The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,36

making a perfect triangle of the three of them, wiped a streak of wine from the side of her glass and sucked her fingertip. “You’re salty this morning.”

“I don’t care for the feeling of being ambushed,” said Savine, looking from one woman to the other, both formidable in their own ways and as a pair positively daunting.

They exchanged a glance. “You go,” said her mother. “I’ll chime in if needed.”

“My son has inherited a weighty responsibility,” said Lady Finree. “One that he is in some respects well suited for, but in others… less so.”

Savine could well imagine. “He’s hotheaded, ignorant and reckless, you mean?”

“Exactly.” Savine should not have been surprised. A woman who had faced down an army of screaming Northmen was unlikely to be put off by a little plain-speaking. “You, meanwhile, are known to be cool-headed, calculating and patient. It seems the two of you are complementary.”

“Fire and ice!” threw in Savine’s mother between sips.

“My son likes to think he can do it all but, like his father, he has always needed someone beside him. Someone to give good advice and make sure he takes it. Someone to guide him to the right decisions. There comes a time when a mother can no longer do that for a son.” She raised her brows expectantly.

Savine did not like the way this was going. “I’m not sure what I—”

Her mother gave an explosive sigh. “Don’t be obtuse, Savine. Lady Finree and I have been discussing a match between you and Leo.”

Savine blinked. “A marriage?”

“Well, not a bloody fencing match.”

Savine stared from her mother to her prospective mother-in-law. It was an ambush. An expertly prepared pincer movement, and she was outflanked on both sides.

She lifted her chin and played for time. “I’m not sure the two of us are suited. He is a good deal younger than—”

“I understand you felt differently when he last visited Adua,” said Lady Finree, looking at her significantly from under her brows.

It took a moment for the implications to sink in. “He told you that?”

Savine’s mother raised a hand. “I told her that.”

“How the hell did you find out?”

“Don’t be cross and don’t be coy. Neither suits you. Zuri is worried for you, as a good servant should be. As a good friend should be. She is thinking of your best interests. We all are, believe it or not.” Her mother leaned forward, holding her eye, and put a reassuring hand on Savine’s knee. “She told us about your… situation.”

Savine’s face burned. She found she had put a hand to her stomach and angrily snatched it away. She was used to stabbing other people with their secrets. She did not at all enjoy being impaled on one of her own.

“Forgive me if I am blunt,” said Lady Finree. “I have spent much of my life around soldiers—”

“Fancy that,” snapped Savine. “So did mother, in her youth.”

“It’s a shame youth has to end,” sang Savine’s mother, fluttering her eyelashes. Then she gave Savine’s knee a parting pat and sat back, murmuring out of the corner of her mouth, “You see that bluntness won’t be a problem.”

“Then let us speak plainly,” said Lady Finree. “It will not be long before your condition becomes difficult to hide.” Savine angrily set her jaw, but she could hardly dispute the facts. The laces of her corsets already needed even more brutal handling than usual. “It could be a disaster for you. Or it could be an opportunity. Turning disasters into opportunities is what an investor does, isn’t it?”

“Wherever possible,” muttered Savine.

“My son has title, fame, courage and loyalty.”

“And is a damnably handsome fellow,” observed Savine’s mother.

“You have wealth, connections, cunning and ruthlessness.”

“And in the right light can look rather well yourself.”

“I doubt there is a more eligible young man in the Union,” said Lady Finree. “Unless you were to marry the king, I suppose.”

Savine’s mother coughed wine down her dress. “Damn it. Silly me.”

“Your pride is well earned,” said Finree, “but the time has come to put it aside.”

Her mother was dabbing at herself with a handkerchief. “Really. You could be the most envied couple in the Union! You’re far too clever not to see the sense of this.”

“And certainly far too clever to raise a bastard alone when you have such an advantageous alternative. By all means lead my son a little dance if you please, no man values what he gets too easily. But there really is no need to drag this charade out any further between the three