Chapter 19: The Regent's Fall

"That is my hand," Ottoline said again, and the councillor laid the check down on the table between them.

She did not look at Sybilla.

She looked out over the three hundred faces in the tiers, and for the first time that week she did not smile.

"I signed it," she said. "I signed nine of them, over two hundred years."

She turned her palm up.

"I paid every wife in full, and I never once touched a hair on a child."

"You ended nine children," said Ambrose.

"I prevented nine kings from being born who would have made a war of this house."

The old councillor lifted his cane and set it on the floor.

"Say it plainly, Ottoline."

"Plainly then." Her voice was crisp. "A king with a blood heir does not need his Council."

She lifted her chin.

"The Council keeps this court from tearing itself apart, and I have been the Council for two centuries."

Her voice did not shake.

"I would pay fifty million to a stranger every hundred years to keep it so. I would do it again tonight."

Nobody spoke.

"And the tea?" I said.

Ottoline looked at me for the first time since I had poured it out.

"The tea was an economy, child. A woman who does not conceive is spared a great deal of trouble."

She tilted her head.

"You would have thanked me in time."

"Linnea," Ambrose said quietly, "let me."

"No," I said. "I've waited a year."

I climbed the step to the dais.

Nobody but the regent had stood on it in a hundred years.

I took off my coat and held up my arm.

"I'm ten weeks pregnant with three babies," I said, and my voice rang. "I'm a nurse, and I know what silver in a blood panel means."

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