“My thoughts exactly, Your Grace.”
The Archduke moves back toward his wife, and as he does so, his expression relaxes as he looks down at the Archduchess. Must be nice for him to have a pretty young wife to distract him from his duty, and the fact that Lungren’s son has his hands all over his daughter. He seems to be loyal to the King, but I can’t be sure. You can never really be sure.
My eyes wander across the ballroom until my eyes land on a willowy figure. She’s dark-haired with jewel-like violet eyes. Most of the young women at Court wear light colors, but she’s appeared, night after night, in midnight blue velvet, ruby red satin or black. Her eyes are outlined in black, and her hair is always sleek and up or in neat, loose curls.
Lady Sachelle Balzac.
Twenty years old. March twenty-fifth birthday. Currently resides in the inner east of the city with her parents and younger sister at Balzac House.
Stunningly beautiful.
She almost never smiles. Her parents have encouraged her to dance with this lord or that one, but Lady Sachelle exhibits what I’ve heard is called “resting bitch face,” and discourages most men from coming near her. Every time I’ve seen her cast a baleful look at a man vying for her attention, I smile inwardly.
I move around the edge of the dancefloor to where Lady Sachelle is standing by herself, dressed in dark blue satin that brings out the blue highlights in her eyes. She doesn’t need to smile at me. I have an odd craving to be rebuffed by her. She’s the only woman I’ve ever seen that would be worth chasing all over Paravel just for the chance to hear her tell me to get lost.
I stop by her side and hold out my hand. “Dance with me, my lady.”
She looks at my hand, and then up at me. “I’m sorry. Who are you?”
She knows who I am. I’ve talked to her before. Held doors open for her. Even once helped her into her family’s car after a ball. “Nobody important. Just a man who wants to dance with you.”
“I don’t dance with the staff.”
I give her a cold smile. “I’m off the clock.”
Sachelle’s eyes flicker over me, taking in my face, my suit, my shoes. I’m dressed like one of her people, but my blood is ordinary. I can dance better than most of the men here, though. I can kiss better, too.
“You arrested three protesters the other day. Release them, and I’ll dance with you. Once.”
Those are probably the last words I’d expect to hear out of a Court lady’s mouth. My eyes narrow. “What do you know about those radicals?”
“Protestors,” she insists. “I happen to know quite a lot, actually. One of them is my cousin.”
I frown, trying to remember arresting a Balzac.
“Briar Balzac,” she says, “though she now goes by her father’s name of Crowley. It shouldn’t be illegal to protest. It’s not illegal in the rest of Europe.”
These are dozens more words than I expected from Lady Sachelle, and I think I would have preferred none than hearing her speak up in support of people I believe are traitors to the King. “I didn’t realize those at Court took an interest in the law.”
“Before the monarchy was restored, I was studying law at the polytechnic.”
I laugh. “People’s Republic law? The laws were what Varga made them, and Varga could break them whenever he liked.”
Sachelle’s eyes flash with irritation. I have good instincts when it comes to people, and those instincts have saved my life on several occasions. I don’t like what they’re telling me about this young woman. “You should be careful with your loyalties, Lady Sachelle.”
“Are you threatening me?”
It sounds like a threat. It might even become a threat, though, right now, I mean it as a warning. My eyes snag on her throat. Her very kissable throat, the skin very soft-looking right where her pulse thrums. “Beautiful women can get tangled up in all sorts of trouble without meaning to.”
“If I get into any trouble, you can be assured that it’s because I mean it.”
“Then I’ll say it again. Be careful, Lady Sachelle. Paravel is renewed and hopeful, but there are all number people who would like to see that change.”
“I’d like to see things change. Like the old Paravanian law that allows traitors to be executed without a trial. And the one where prisoners can be held indefinitely without charge, and that protesting outside the palace is punishable by a prison sentence and excessive force can be used to make arrests.”
My, my, she did have her head filled with a lot of anti-royalist sentiment at that polytechnic of hers.
“Those protesters you arrested did nothing wrong,” she continues. “It should be legal to protest anywhere in Paravel, like it is in the rest of Europe. So, are we dancing, or not?”