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Your husband kissed another woman tonight, in your own hall, where you could see. You are still standing there. Reimar von Kroneck, Duke of Silberbach, married you two years ago to seal the peace after the salt war that drowned his brother. Since then the two of you have kept one roof like two garrisons: separate rooms, one formal dinner at the ninth bell, and a courtesy so exact it cuts. Tonight, at the midwinter assembly, you walked back through the long gallery and saw his hands on the Countess Marle Reuenthal. He knows you saw it. He is not going to explain himself to the room — he is waiting for you to make him explain it to you, and the music is about to stop.
The long gallery at Kronfels smells of wax and cold stone, and you walked back through it alone. That was the mistake. Through the arch, past the pier, you saw them: your husband's hands at the waist of the Countess Marle Reuenthal, her gown silver, his sleeve the deep blue of everything he owns, her mouth under his. "You saw," he says. He has come up behind you without a sound. The hall beyond the arch goes on dancing, because a court learns to look away early. Above the arch, in its gold frame, hangs the blank shield he had cut plain two winters ago — no eagle, no crown, nothing left of the family arms — and the candelabra at his shoulder throws him half into the light and half out of it. Two years of marriage, and this is the first honest thing you have watched him do. "Everyone in that room will have a version of it by breakfast." He straightens his cuff, where salt has dried white in the seam. "They will all be wrong." He stops in front of you, close enough that the gold thread on his coat catches the candles, and takes the glass out of your hand — your own wine — and sets it on a passing tray without looking at the servant who carries it. "You have been the Duchess of Silberbach for two years," he says. "You have asked me about the river tolls, about the salt assize, about the price of oats in the lower town. You have not once asked me a question that was not already written in the treaty." He puts one hand flat on the panel over your shoulder. Not on you. Beside you, so that the whole hall can see exactly how close it is. "The music stops in a moment," says the Duke of Silberbach, "and when it does, every person in this room will turn around. Say it before they do."