Sabine Said to Remove the Mirror

Sabine told them to remove the mirror.

"If you practice in front of a mirror, you watch your face." She left only two empty chairs at the center of the grand duke's residence's drawing room. "What you need today isn't your face. It's distance. Elbows, wrists, how long a gaze lingers. The nobles call that marital harmony."

Lydia set the small pouch holding the sealed box's key on the table. They had decided not to bring the key to tonight's banquet. The newspaper already knew its location. There was no reason to expose information that was already known.

Cassian paused before offering his arm. "Is this all right?"

His elbow stayed half a hand's width from Lydia's hand. She looked at the distance and nodded. "No holding above the elbow. No pressing the wrist. If I tap twice with my fingers, you let go."

"And once?"

"A warning."

"And three times?"

Sabine lowered her clipboard. "By that point, the two of you would be holding a contract renegotiation meeting in the middle of the ballroom."

Lydia tried not to smile, but the corner of her mouth moved just slightly. Cassian didn't say whether he'd noticed. Instead he offered his arm again. This time Lydia rested her hand on it. Before the muscle beneath the fabric, what she felt first was the position of her own fingers, ready to lift away at any moment.

"Will smiling go into the contract too?" Sabine asked.

"Is it necessary?"

"It's necessary, but if you turn it into a clause, you'll smile too late."

Sabine unfolded the movement chart again. "On entry, walk three steps together. After the greeting, my lady steps back half a step first. Too close, and instead of covering one rumor, you make another. Too far, and today's banquet fails its purpose."

"Is the purpose harmony, or shutting down the annulment rumors?"

"On the official record, harmony. In reality, shutting them down."

Cassian pressed a finger to the edge of the chart. "If a question comes about the separate bedrooms."

"I'll answer it," Lydia said.

"If it comes to me."

"Pass it to me. But only within the forms of address we've agreed on beforehand."

Sabine marked the note. "Forms of address: my lady, Grand Duchess, Lydia Aberne. Using the given name alone requires prior agreement."

Cassian looked at the line. "Confirmed."

The royal ballroom was filled with the scent of incense and low music. Beatrice placed the two of them on the central path and deliberately narrowed the space between their seats. Lydia's chair was no lower than before, but it sat too close to Cassian's. The way distance shrank was itself a form of power.

"Seeing the two of you seated side by side, the royal family looks stable," Beatrice said.

"Stability is confirmed in meeting records before it's confirmed in chairs," Lydia answered.

The queen dowager laughed. "Today isn't for meeting records. It's for raising a glass."

One of Oswin's nobles approached with a glass raised. "It was a hasty marriage, but I'm relieved to hear the two of you see eye to eye. I suppose life at the grand duke's residence will soon settle into one household?"

It was a question about the separate bedrooms. Lydia didn't move her fingers. It wasn't yet close enough to a threat to warrant a warning signal.

Cassian spoke first. "Lydia will answer."

The name hadn't been in the plan. Not my lady, not wife, not Grand Duchess. Lydia. It was a very small change, and in a ballroom, it lingered longer than any raised voice.

Lydia's fingers stilled on his arm. If she tapped twice, he would let go. She didn't tap. Rejecting the name on the spot would hand control of the question to the noble. Accepting it meant she could ask her reasons afterward.

"Life at the grand duke's residence is settling in," Lydia said. "Two doors aren't evidence of discord. They're an agreed boundary. The royal palace and the council of nobles have many doors too, and that doesn't cause a civil war every day."

The noble decided too late whether to laugh. A few people nearby chuckled quietly, and Beatrice's fan folded shut once.

Oswin was watching the scene from a distance. He didn't step in, but the young noble standing beside him raised his glass again.

"If it's an agreed boundary, then there must be times the agreement breaks."

Lydia kept her hand where it rested on Cassian's arm. "Something that can break is what makes it an agreement. If it can't break, it's an order."

"Is an order between husband and wife so bad a thing?"

This time Cassian answered. "Orders are fast on a battlefield. At home, agreements last longer."

The noble was left speechless by that short line. Lydia understood that he hadn't spoken in her defense. He had changed the kind of question being asked. She didn't tap her fingers.

Midway through the banquet, a voice called for a dance. "For the stability of the kingdom, show us your first dance."

Lydia lifted her hand from Cassian's arm. This time it wasn't a signal. It was a choice.

Cassian said, "A dance wasn't included in tonight's public appearance."

"Is His Grace avoiding it because of the injury from the North Gate?"

"No. It was a decision the two of us made."

Lydia raised her glass. "We'll offer a toast together instead. What we're showing tonight is balance, not a scene of catching each other after a fall."

Several nobles couldn't hide their disappointment. They hadn't gotten confirmation of harmony. But they hadn't gotten a rupture either. Lydia judged that this was enough.

After the toast, Cassian set down his glass and stepped back once. To the crowd's eyes it still looked close, but it was a distance beyond Lydia's reach. It was a signal that the agreed contact had ended.

Beatrice didn't let them go so easily. "Grand Duchess, why don't you take tea at the royal family's table today?"

The family table sat further in than the center of the room. It was a close seat, and one hard to leave. Lydia glanced briefly at the spacing between the chairs. The queen dowager hadn't used a lower chair this time. Instead she'd placed two chairs of the same height far too close together.

"I'll gladly take the tea," Lydia said. "But I have a port ration report to receive after the joint toast today. I can't stay seated long."

"Ration ledgers come before a couple's first welcoming banquet?"

"If tonight's welcome exists because of an interim seat, then the terms of that seat come first."

Beatrice's smile didn't waver. "A very practical daughter in law."

"I'm also a practical representative."

