Page 100 of The Twisted Throne

“I have no plans to wed,” he said. Then, because his sister had hit on a suspicion he himself had once had, he asked, “What has Ahnna done that causes you to believe she’s without means?”

“Well, for a start, she has not worn jewelry since she arrived.”

“Perhaps that’s not something that is done in Ithicana.”

Ginny ignored him. “She came with one trunk. One. And since arriving, she’s only purchased gowns that the modiste was getting rid of at a steep discount, including that travesty of a pink dress that Elizabeth paid the modiste to make as a lark. The majority of what Ahnna wears has been made by Hazel.”

“Hazel is a talented seamstress.”

Ginny made a face. “She’s alaundress,Jamie. Not even intended as a lady’s maid, but we all know what befell poor Agnes on theDefiant.It was only luck that Mother lent Hazel to Georgie to do his laundry on theVictoria,and she’s only kept her position because Ahnna seemed not to know the difference between a laundress and a maid.”

“Don’t be a snob.”

“I’m not!” she huffed. “But all that could, of course, be blamedon her being Ithicanian, except she went to the lending house to secure a loan and tried to use Harendell as collateral.”

“Harendell?” He shook his head. “That can’t be right. And how do you know that anyway? The bankers keep confidence like no other.”

“But blather on without care for their own servants in the room. My maids heard that it was quite an upset among the lenders as they debated whether a nation could be used as collateral, and they decided that it could not, but a future queen’s goodwill certainly could. Either way, what need has she of such a large loan if her brother is rich as sinunlesshe’s cut her off?”

“You know I have no patience for gossip,” he said, even as he took in his sister’s words. Yet another secret that Ahnna was holding close to her heart?

“It is not gossip, it is a puzzle. A puzzle I wish to solve, which is why I agreed to this venture,” Ginny said. “Bankers keep confidence, but jewelers do not, so I will learn how she pays for her purchases.”

“To what end?”

“If she has no influence in Ithicana, then she is not the asset Father believes she is, and he ought to know that. Perhaps he might consider negotiating for something of more value.”

His sister had latched on to something that might actually have weight with their father as far as breaking off the betrothal, but all James felt was anger that his sister was attempting to undermine Ahnna. “This is an about-face, Virginia. I heard that Elizabeth and Ahnna had words regarding Lestara. If this is about that, you’re being petty.”

“It’s not about that nor anything else she’s said or done,” Ginny snapped. “It’s about discovering whether she’s being deceitful. I once hoped her to be the greatest of assets and worthy ofWilliam’s love, but now I wonder if she’s only using Harendell to elevate her own fallen position. I wonder if she has been lying all this time.”

“I feel as though I’m speaking to your mother, not to you.”

Ginny’s face twisted. “Perhaps Mother had the right of it not to want Ahnna. But if you must know, she’s not said a word to me about Ahnna since she arrived, so all that I have said is spoken from my own heart out of a desire to protect our brother. But by all means, please do take the side of the woman you barely know over your own sister.”

“I didn’t—” James broke off, because Ginny had already heeled Daisy for more speed, the mare moving through the group until Georgie noticed and fell in alongside, head bending close to Virginia’s.

If Ahnna noticed the tension, she didn’t show it, her posture relaxed and her focus alternating between her horse and her surroundings. Ginny’s mood could change with the weather, but instinct told James that this ran deeper than a spat, and his skin prickled with the sense that there had been a shift in the Sky Palace against Ahnna’s presence. A shift that echoed some of the rising complaints about Ithicana that he suspected were fueled by Cormac and his agents. All of which fed into James’s goals, and yet every part of him wanted to defend her. To argue that she deserved to be queen and would make a good one at that.

If anyone was deceitful, it was him, and not for the first time, James wondered how his sister would react when the day came that their father and King Ronan came to terms and she learned his true feelings on Cardiff. Neither his sister nor his brother knew anything, not even of the weeks at a time that he’d spent with his uncles in his youth, the excuse always being that he was learning survival skills in the north.

Lies upon lies, and he’d held it all together until Ahnna Kertell had strode into his life.

James risked a glance at her again, just in time to watch her entire body tense and her hand reach into the pocket where a knife was hidden.

What precisely warned her, Ahnnacouldn’t have said. Some sixth sense gained from a lifetime of people trying to kill her, animals trying to kill her, and storms trying to kill her, perhaps. But there was no mistaking the crawl of sensation across her skin warning that malevolent eyes were watching her.

Experience kept her from revealing her awareness by overtly searching their surroundings, but she slowly slipped her hand into her skirt pocket, the hole Hazel had sewn into it allowing her to close her fingers over the hilt of the six-inch blade strapped to her thigh.

Beneath her, Dippy gave a small buck, and Ahnna took a deep breath to relax herself lest the gelding give her away.

Then James was alongside her.

“There’s someone following us,” she said softly. “In the trees, left side of the road.”

“I haven’t seen anyone.” He stretched, expression bored, though Ahnna knew it was an act.

“Trust me.”

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