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stolen from your father.”
    “Regardless,” Alexander said, “that’s tantamount to war. Is that what you want?”
    “I didn’t march into the Court accusing a decent man of terrible things! I didn’t murder him and steal his Dukedom! I didn’t ask for this war but if that’s what it takes to restore to us what is rightfully ours – and has been for hundreds of years – then so be it!”
    Alexander paled. “Mother, you’re grieving, you’re not–”
    “You are avoiding facing up to your responsibility.”
    “Which is?”
    “To help me clear your father’s name and take back the Dukedom.”
    “You want me to be Duke?”
    “It’s your birthright.”
    There was a knock at the door and Alexander called in the butler, who had tea, sandwiches and cakes ready to serve. Margritte seethed as the tea was poured. Her son had been left in his ivory tower too long.
    Once the butler had left and he’d taken a rather audible gulp of tea, Alexander said, “Mother, I’m no Duke, I’m a professor and the Vice-Chancellor of Oxenford! I can’t just abandon my responsibilities here. And I’m sorry, but I can’t share your opinion on the way to proceed. Starting a war with the Irises would be… foolish.”
    “You think I’m a grief-stricken fool?”
    “I think you’re making decisions whilst traumatised. I couldn’t possibly sanction a war with the Irises; there are many who live in Oxenford. They hold three colleges here, and, after the terrible disruption to the university caused by the fall of the Roses, I couldn’t possibly see how a war would be supported by my peers or the Chancellor.”
    “Damn the Chancellor! He isn’t one of us!”
    “Mother–” Alexander made no effort to hide how appalled he was “–I cannot risk the stability of Oxenford just because you cannot manage your grief.”
    She stood up so quickly she knocked the tea cup onto the floor. “How dare you dismiss my loyalty to our family as a weak woman’s grief. I suggest you think very carefully about where your loyalties lie.”
    “Where are you going?” he asked as she turned her back on him and stepped over the broken porcelain.
    “To speak to the Patroon. I’m curious to see whether he thinks our family’s honour is less important than the comfort of a Sorcerer and his pet academics.”

 
    3
    Sam looked at the people filling the crematorium’s chapel. He didn’t recognise most of them. Some of the women were crying, all dressed in the same kind of corporate gear Leanne used to wear, only black. Their grieving made him aware of his own hollow detachment. He felt nothing except the sharp awareness of the man who’d killed her sitting three rows behind him. Bastard.
    “I would like to speak at the funeral,” Neugent had said in a letter redirected from his house in Bath to Lord Iron’s vast estate in Lancashire. “I worked very closely with Leanne for several years and had the utmost respect and admiration for her.”
    Sam had burnt the letter and stood at the window, looking out over landscaped gardens, wondering what the fuck was happening to his life. Lord Iron had dined with him the night he arrived; they’d talked about Leanne mostly, then he’d been called away on business. “Stay, relax, grieve,” Iron said as he shook his hand. “Treat this as your own house. The staff will provide everything you need. I’ll be back for the funeral.”
    He’d watched the limousine crawl down the drive, listened to the crackle of the gravel beneath its tyres and thought of the last time he saw his wife. It was all he seemed capable of thinking about.
    The funeral had been delayed by the recovery from his own injuries and by the autopsy, which gave a simple (and incorrect) conclusion: natural causes. A blood vessel had burst in her brain and then she dropped dead. The report detailed that she was slightly underweight but otherwise in good health.
    Several nights in a row he dreamt of her on the underground platform. In one