“Oh, I had a personal tutor!” Olga enthused. “But Daddy didn’t want to send me away to school on the other side. We were having a spot of bother and he thought I’d need too many bodyguards.”

Angbard smiled again, in a manner that Miriam found disquietingly avuncular. “There has been a threat of rebellion in Hel these past two years,” he explained with a nod in Miriam’s direction. “Your father needed the troops. Perhaps next year we can send you to Switzer-Land?”

“Oh, yes!” Olga clapped her hands together discreetly. “I’d like that.”

“What would you like to study?” Miriam asked politely.

“Oh, everything! Deportment, and etiquette, and management of domestic events—balls and banquets. It’s so important to get the little things right, and how are you to supervise everything if you don’t know what your steward is doing?” She gave a little squeal. “I do hope they’ll let me continue with the violin, though.”

Miriam forced herself to keep a straight face. “I can see you’re going to make a very good marriage,” she said, voice neutral. It all added up to a horribly consistent picture: the older woman as chaperone, the total eagerness for the description of her own upbringing and education, the wistfulness for a place at an expensive finishing school. This could be a problem, she thought dispassionately. If they expect me to behave like this, someone is going to be very disappointed. And it won’t be me…

“I’m sure she’ll marry well,” said Margit, venturing an opinion for the first time. Vincenze whispered something to Roland, who forced a knowing chuckle. “She’s of the right age.” Margit looked at Miriam dubiously. “I expect you’ll—” she trailed off.

“Discussions of Countess Helge’s eventual disposition are premature,” Angbard said coolly. “Doubtless she will want to make a strong alliance to protect herself. I’m sure she has a solid head on her shoulders, and will want to keep it there.” He smiled: a thin, humourless expression.

Miriam swallowed. You old bastard! You’re threatening me! Servants removed her plate and refilled her wine glass. Growing anger threatened to overwhelm her. She took an overhasty mouthful to conceal her expression, leaving a bleeding ring of lip gloss on the crystal. Her heart was pounding and she couldn’t seem to get enough air.

“To set your mind at ease, my dear, you are quite safe for the time being,” said Angbard. “This is a doppelgängered house, with a secured installation on the other side, as strongly defended there as here—but if you were to venture outside of it you would be in jeopardy. I am concerned about your other relatives, such as the family Axl, and your late father’s heirs of family Wu, in the far west. A strong alliance would go a long way toward protecting you.”

“An alliance,” she said thickly. It seemed to be hot in the dining room. She finished her glass, to buy some time. “Y’-know, it seems to me that you’re taking a lot for granted. That I’ll fit in and adapt to your ways.”

“Isn’t that how it always works?” asked Olga, confused. A dessert appeared, individual plates of chocolate truffles drizzled in syrup, but Miriam had no room for food. Her meal sat heavily on the top of her stomach.

“Not always, no,” Miriam said tightly. She picked up her full wineglass, then frowned, remembering two—three?—refills before it, and put it down again, a little harder than she’d intended. Roland smiled at her indulgently. They all seemed to be smiling at her too much this evening, she noticed. As if they expected her to break down in tears and thank them for rescuing her from a life of drudgery. She forced herself to straighten her shoulders, sipped sparingly from her glass, and tried to ignore the growing pains in the small of her back. If she could just get through the remainder of the meal she’d be all right. “But we’ll worry about that when we get to it, won’t we?” She mustered a pained smile and everyone pretended she hadn’t said anything. The strange cousin’s faux pas, she thought, as Vincenze asked Roland something about cavalry manoeuvres.

A few minutes later, Angbard rapped a silver dessert spoon on his glass. “If you have finished eating, by all means let the after-dinner entertainment commence,” he said.

Servants wheeled a tall trolley in and Miriam blinked in surprise. A huge thirty-inch Sony flat-panel television faced them, glassy-eyed, blocking the doorway. A black video recorder sat on a shelf below it, trailing cables. A white-gloved footman handed the remote to the duke on a silver plate. He bowed himself out as Angbard picked it up and pointed it at the set.

It was all Miriam could do to keep her jaw from dropping when a familiar signature tune came welling out of concealed speakers around the dining chamber. A helicopter descended onto a rooftop pad outside a penthouse suite: The famous Stetson-wearing villain stepped out into a sea of family intrigue. Miriam gulped down her wine without choking and reached for the inevitable—invisible—refill, barely tasting it. Her nose was going numb, a warning sign that she normally ignored at her peril, but this was just too bizarre to take while remaining sober. Dallas! she thought, making it a curse. As a choice of after-dinner videos, it was perfect. She’d been wrong about the ordeal being nearly over: The meal was only the beginning.

Roland tried to say something as they left Angbard’s rooms. “Hush,” she said, leaning on his arm as they descended the grand staircase. Her back ached and she was wobbling on her heels. “Just get me back to my room.”

“I think we need to talk,” he said urgently.

“Later.” She winced as they reached the corridor. Take lots of little steps, she thought. The ache in her back was worst in the region of her kidneys. She felt drunk. “Tomorrow.”

He held the door open for her. “Please—”

She looked into his eyes. They were wide and appealing: He was a transparently gallant, well-meaning young man—Young? He’s only a couple of years younger than I am—with a great ass, and she instinctively distrusted that. “Tomorrow,” she said firmly, then winced. “I’m tired. Maybe after breakfast?”

“By all means.” He stepped back and Miriam turned to close the door, only to find the head maidservant, Meg, standing ahead of her.

“Ah. Meg.” Miriam smiled experimentally. Glanced at the bathroom. “I’ve had a long day and I’m going to bed shortly. Would you mind leaving?”

“But how is you to undress?” Meg asked, confused. “What if you want something in the night?”

“What’s the usual arrangement?” Miriam asked.

“Why, we sleep inside the door here, against your needs.” She dipped her head.

“Oh my.” Miriam sighed, and would have slumped but for her dress, which seemed to be holding her upright. “Oh god.” She took a stride toward the bathroom, then caught herself on the door frame with one arm. “Well. You can start by undressing me.” It took the combined efforts of two maids ten minutes to strip Miriam down to her underwear. Eventually something gave way and her ribs could move again. “Oh. Oh!” Miriam took a breath, then gulped. “’Scuse me.” She fled dizzily into the bathroom, skidding on the tiled floor, and locked the door. “Shit, shit…” she planted herself firmly on the toilet.

After a moment, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her gaze fell on the dictaphone and she picked it up. “Memo to self,” she muttered. “At a formal banquet the pain in the small of your back might be the chair, but on the other hand it might be your kidneys backing up.” Four, no five, glasses of wine. She shook her head, still wobbly, and took another deep breath. “And the breathing trouble. Fuck ’em, next time—if they want formal, they can put up with whatever I can buy off the rack in Boston. I’m not turning myself into an orthopaedic basket case in the name of local fashion.”