Chapter 12: The Diary

The Prince sat down at my father's table.

A footman, too frightened to refuse, laid a place and poured him wine.

"I came to congratulate you," Edmund said, and tasted it.

"Everyone in the city is talking about your dinner."

"Thank you, Your Highness."

"I hear you've paid off every creditor your father owned."

"I paid some of them."

"With silver you found under apples."

His eyes slid to the iron box under Hadrian's arm.

"And what's that, Lord Marshal?"

"Crown business," Hadrian said, in a voice like a shut door.

"Everything in this country is Crown business," the Prince said pleasantly.

"Even my betrothed's property."

He turned his wine glass slowly in his fingers.

"I wonder whether you'll be as clever at Midsummer," he said to me.

"I wonder what you'll do when you have no Marshal to hide behind."

"I'm not hiding," I said.

"I'm eating dinner."

"Then eat," he said, and rose, and bowed to my father.

"A charming house, Marquess, though I expect it will feel smaller soon."

My father squeaked.

The Prince left with his friends behind him, and nobody spoke until the carriage wheels had faded.

"Well," said Betsy, in a very small voice, "he didn't eat the soup."

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