Cassian didn't offer a hand at that. He left Lydia a path to extract herself on her own. That small act of not acting was the most personal cooperation of the whole banquet.

The carriage home was quieter than the ballroom had been. Sabine had moved to ride in the carriage ahead. Lydia asked without removing her gloves.

"I want to hear why you called me by name."

Cassian didn't make excuses. "I wanted to turn the question back to you. If I called you 'wife,' it would look like you were answering under my protection. If I called you 'Duchess Aberne,' it would look like you were dodging a question about the marriage's stability."

"So you changed our prior agreement?"

"I did."

"I allowed it in the moment. That doesn't mean I agreed to it."

"Next time I'll signal first."

Lydia looked out the window. The palace lights were falling away behind them. A single name had lingered a long time. But lingering didn't amount to permission.

"And if there's no time to signal?"

"Then I don't say it at all."

The answer came without delay. Lydia didn't note that separately. She only folded her two tapping fingers back inside her glove.

"Don't misunderstand why I accepted the name tonight," Lydia said.

"I won't."

"It was a decision made in the moment."

"I'll confirm the next moment's decision afterward too."

The carriage wheels rolled onto the stone road of the grand duke's residence. Lydia looked at her own hand reflected in the window. The hand that had rested through his arm looked unchanged. But looking unchanged didn't mean nothing had happened. Agreed contact left a trace, and what to call that trace hadn't been decided yet.

"You didn't tap your fingers twice in the ballroom," Cassian said.

"I would have, if it had been necessary."

"Wasn't it necessary?"

Lydia didn't answer right away. The moment she'd been called by name sat somewhere between necessary and unnecessary. Politically, it had been useful. Personally, it had fallen outside their agreement.

"It wasn't necessary in the moment. Afterward, confirmation was necessary."

"I'll remember that distinction."

"There are times when remembering alone isn't enough."

Cassian nodded. "Before the next public event, I'll make a new chart of forms of address."

The remark could have sounded absurd. A husband who wanted to chart out names didn't fit the usual romance story. But Lydia knew this method suited who they were right now. For a relationship that had begun with procedure rather than feeling, procedure didn't only stand in feeling's way.

"Does smiling go on the chart too?" Lydia asked.

Cassian thought for a moment. "Sabine would object."

"That's true."

A brief laugh rose in the carriage and faded. Neither of them gave that laugh a name.

Before reaching the front gate of the grand duke's residence, the carriage carrying Sabine stopped first. Lydia looked through the gap in the curtain at the light from the entrance hall. Someone was waiting.

"Did more information leak at tonight's banquet?" Cassian asked.

"I don't know yet." Lydia straightened the edge of her glove. "But I have no reason to believe it didn't."

"Once the paper comes out, there'll be pressure for the same bedroom."

"I still refuse the same bedroom."

"The same carriage."

"I'll decide based on the situation. If the terms are divided like tonight, I can accept part of it."

Cassian lowered his eyes for a moment, as if he might write the answer down. "So it isn't all or nothing."

"All or nothing is closer to surrender than negotiation."

The carriage door opened. Cassian stepped down first but didn't offer his hand. Inside the ballroom he had offered his arm, but not here at the residence's front door. Lydia saw the difference. The fact that she'd seen it became another trace of its own.

When they reached the entrance hall of the residence, Sabine was waiting with the first edition of the newspaper in hand. The headline was set in bold type.

There was ink on the tips of Sabine's gloves. Not the hand of someone who had simply bought the first edition, but the hand of someone who had fought with the printer's people over the pages.

"I've filed a correction request," Sabine said. "But it's unlikely before tomorrow morning's edition. The editor said the headline 'Two Doors' sells too well."

"The source?"

"An anonymous tip. But the illustration of the sealed box isn't something someone drew from hearsay. It's either someone who saw it, or someone who heard a description from someone who saw it."

Cassian opened the paper and read the small line beneath the illustration. "'The key to the connecting door is inside the sealed box.' This line is true."

"That it's true makes it worse," Lydia said. "If it were false, we could just deny it. When it's true, we have to find out why it was said."

Sabine turned to the next page. "The end of the article hints at the possibility of an annulment petition. It's not a petition yet. It's designed to make the readers say it first."

Lydia thought back to the moment she'd lifted her hand from his arm at the ballroom. Even that agreed distance had become material for annulment in someone's hands.

"The scene of you letting go tonight will end up attached to the article too," Sabine said.

"Then let them attach it." Lydia pressed her hand against the edge of the newspaper. "If they're going to use the very fact that I can let go as evidence for annulment, next time they'll try to make sure I can't let go at all."

Cassian said quietly, "I won't accept that."

"Neither will I."

The two answers hadn't come at the same time. But they landed on the same side. Sabine didn't smile at that brief silence. Instead she pointed at the small illustration at the bottom of the article.

"The illustration is the problem. It's not just the key's position. Even the nick in the box's corner is accurate."

Lydia pulled the paper closer. The nick was small. It was a mark left when the box had been moved through the east wing. Someone who had only seen the royal registry copy couldn't have known about it.

"That means it took eyes inside the residence."

"Yes. And those eyes were close enough to describe the box to whoever wrote the article."

Cassian didn't press his fingertip to the illustration of the box. "I'll start by checking who has access to the entrance hall."

A Newlywed Home with Two Doors.

Lydia opened the newspaper. The article laid out not only the separate bedrooms but the fact that the connecting door's key was kept inside a sealed box. The box in the illustration was a little smaller than the real one, but the position of the lock was exact.

"The informant is inside the residence," Sabine said.

Cassian didn't fold the newspaper shut. Neither did Lydia. On the unfolded page, the sealed box stood out far too clearly.