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including only Baroness Saveze was too particular an exception and that the addition of a handful of other women, respectable married women… she couldn’t repress a bubble of laughter at the thought of giving Tionez that label.
    “Is the picture that humorous?”
    “I have an idea. No promises, but I think it may succeed. In return you must take me to visit your grandmother tomorrow. Don’t worry, you needn’t stay! I have a matter I want to discuss with her and I’d rather it seemed by chance.”
    “You’re all full of secrets and errands today,” Tio said, but her pout had faded. “I saw your friend Benedetta singing at Maisetra Sovitre’s the other day. She looked so much older off the stage; forty if she’s a day!”
    “She’s thirty-eight, or so she says,” Jeanne replied tartly. “And I’m a few years more than that, you know.”
    “Never! Surely in your heart you’re still seventeen.”
    From another, Jeanne might have thought it mockery. Tio might not be serious, but she was sincere. And she couldn’t know she’d touched an old scar that could still give pain. “My heart will never be seventeen again,” Jeanne said, thinking on those days. “An eternal twenty-five, perhaps.” She gave Tio’s fingertips another lingering kiss. “You remind me a great deal of myself when I was twenty-five.” Tio had that same reckless passion, however misdirected it might be. Nothing was as attractive as that inner fire and she was drawn to it as a moth to flame. “Here we are, and now I must leave you.” She lifted Tio’s fingertips to her lips once more as the carriage steps were let down.
    Alchemy , Jeanne thought, returning to her purpose as she climbed the steps to Emill Chaluk’s door. How in the world did one even begin to broach the subject without seeming a fool?

Chapter Four
    Barbara
    An invitation—or perhaps, more accurately, a summons—from the Dowager Princess did not carry the same weight it once had. When young Aukustin, her son, seemed likely to be named his father’s heir, Elisebet, his mother, had been a power in the court. But when the council threaded the shoals of the succession controversy by electing Annek, Prince Aukust’s widowed daughter by his first wife, Elisebet’s star had been eclipsed. Many of those who had once supported her now kept their distance, but Barbara saw no reason to ignore her request. Elisebet was still an Atilliet and mother to one of the potential heirs. There was loyalty owed for that, despite the conflict they had come into during the succession debates.
    Barbara arrived promptly at Elisebet’s private apartments at the stated time, and was surprised to see they were to be alone.
    “Mesnera,” she said, curtseying with the proper degree of respect and trying to guess from the strained expression on the princess’s face what would be asked of her.
    There was a time when Elisebet Atilliet had been counted a beauty, but the years had coarsened her features. The delicately pink cheeks were now merely ruddy and the dark-eyed glance that was said to have pierced hearts had turned sharp. Even before she had watched the crown slip from her grasp, the confident pride had become a brittle haughtiness. Persuading others to her plans had never been one of Elisebet’s strengths. If it were, likely Aukustin would sit the throne today. So it was no surprise that she began with no preamble and no subtlety. “I understand Friedrich has included you in this expedition to Feniz.”
    It was a small thing, the insistence on calling Annek’s son by his Austrian name and not the Alpennian version he now used. A small thing and it only made her look petty rather than reminding others of the boy’s foreign birth. “Yes, Efriturik has done me that honor.”
    “He asked Aukustin to accompany him and I didn’t dare refuse.”
    “Surely your son is of an age to enjoy riding to the hunt. How old is he now? Fourteen?” She spoke of him as if he were still in leading