Page 101 of When the Sky Breaks

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I have it on good authority that you are High Lady Sorcha Wilson?” the stranger said, Italian by his accent. “I am Lord Giancarlo Vespucci.”

He sat down beside me. I moved farther away, digging in my pockets for a handkerchief to ward off the smell.

“I heard that, perhaps, you are searching for a new husband? That the—servant boy you married is not proving satisfactory?” Giancarlo said.

I mentally revised my evaluation of the suitors—Noah wasn’t awful. But Giancarlo was not giving me hope for the rest of them.

“Excuse me?” I asked. “The servant boy I married?”

“And clearly he has no understanding of how a noble lady should comport herself,” Giancarlo continued, clearly not paying attention.

He gestured vaguely at my belly then at my plate and continued, “Your figure for one thing. Hardly acceptable in Europe. And to be encouraging it with sugar like that?”

And that was the moment I felt Neal’s hand on the back of my neck. He bent and kissed my cheek.

“She is very busy working on having a big healthy baby,” Neal said, pulling me into an embrace that made Giancarlo go pale.

“You are having a baby?” Giancarlo said in utter disbelief. “With the servant boy?”

“Steward when I married him,” I corrected, voice dropping to something lower, more authoritative. “And now? Lord of the Outer Court. So watch your tongue.”

Word was clearly spreading. Over the next few hours I watched half a dozen different young men in expensive tuxedos glance at me, lock their eyes on Neal, and then scurry away whispering. But not all of them had heard yet—heard that I was properly taken, uninterested in other offers, very pregnant, very sick, and mildly terrifying—not all of them.

Because as I chatted with an older Elven couple—listening to them go on about the ducks they raised on their estate, something about how it helped their vineyard—another young man accosted me. He tapped my shoulder, begged the old couple’s forgiveness, and backed me against the wall, a hand on either side of my head.

I could get away, but it’d make a scene. So much for Iksura softening her approach.

“Lady Sorcha, I presume?” he asked. He was shorter than Neal, stocky build. His nose had clearly been broken. But the tuxedo was expensive, his hair was perfectly arranged. Still clearly an aristocrat, just one with a backstory.

“Who’s asking?” I replied.

“Lord Ferrysburg,” he said. “Family has a small estate up in Maine. But I also work with Iksura directly. Long line of diplomats.”

My pulse skyrocketed.

This was a problem—not a pansy aristocrat I could easily intimidate, not someone who would cave under pressure—an Inner Court Inquisitor. Here. Now. Where the hell were Ansel and Neal?

“Not interested,” I said. I gestured first at my wedding ring, then at my belly and prayed he would take the hint. “You’re very late.”

He didn’t.

“You defied Iksura’s orders. Married some no-name Steward. What is that doing to our royal lines? What message does that send to our people?” he said, voice calm but dangerous. He still hadn’t moved, hadn’t let me get a hairsbreadth of space from the wall. “Oh and look, you are carrying his whelp. We’ll simply do away with that before word spreads any more—already spreading around high society here like a bloody wildfire. You can claim he assaulted you, have the marriage annulled. Start fresh. With me. All with Iksura’s approval and endorsement of course.”

I shuddered. Iksura had no legal claim. She had no legal claim. I repeated it like a mantra over and over in my head.

Then I took a deep, steadying breath, squared my shoulders, and summoned every ounce of courage and composure I’d tried to learn over the last six months. “Our people? They’re not yours. Ferrysburg? You are a pawn. You are an Inner Court thug bought off with a title and dressed up like a dandy. And I? Am your sovereign. So learn your damn place.”

He froze. Didn’t speak. Didn’t move.

In the corner of my vision I saw Ansel and Neal, waiting, seeing how I’d let this play out.

“Have you ever seen a bull moose up close?” I asked, voice moving back to its usual octave. “Huge. Terrifying. And oh the smell.”

Ferrysburg swallowed hard.

“No,” he said, “I do not believe I have seen one up close, High Lady Wilson. Only at a . . . rather great distance.”