Chapter 201 Prince Ambrose's Intentions

In the front court of Prince Jasper's mansion, Lora and Mother were just boarding their carriage when a litter came in through the gate. A pale, fine-featured, handsome man stepped down and made straight for the Countess with his greeting.

He'd introduced himself in that warm, familiar way — but Lora couldn't put a face to the man.

Happily, Brendan had already saluted with his fists cupped: "Your Highness Prince Ambrose — what a chance meeting. What brings you here?"

"If Your Highness has come calling on Prince Jasper, he's only just lain down. Perhaps another day?" The Countess smiled.

Lora hurried into her curtsy.

So this was the famous Prince Ambrose. No wonder the unofficial histories called him a pretty-face — and no flattery either; the face really was white.

Looking at Ambrose, she thought all at once of Lillian Ypres, a couple hundred leagues away — and a small, meaningful smile crept over her face before she could stop it.

Her dimpled, downcast smile, Ambrose took the wrong way entirely. His wits went to smash, and his answer to the Countess came out in stammering bits:

"Asleep... good, good that he's asleep..."

Hmm? The Countess couldn't make anything of it: good that he's asleep? — then what have you come for?

Ambrose had not come to see Prince Jasper; he wasn't that kindhearted. He'd heard the Countess had brought her cousin Lora up to Prince Jasper's mansion, and he'd come on purpose to stage a "chance meeting."

His aunt had told him no end of Lohenheim news — and every last item of it had the little Odenheim cousin somewhere at the middle of it.

Especially whenever he sat down to tarocchi tiles, he thought of this cousin he had never once met — a head stuffed full of newfangled notions.

At the last St. Agnes' Eve, the Odenheims' East-Capital Brew had gone onto the register of royal wines — and a wine like no other wine on the table. He'd supposed the Odenheims had lucked into a distilling recipe somewhere, the best luck in the world.

Till the Dunbars told him: they had made a round of quiet inquiries and come up with a rumor — the little cousin had a "Grand Strategy of the Realms," and every one of these newfangled things came out of that Book, distilling recipe included.

By now the Odenheim guard camp held its lips pressed tight. Ask anyone about the Book, and the answer was: no such thing exists.

And wasn't that the very proof of it? The more you hush a thing up, the more it shows.

It was enough to set a man dreaming — especially a prince who forever felt short of ready cash.

Never mind the rest: take the East-Capital Brew recipe alone. The wine trade ran under the Crown's monopoly, same as salt and iron. With an East-Capital Brew already named a royal wine, one could get oneself licensed as a monopoly distillery, set oneself up as a Crown monopoly merchant besides — and on that one item alone, the money would come rolling in, year upon year.

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When Lora brewed that wine she hadn't thought one step that far, and she'd never told anyone to keep it dark. The night the whole tower chamber drank itself under the table, there wasn't a soul in the Odenheim house that didn't know.

It was Leon who had carried off the recipe and told her to leave it all to him — hung the signboard even in another man's name — wanting to wall Lora off from the whole affair. But the folk of the house had already made it a standing joke, passing it from mouth to mouth.

Later they'd banned all talk of the "Grand Strategy of the Realms" in the house and the camps. A pity: when a rumor stops dead like that, to the calculating eye, the stopping is the confirmation.

Ambrose had come in the spirit of better-to-believe-it-than-not.

At the last St. Agnes' Eve, quite a crop of young noblewomen had come up from the Eastern Capital — and every last one of them, so-so.

The best-looking of the lot was cousin Dorothy Dunbar. But she was the one rumored to have tumbled with Felix Fairfax — and true or not, she was a girl the King had passed over. How was he to take his brother's leavings?

He'd come meaning only to get near the Book and sound the thing out. He held a prejudice besides: a woman with brains is slack about her looks.

But today, seeing Lora in her full dress, his heart went off like a flower in bloom:

This was far better sport — parrying with a beauty. If she'd been an ugly one, he'd have had to suffer through it himself.

