The Marshal’s eyebrows went up. “So you’re here, eh?”
“Of course, sir. I have several days’ leave planned, as you know, but I didn’t intend to depart until this evening.”
“Never mind, never mind. I had the impression you might have gone away somewhere.”
“No, sir,” said Aufors, managing to look extremely puzzled. “Though I did oversleep this morning.”
“And where are you going for your leave, Colonel?” asked the Duchess.
“An old friend of mine is being married in Reusel-on-Mere, and he’s asked me to stand up for him.”
“Right,” snarled the Marshal. “You told me, weeks ago. Well, well, go shave yourself. You look disorderly. We’ll talk later.”
“Yes, sir.” And Aufors Leys departed, taking note in passing of the Duchess’s quietly triumphant expression.
She would have been less pleased if she had heard the Marshal’s commands to an aide, given soon after she departed. All roads out of Havenor were to be scoured for a runaway daughter. If found, she was to be brought home to him, at once. An intelligent women herself, the Duchess had overestimated the Marshal’s intelligence. Not an ambitious women, she had underestimated his ambition. So are many misread by other’s lights. The Marshal did not for one moment believe that a family alliance to Prince Delganor could bring him, the Marshal, anything but good. The Duchess was obviously a woman to whom the covenants meant nothing. Her warnings were ridiculous, the result of pique or jealousy or female connivance. Women were always warning you against this or that. Genevieve’s mother had been full of such warnings. No doubt the Duchess would have preferred the Prince for one of her own daughters. Perhaps she still did.
Having assumed this, the Marshal rested on the assumption as on a rock, without bothering to turn it over to see what lived beneath it. He particularly did not ask whether the Duchess had a marriageable daughter, for he preferred not to know that she did not.
While all this scurry went on in the house of the Marshal, the Lord Paramount of Haven, guarded as always by two Aresians, sat down to a late breakfast, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Yugh Delganor, who seemed in an unusual state of annoyance.
“The girl’s run off,” the Prince said, with an angry grimace.
With well-feigned innocence, His Majesty looked up from his imported quail, served on a bed of Farsabian rice. “What girl?”
“The one we planned for me. Langmarsh’s daughter. My listener heard the Duchess of Merdune telling the Marshal about it earlier this morning. Seemingly, I frightened her rather badly at dinner last night.”
The Lord Paramount had known this for hours, but he did not say so. “Ah. Well! Does this upset your plans for her?”
The Prince snarled. “It could well do. Though I doubt she’ll be hard to find. Her father’s already sent people after her, as have I.”
“Who did she elope with? That young man, the equerry, what’s his name?”
“Colonel Leys? No.” He barked laughter. “I wouldn’t have minded if she’d eloped with someone. That would have been easy enough to fix. One of my men tells me that someone bought passage for a young woman on the Reusel packet, the someone much resembling Colonel Leys, so she’s probably prevailed upon him to help her run off home to Langmarsh House.”
The Lord Paramount mused, “Your business is scheduled for later this year, Delganor.”
The Prince shrugged. “There’s more than one way to crack a craylet, Your Majesty. So she’s run off home. We’ll give her a little time to calm down. Either her father will round her up, or you’ll discover that she’s displeased you by leaving without permission, and my men will find her for you. Under threat of royal displeasure, our subjects are usually biddable enough.”
His Majesty nodded and smiled while marking down in memory what Delganor had just said. In the Lord Paramount’s pocket was a small, off-world machine on which everything anyone said to him was recorded. In the Lord Paramount’s luxurious rooms was another little machine into which, every evening, the Lord Paramount unloaded those parts of his day’s record that qualified as “Delganor’s presumptions.” He did not wish to forget even one of them, and certainly Delganor’s use of the words “our subjects” was a presumption, if not a damned arrogance.