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“Happen she don’t think of it as Lady Kentigern’s house,” Ingrid sniffed. “Happen, she thinks of it as yours.” Konrad bristled, but the servant rattled on before he could correct this misconception. “But as it happens, Mistress Magnatrude had a reply from the countess the self-same day, inviting her to call on them on the morrow.”

“The Strethneals have lodgings in town?”

“They’s taken quarters at the palace,” Ingrid replied with some malicious satisfaction.

“What?” He did not even try to conceal his astonishment at this development. The Strethneals had always been staunch supporters of the Blechmarsh claim. For them to take up positions as courtiers now at the southern court surprised him.

“They’re not the only northern nobles here, neither!” Ingrid carried on. “The Martindales is here too, at the palace.”

Konrad grunted. Everyone knew Guy Randall was enamored of his southern wife. Consequently, their presence at court was no surprise. The Strethneals, though … Times were changing, he reflected. Presumably, they were here for the tournament. He wondered if Princess Una would be in attendance and felt the familiar cold prickle of shame that washed over him when he thought of the fate of their northern princess. He had done nothing to save her from her unworthy marriage.

He had lost half his sight and endured horrific wounds in battle to defend the northern standard, but when it came to the fate of that ill-starred damsel, he had turned his back on the last of the Blechmarshes. The monarchs he had pledged his life to defend.

Was his sister in the right of it? Should he have competed to win Una’s hand? There was no actual bar to northern entrants to the fray, though common opinion had been that Wymer would ne’er have allowed a former follower to win her hand. The fact of the matter was that Konrad had shrunk from the notion of spending the rest of his life with a constant reminder of all that he had lost.

He was ashamed of his behavior, that was the stark truth. He had made damn sure he was on the wrong side of the country when that fateful May Day tournament had taken place. He had spent a full week roaring drunk, holed up in a secluded hunting lodge.

What would he have done with the princess if he had won her anyway? Neither carting her from one tournament to another seemed right, nor leaving her to rot at Bartree Lodge with his increasingly embittered sister.

He dried off his face. It was a moot point now in any case. Both he and the princess’s fate were sealed. He peered at the mirror and wondered how his bride could look him so squarely in the eye without flinching. So lost in thought was he that only Ingrid’s wheezing cough roused him from his ponderings. “Send my sister up to me,” he said shortly.

Magnatrude took her sweet time making her way up from the floor below. By the time she knocked on his door, he had long finished his ablutions and was glancing into the cavernous cabinet that Jakeman had stored his clothes in. All his garments fitted neatly into one corner of the thing.

“Come in,” he called back over his shoulder, and his sister came into the room, closing the door smartly behind her.

“My, what a grand bedchamber,” she commented. “You must have the best in the house. Goodness,” she commented wryly, looking down at the fancy doublet he had found laid on his bed that evening. “Your taste in clothing has grown a good deal grander than I recall.”

“And yours a good deal shabbier,” he responded, fastening the cupboard door shut and turning to survey her.

She bridled at his words. “I am not ashamed of the clothes on my back,” she said lifting her chin. “They have done me sterling service this past decade.”

“Should you like to join a nunnery, Trude?” he asked forthrightly, making his sister gasp. “It could be easily arranged, and shabby black gowns won’t raise an eyebrow there.” He paused a moment before adding conversationally, “Was it your intention to make a show of me before the Strethneals with your mean apparel?”

She turned a dull red at that. “Someone has been talking,” she muttered. “Ingrid, of course. Her first loyalty was always to you.” He made no reply, as the matter of Ingrid’s loyalty was obvious. It would belong, of course, to her liege lord. “You do not wish me to meet with the Strethneals?”

“I simply fail to see the need for all the secrecy. Why are you shutting yourself away all day in one room until my return of an evening?”

“I don’t know what you mean!” she flung back at him. “I live very quietly at the lodge and am not used to the society of other women!”

Konrad snorted. “Yet you crave the society of the Countess of Strethneal.” When she did not speak, he added, “Freda, too, shares your circumstances, yet she does not scorn my wife’s company.”

Trude’s mouth twisted. “I always forget how confrontational you are,” she mused. “It’s a shame, brother, that you could not have brought this same fighting spirit to the May Day tournament last year.” So, there it was. Evidently, she had still not forgiven him for that.

“A strange wish considering your avowed aversion to female company. Should you have liked a fellow inmate at Bartree Lodge, sister?” Konrad growled. “Another spectator to the slow degradation of our former home? Knowing how terrible you believe your own fate, you think Princess Una has not yet suffered enough that she should share in it?”

Trude flushed. “It would be better than the fate that has overtaken her,” she flung at him.

Konrad shrugged. “De Bussell is an amiable enough fellow. I daresay his company is far preferable to my own.”

His sister’s breath hissed through her teeth. “That southerner is not fit to clean her shoes let alone to warm her bed!”

Konrad snorted. “What do you know of bed-warmings? If you had not been so capricious, you would have been wed years ago.”

“You fling that at me?” she seethed. “You? Who was jilted just as I was! I would have thought your own experience would ensure some fellow feeling, but you are as cruel in this as everything else!”

“Spare me the histrionics, sister. Even without the intercession of the war, I doubt you would have wed Kimarne. You bickered more than you were ever in accord.”

“How dare you speak his name in front of me!”