, and then went off to chaperone Cullen in the schoolroom with Jerin’s sisters.
Zelie was the leader of the youngest princesses. With a regality that fitted her position, she announced, “We’re reenacting the battle of Nettle’s Run.”
Jerin smiled. The soldiers might be tin instead of wood, the cannons might articulate and fire, but it was one of the same battles his sisters engaged in on long winter afternoons. He glanced over the troops. “Where’s Peatfield?”
“What do you know about playing with soldiers?” Mira, the obvious baby of the sisters, asked.
“My grandmothers were under Wellsbury,” Jerin explained, pointing to the mounted general flanked by her younger sisters. “My sisters and
I have re-created this battle, just like this.”
“But you’re a boy,” Princess Zelie said with puzzlement tinged with contempt.
“Yes. I find it depressing sometimes,” Jerin admitted.
“Why?” Quin, or perhaps Nora, asked. The two looked very similar and all the girls had shifted since he’d been introduced to them.
“There’s lots of things I would like to do that I’m not allowed,” Jerin said.
“Do you want to play?” the other of the two asked.
“We’ve already picked troops,” Zelie reminded the others.
“You don’t have Peatfield,” Jerin pointed out. “She was held in reserve for most of the battle. I could play her troops.”
They consented after a quick check with their history books to confirm Peatfield’s existence and the strength of her troops. Almost seventy-five thousand women clashed in the woods alongside the Bright River, leaving nearly ten thousand dead or wounded. It was attributed as a brilliant win for Wellsbury, but luck had played a large part in the victory—Smythe’s misunderstanding her orders and withdrawing just as Wellsbury attacked, for instance. Though in truth, the garbled message she received hadn’t been the true orders issued. Peatfield’s orders too had been waylaid, and thus her reserve troops never entered the battle.
When played without the sleet, the exhaustion, the lack of food, the poor visibility, the sniper attacks, and the Whistlers confusing enemy orders, the outcome favored the False Eldest’s forces. It surprised him, thus, that the royal sisters kept to the same attacks and retreats of the original battle.
After watching for several minutes, he faked a retreat up Granny Creek, crossed over Blue Knob, and took out the overextended left flank of Wellsbury’s force. Zelie shrieked with dismay and literally had the army fly to protect her tin general.
“No, no, no, you can’t do that.” Jerin laughed as he caught a tin soldier that was flying miles across the landscape to land in his path.
“Yes, I can.” Zelie pushed his hand away to thump the soldier down. “I just did!”
“No, you can’t.” Jerin struggled to stop laughing. “That’s against the rules.”
“You can’t talk to me that way!”
“Good heavens, why not?”
“I am a princess of the realm,” Zelie explained in perfect princess tones.
Jerin covered his mouth to hold in a crow of laughter. She was so delightful using the adult deadpan. “Your Highness, the point of the rules is to mimic battle, so you can learn how to fight one without getting everyone killed on your first charge. Your tin soldiers can only do what real soldiers do, because you must learn what your real armies can do. If you cheat, then you’re not only cheating on me; you’re cheating yourself out of a chance to learn, and you’re risking the life of every woman you’ll ever command.”
“But you cheated!” Zelie cried.
“Oh, there is cheating and then there’s cheating. What I did, real soldiers could do, that is, pretend to run away and then attack elsewhere. Real soldiers, however, cannot fly across the battle, willy-nilly.”
Five serious faces considered him. “So it’s all right to cheat sometimes?”
Oh, dear, Ren probably wouldn’t be happy if he perverted her youngest sisters. Still, Whistlers never found a little cheating to be harmful.
“My mothers always said,” Jerin said carefully, “that those who are completely forthright are often at the disadvantage of those who are corrupt. Here.” He picked up three of the earthen cups that held the cannonballs, passed the cannonballs out to the princesses, and turned the cups upside down. He picked up a marble and showed it to them. “We’re going to pretend your cannonballs are coins. I’m going to put this marble under one of the cups, and shuffle them around. You bet your ‘coins’ on which cup that you think the marble is under. If the marble is under the cup, then I’ll match the number of ‘coins’ you bet. If the marble isn’t under the cup, then I get to keep the ‘coins’ you bet.”
He made a show of placing the marble, palmed it, and allowed them to win the first pass by palming it under the cup they chose. After that, he left the marble pocketed and began winning all their cannonballs. Eventually, one of them remembered what had started the game.
“Wait!” Selina squealed with surprise and dismay. “You’re cheating! Aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes. See?” He overturned all the cups. “The marble isn’t under any of them. There’s no way you can win.”
“How did you do that?” Zelie asked, chewing on one long lock of hair. “We saw you put it under one of them.”
So he showed how he could palm the marble, using misdirection and sleight of hand. “The point is, you could have lost all your money, because you thought I was being honest, and you were playing fair. The more you know how people can cheat you, the less likely you’ll be cheated.”
