Chapter 11: The Portrait Hall

Linnea found him in the long gallery that night, standing before a portrait with a candle in his hand.

The gallery ran the whole length of the east wing.

Painted dukes hung on one wall, each one tall and dark and grim.

On the other wall hung their duchesses.

"Hask said something to me," she said from the doorway.

Aldric did not turn.

"Hask says many things."

"Then you know what he told me to ask you."

The candle flame trembled, once.

"He is a bitter man who has lost his seat," Aldric said. "He wanted to leave a splinter in you."

"Then pull it out."

"There is nothing to pull."

She walked down the gallery.

She stopped before the first portrait of a woman, a fair girl in a grey gown with a small child's ribbon in her hand.

The plaque read, The First Duchess of Skarreth, aged twenty-four.

The next was a dark-haired woman with a stern mouth, aged twenty-six.

The next, twenty-two.

There were six of them.

Not one woman was older than thirty.

Linnea's skin went cold.

"Aldric."

"My mother is the last."

He lifted the candle to the sixth portrait, a laughing woman with his grey eyes, and his hand was not steady.

"She died the day I was born," he said.

The air left the gallery.

Linnea turned to face him.

"Is that what you were afraid of?" she said. "Is that why you stood at my door? Why you said you never meant to keep me?"

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