Ambrose lost no time making his gesture of welcome:

"A chance meeting beats an invitation any day. My mansion is just next door — cousin-aunt, if you wouldn't think it too sudden, come in and sit a while. I got some Far South citrus from the Queen Mother only yesterday — do bring Brendan and the little cousin along to taste something new."

Brendan had met Ambrose a few times and counted him half a friend already. A prince asking them over — of course he was pleased. But the Countess refused him:

"Far too abrupt. And Lora has to get back this very hour to fill Great-great-grandfather's prescription — hold her up any longer and she'll never make it in time."

Brendan, seeing disappointment cross the prince's face, made haste to say: "Your Highness, I've nothing at all to do with myself today. You were speaking of tarocchi the other day — shall I find a couple of hands to play a few rounds with you?"

The Countess couldn't very well scold her son to a prince's face; she waited till they were up in the carriage to let it out:

"This morning Brendan stood in my room swearing up and down he'd turn over a new leaf — and the minute he turns his back he's glued to Prince Ambrose and his tarocchi! Lora — I hear those tiles were your contriving. Isn't that aiding and abetting the tyrant?"

"Wronged, Mother! I watched them playing at the Crown Granary and worked out a way to stand the tiles upright — and that's my fault too?" Lora wasn't having it; she pushed her lip out:

"A knife can kill a man. When somebody's been killed with it — is it the knife you blame?"

The Countess's head fairly ached. She waved it off:

"Enough, enough — your mother isn't scolding you for sport, it's that Brendan of yours that's driven me to it. Home now. You gave your word about Great-great-grandfather's foot-soak medicine — a promise is a promise."

"I know it."

Lora had a small private account of her own in the matter.

She knew well enough that diabetes — the honey-urine sickness — can't be cured at the root. Foot soaks, massage, foods that suited the old man: all of it only edges the sickness back a little — buys him a few more years, if it buys anything at all.

But with errands running regularly to Prince Jasper's mansion, the chances of seeing him multiplied.

Back at the house, Lora wrote out a prescription for the diabetic foot and sent Rosa off to have it filled.

The Countess had the house physician look it over first. He'd never read the medical books of that later dynasty, but the working of every herb in it he knew cold, and the pairing of them had nothing wrong with it. A foot soak, after all — effect or no effect, no great harm could come of it.

The medicine was scarcely back from the shop when Brendan came home too — with Ambrose in tow.

They didn't look like men who'd played a few rounds of anything. One sight of the prince, the house physician retreated at speed to brew the medicine.

Whoever crosses the threshold is a guest; the Countess put on her hostess smile: "Your Highness, sit anywhere you please — you must excuse me from keeping you company. Lora — the moment the medicine is done, carry it over to Prince Jasper's."

Once Mother was out the door, Brendan grinned at his sister:

"Sister — last time I caught you burying jars of hawthorn-blossom wine in your own courtyard, and you said it couldn't be drunk for a year. Ambrose tells me that was a sell — hawthorn-blossom wine doesn't want anywhere near that long."

"The longer it sits, the rounder it gets. I strained out the lees and set it to brewing on — why shouldn't a year serve?"

Lora was waiting on the physician's decoction and couldn't well walk off; and reading the lay of the land — the prince had come begging wine. So she said:

"If it's spirits Your Highness is after, there's no call to come to the Odenheims. Augustburg has its shop selling the East-Capital Brew already. Our house does the supplying — the selling is none of our business."

That shop Leon had set men to open; of course it was none of the Odenheims' business.

But Ambrose only laughed:

"The little cousin thinks too small. I haven't come to drink. I came to ask — does she still remember the distilling recipe? We have our East-Capital Brew — what's to stop an Augustburg Brew as well?"

"Exactly, Sister! Ambrose says he'll put up the capital, we brew the new wine up, and the three of us split a share apiece." Brendan said it purring with content.

Lora's temper went up like a struck match. She'd never in her life seen a man come grabbing for a recipe with a face that bare.

She shot one glance at Brendan and said it, cold as a well:

"Fourth brother — your name is Odenheim. The Odenheim house already holds your share. What do you want dragging an outsider in, to rob the family's road to money?"