“So it’s all right to cheat?” Mira asked slowly, obviously struggling with the concept.
He shook his head. “Lying and cheating is like playing with guns. When it’s real, it’s very dangerous. You have to be very careful, but we Whistlers always thought it was a good thing to know how to do it well, and more importantly, how to tell when someone else is doing it.”
Jerin realized that someone else was in the room. He glanced up to meet the gaze of a young woman leaning against the door, watching them. Judging by her auburn hair, fair skin, and delicate features, she could be none other than the mysterious Princess Trini. Her look was a mix of amusement and dismay.
Lylia wandered back into the room. “Trini, there you are! You haven’t met the Whistlers yet. This is Jerin.”
Princess Trini straightened up with a scowl at her younger sister. “Well met, Master Whistler, but if you’ll excuse me, I have better things to do than to play with toy soldiers.”
The others, minus Eldest Whistler, returned to the playroom. Barnes, they said, had fetched Eldest to meet with a visitor. The Whistlers showed off their skills at sleight of hand for the youngest princesses, making coins and balls disappear and reappear. The children and Cullen picked up most of the basic moves, but Lylia, laughing at her own fumble-fingeredness, couldn’t get it.
“Finally,” Cullen gloated, “something I can do that you can’t!”
The young princesses’ tutor arrived, announced playtime was over, and shooed the visitors away. The group decided to troop back to the Whistler suite for tea. They reversed their normal marching order, with Lylia and Jerin leading, while Summer and Corelle, flanking Cullen, trailed behind.
Reaching the suite first, Lylia opened the door and halted.
Eldest Whistler and Kij Porter stood in the room, the tension almost visible between them. If Kij and Eldest Whistler had been armed, surely both would have hands resting on their weapons. Seeing them standing thus, it struck Jerin for the first time that the Porters were built much like his sisters—tall, lean, and broad in the shoulders.
“You’ll have to give us time to decide.” Eldest’s voice was carefully flat, void of any emotion. “I won’t be pressured into a snap decision.”
“I don’t see what there is to decide,” Kij said lightly, though her eyes were narrowed in something that might be anger. “We’re willing to offer twice the amount you’d get from commoners. We’re a powerful family with ancient noble lines. There isn’t a family greater than ours in all of Queensland.”
Jerin’s heart quaked in his chest. Offer? The Porters?
The two women realized that he stood in the doorway. They turned toward him, Eldest with a flash of irritation, Kij Porter with a look close to greed.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Eldest stated firmly; it was unclear if she spoke to Kij or Jerin.
“Jerin!” Kij came to claim his hands, squeezing them possessively. “You’re more beautiful every time I see you.”
“It’s the clothes,” he murmured, ducking his head shyly, but then glancing up to study her. Did he want Kij as a wife? Kij and her sisters were han
dsome women—stronger in features than the delicate royal princesses, which some would say was a bonus. Certainly they did not tend toward freckling like Lylia. Kij’s eyes were the hard blue of sapphires.
Jerin could not find a single spark of warmth for Kij. Was it because he had given his heart totally to Ren already? Was it just a lack of knowing Kij?
She leaned toward him. A month ago, he would have missed the warning signs. Thanks to his experience with the royal princesses, however, he realized she was going to try to kiss him. He stepped backward with no conscious thought in the action, not even aware he’d avoided her until she straightened with a slight frown.
“Come, what’s the harm in a simple kiss? A sample of what I’m buying?”
“My brother is not a horse, nor a whore.” Eldest’s voice was toneless with her controlled anger. “We’ll need a contract and brother’s price in hand, a secure betrothal, before anyone can try for a sample.”
Not counting royal princesses, of course. Jerin studied his feet as his face burned. Hopefully that comment won’t blow up in our face.
Kij didn’t seem put off in the least. She chuckled softly and murmured, “Ah, I do enjoy taming a spirited colt before mounting and riding.”
“Good day, Porter,” Eldest snapped.
Kij nodded to them and went out.
“I don’t like her, Eldest,” Corelle muttered.
“You said he wasn’t a horse,” Summer growled.
“Corelle. Summer,” Eldest snapped. “We don’t discuss family business in public.”
Lylia and Cullen! Jerin turned around and found the two hovering by the door, looking paler than any of his sisters.
“This is not a good time,” Lylia said, blinking rapidly. “We’ll leave you to discuss this.”
She went without seeing if Cullen followed. Cullen opened his mouth, closed it again, and hurried after his cousin. The Whistlers stood in silence, the younger siblings waiting out of habit for Eldest to speak.
“Well?” Corelle finally asked. “What do we do?”
“We wait,” Eldest stated firmly, leaving no room for discussion. “This is only our first offer. We have time. We wait.”