Puffing mightily, she sank down beside the duchess. Fans were in vogue again this year and Kade took advantage of the fact vigorously.
“Good!” she said. “I allow my ambitions to exceed my abilities! I feared I was going to have an apoplexy halfway through that one.”
“I am sure you would never do anything so gauche, my dear. It is going well, I think?”
“Marvelous!” Kade sighed contentedly. “Winterfest is a dry crust anywhere but Kinvale. It is wonderful to be back again.” Her eyes were raking the hall.
“Over by the far buffet,” Ekka said. “With the legionary, the tall one.”
Kade nodded and relaxed. “A great experience for her. She will never forget Winterfest at Kinvale. No one ever does.”
“Kind of you to say so.” Ekka frowned at the sight of the Astilo girl talking with the weedy Enninafia youth. His family did not need her money, and it could use an infusion of brains that her bloodlines would not supply. ”Your niece does you great credit, ma’am.”
Kade simpered and they both chuckled. They had been—and indeed must still be—sisters-in-law. Their acquaintanceship dated back for almost half a century. They needed very few words to convey meanings to each other.
“She benefits more from the current fashion than I do,” Kade said wistfully. Ekka was too kind to smile. Only short weeks before Winterfest the dramatic news had come from Hub—trumpets were out, bustles were back in. Dress plans had been changed at very short notice, but the last thing Kadolan needed was a bustle. She had done the best she could, staying with dark-blue satin and a single strand of pearls, borrowing Ekka’s own pearl tiara, but even in such simplicity she was still dumpy, and the bustle mocked her.
“At the back she benefits perhaps,” Ekka remarked. “She is a little young yet for the necklines.” She disapproved of the present style in necklines. They took the men’s minds off conversation.
“Well, in necklines I am qualified.” Kade raised her fan to conceal her mouth. “My niece had the audacity to tell me that my figure was altogether two things of a good much.”
Ekka’s thin dry lips sketched a smile. “Of course you chided her for unladylike thoughts and unseemly vulgarity?” The orchestra was striking up a gallopade, and the floor began to swirl again with eager couples.
“Of course! But Kinvale has been wonderful for her! Six months ago she would have said it in public.”
“That was what I wanted to ask you, dear. How is our young hussar faring?”
Kade sighed again. “She suspects that he may have left his helmet out in the sun too long. With his head in it.”
“It is not unlikely,” Ekka agreed. “I fear that I am running out of candidates, Kade. If you are still intent on leaving in early summer, we are facing a shortage of time. Shall we review the requirements?”
The gallopade was in full romp, and Inosolan was being passed down a line of men, laughing and smiling. Her dancing had improved beyond all recognition. The ladies continued their conversation while watching the dancers.
“Character, I fear, comes first,” Kade said sadly.
“That is a problem. Anything else is easy. And character is not merely rare, it is hard to detect soon enough. Although nothing brings it out like matrimony.”
“Too late then, of course.” Kade accepted a sparkling goblet from a footman’s tray. “Holindam insists that she make a free choice, as I told you.” She paused. “Even if her happiness requires her to remain in the Impire, he said.”
Ekka was startled and said, “Indeed?” noncommitally, while she mulled this interesting complication. She could think of several families that would be gratified to pick up a meaningless royal title, so long as their son did not have to go and dwell in the barren north for it. Her own, for example—and there were other interesting implications.
“That certainly widens the field, then. He would allow her to relinquish the throne, you mean?”
Her sister-in-law hesitated again. “It may not be hers to relinquish, dear.”
Silence was the best lubricant for confidences . . .
Kade frowned, as if she had not meant to go so far. “In the Impire you have had several imperesses.”
“Mostly very competent!”
“History is not my strong point.” Kadolan was still watching as Inos drew closer in the intricacies of the dance. “But in Nordland there is no doubt—only men can rule. Krasnegar has no precedents in the matter.”
“So who makes the decision?” Ekka asked, nodding to some passing ladies.
“He does,” Kade said confidently. “He will name his heir.” Ekka waited for more, then prompted. “But can he make it stick after his death?”
Kade smiled unwillingly. “Time has not blunted you, dear.”
That will depend on a lot of things. Will the people accept her?
“Will Nordland? Will the Impire?”
Mmm . . . obviously something more topical was bothering her. Something had provoked this confidence, or it would have come out months ago.
“And his decision, and all the others’ decisions, will depend on her choice of husband?”
Kade nodded absently, acknowledging friends whirling past.
“Very much so, I think. Certainly Nordland’s.” More silence and then she said, “And the timing.”
Ah! “Timing, dear?”
Inos came dancing by. She noticed her aunt and smiled radiantly, then was swept away into the pattern. She was almost the only woman in the room who could wear a green like that. It set off her eyes beautifully—and almost as much as her golden hair, it let Kade pick her out in the crowd.
“Holindarn can train a successor,” Kade said, “whether Inos herself or her husband. Ruling a kingdom, even a single-bed-size kingdom like Krasnegar, does take a certain knack.” This time silence was not enough lubrication. “He is a relatively young man yet,” Ekka suggested.
“Of course.”
But there had been a hesitation. Travel between Krasnegar and Kinvale was not impossible in winter. Trappers and other rough men could do it. Such men would do it for money. If Kade had been concerned about her brother’s health, then she would certainly have arranged for someone in the palace hierarchy to keep her informed—she was not nearly as scatterbrained as she pretended.
“You have had no word lately, have you? No news is good news.”
“So they say,” Kade agreed, with a tranquility that did not deceive the dowager duchess for a moment.
For if Holindarn did not want his sister to hear, then he was quite capable of learning whom she had recruited and then derecruiting them. Had any message arrived at Kinvale, Ekka would surely have heard of it. No news, then, was bad news, and that was what was rankling.
And if Inos did not succeed, who was next in line?
“So the hussar we send back to his horse,” Ekka said, “or we may aim him elsewhere—the Astlio girl, perhaps . . . Have any of his predecessors dropped sparks on the tinder?”
“Yes indeed. I wanted to ask you about him. You built a blaze with your first attempt, dear, and left no fuel for the others.”
Ekka was surprised. “That merchant youth? What was his name? The one from Jini Fanda?”
“Good Gods, no!” Kade spluttered in a very unusual display of emotion. “Even I couldn’t stand him. No, the Andor boy.”
“Ardor? Oh, that one! Still?”
Ekka frowned. “He wasn’t one of mine, Kade. You gave me no warning, remember. It took a little time to call them in from the pasture. Angilki invited that one.” At that moment she noticed her son, dancing with the Yyloringy woman, his face as blank as a well-polished table.
“Perhaps a fortunate chance, then,” Kade remarked sanguinely.
“Perhaps.”
This time it was Kadolan who detected the hesitation. She turned to her hostess with an inquiring glance.
“It is his house, after all,” Ekka said. “I can hardly stop him from inviting his own friends to stay.”
“Of course not, my dear.”
But this would not be the first time Angilki had unwittingly thrown complications into his mother’s plans. She had told him more than once that he could invite anyone he liked except men—or women. The joke had escaped him. Jokes usually did.
“Well, Sir Andor undoubtedly had character,” Kade said, “or at least charm. If diplomacy is a requirement for ruling Krasnegar—and it certainly is—then he would qualify on that. What else do we know about him?” Inos was coming around again. A very good question! Ekka did not think her memory was failing her yet. She was rather proud of her memory. But on the spur of the moment, she could recall nothing at all about that Andor boy. She had engaged him in conversation several times, of course. She had begun a careful probing. Curiously, though, it seemed that the subject of Sir Andor’s background had always slipped out of play. All she could remember was laughing very hard at some of his jests.