"Of course it is. They put this in your heard so you think you want children, so you will never consider your talent."

"And my Gift?" She smiled briefly, then shook her head. "Sario-is it that you cannot sire any?"

"Thank the Mother in Her wisdom for that!" He kissed his fingertips, pressed them against his heart. "I want nothing to do with children. I want only to paint, not to train up an infant!"

She examined him a long moment, weighing his words, his tone, his expression. "Eiha, that is probably as well," she said eventually. "You would not be a good father."

It astounded him that she could make such an all-encompassing judgment. "How do you know? Why do you say that?"

"Men who detest children rarely make good fathers-unless, of course, they truly do want and like them, and merely lie about it."

It was ludicrous, all of it. "Bassda, 'Vedra! I have come to paint you, not discuss procreation."

He took up his brush again, gestured incisively. "Assume the pose, grazzo."

"I'm tired," she declared; indeed, she looked tired. "I want to sit here and rest-paint something else, Sario. The lantern. The decanter. The. fruit. None of them is tired, nor will they complain that you make them stand too long." She cocked an eye at the fruit. "Of course, none of them is standing..."

"Bassda," he muttered. "Matra, but you try my patience."

"Then be an alla prima artist," she suggested sweetly. "Surely you have both vision and ability to paint all at once, from beginning to end, and will be as content with it after one session as you would be with weeks of work."

He growled deep in his throat, intending to say something more, but he had lost her. Her attention clearly was fixed on someone else; and then he heard the footstep in the door.

Ignaddio. Of course. Proving his contention that children impeded work.

" 'Vedra?" Ignaddio piped. " 'Vedra, you are to go out."

"Go out? Go out where?" Sario asked sharply. "No, you will stay. I cannot have the work disrupted yet again!"

Ignaddio dipped his head. "Regretto, Lord Limner, but it's the Duke. He's waiting in the courtyard, by the fountain."

"Matra Dolcha!" Saavedra leaped up from the chair in a flurry of rose-colored skirts and black ringlets.

"Merditto," Sario muttered as she ran out the door. He scowled at Ignaddio, scowled at his brush, scowled at the work. "How can he expect to receive his commission if he keeps stealing the subject?"

"May I see?" Ignaddio asked.

"No, you may not see. I permit no one to see a work in progress."

"But you said once the preliminary sketch was done-"

"Bassda! You try me, ninio." He waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. "Go. Go. Find Diega for me-look in the laundry, grazzo-and send her to me. We have business, she and I."

Ignaddio's eyes widened. "But-I thought you couldn't-" "Couldn't what, ninio? And what concern is it of yours what I can or cannot do, or what I may or may not wish to do?"

"Do'nado," Ignaddio whispered.

"Indeed, do'nado. Adezo, go. Send Diega to me. Then take yourself elsewhere, or I shall never even once examine your portfolio."

And as he had never even once suggested he ever would, the implied threat had the desired effect. Ignaddio departed.

Saavedra stepped beneath the arched, vine-draped entrance leading from a small walled garden into the central courtyard and stopped short. Alejandro stood but yards beyond her, gazing fixedly into the fountain and wholly oblivious to her approach, the sound of her footsteps obscured by the gargle and spray of cascading water. His was a pure, clean profile of such striking clarity she realized all at once she must paint him again, and very soon. Too often portraiture was of a full-face pose, or perhaps three-quarters profile-she wanted the profile itself, as if it bedecked a coin: the high brow partially obscured by unruly hair, still wavy in adulthood; the clean bridge of the nose, as yet unblemished by weapons practice or a misplaced wrestler's hold; the chiseled hollow between nostrils and upper lip; and a mouth she knew inti- mately enough that she blushed to think of it. The chin beneath was pronounced enough to establish a hint of stubbornness, but also of character; and it was far better to have more chin, she thought, than less.

She moved toward him. Her shoes crunched now on gravel and he turned, banishing the profile entirely, but Saavedra did not care. There were esthetics she appreciated in any of his postures, in the lifting of a brow, the quirking of his mouth, the quick snapping gesture of a thick wrist and broad hand in dismissal of a point of argument he found abruptly insignificant, even if it be his own.

Not in the least inhibited by the notoriously flawed grin, he bestowed it upon her freely, then caught both of her hands as she joined him at the fountain. Spray bathed his face, now hers; it mingled as they kissed. But within moments his expression altered from tender to serious, and she knew he had not come out of simple desire for her company.

Saavedra tugged him down beside her as she perched upon the curving bench surrounding the lowest basin, disregarding wind-drifted spray. "Tell me."

He made no attempt to prevaricate. "Caza Varra," he said simply. "I must go there."

She shook her head. "I don't know it."

He scraped a bootheel against a stone flag, digging at an edge as if he would pry it up. "It's one of the country estates. My father took us there during summers when he could get away." He sighed, plainly ill at ease, digging more vigorously. "My mother is there now. She has retired from Court, from all public life."

Saavedra laughed, clamping a hand on one of his knees to prevent him from excavating further. "A loving and dutiful son should go see his mother, no? Lest she make her displeasure known!"

"Eiha, yes, I suppose there is that." He caught the hand, clasped it, lifted it to his mouth, kissed it gently. "Forgive me, carrida ... I beg you, forgive me-but I must go to my mother to discuss an impending betrothal."

It stabbed only distantly, as if she had formed calluses in preparation for this moment.

"Yours."

"Mine."

When she could manage it without clamping down hard enough to score his flesh with nails, she squeezed his hand. "Eiha, we knew this would come. He went there for this purpose, your poor father." Courtesy forbade her adding that he had also taken her painting of his son, which now resided in the court of Pracanza's king.

"But not so soon!"

"Not so soon," she echoed. "No. But it has come now, and we must make the best of it." And then false courage evaporated, along with the brisk tone. "Bassda! I am no conselho trained to diplomacy and evasion. Let me say what I feel, Alejandro . . . that I am angry and frightened and jealous and hurt and confused and bitter and posessive and I want to cry, all at once!" She drew in a painful breath. "But that gains me nothing beyond a splotched face, red eyes, and a swollen nose-and then you would never wish to look at me again and you would look only at your Pracanzan beauty-" She broke off. "Is she beautiful?"

Clearly disconcerted, he made no answer immediately.

"Merditto," she muttered. "She would be. Matra Dolcha, what else? The daughter of a king, a dowry rich beyond imagining, trade potential that can only aid Tira Virte, fertility, I am certain- likely she will be fecund as a rabbit!-your mother will undoubtedly adore her, and she is beautiful!" She looked at him through a glaze of tears. "And now I am crying anyway because I can't help myself, and you'll go away the sooner!"

"Meya dolcha 'Vedra ..." And he did as she both wanted and expected: embraced her, held her close, comforted her fears as only he could, with warmth and nearness and words that made no sense nor needed to, so long as he said them.

"Regretto," she said into his shoulder when she could speak again. "I meant never to do this. I despise women who do this."

"But I love this one, and she may spoil as many of my doublets as she wishes."

"It's weak."

"It's many things, all of them painful and none of them weak. And I also am all of the things you claimed to be in that lengthy, uncompromising, and unceasing string of words you consider epithets so vile I flinch to hear them."

She managed a choked laugh. "Do you want to cry?"

"At this moment you are crying enough for two. I'll wait."

This time the laughter was easier. "Until when?"

"When my mother adjusts the fit of my meticulously tailored clothing, smooths back freshly- brushed hair that is already in place, cups my jaw and tells me what a fine mennino I have turned out to be after all-en verro, the very image of my father!" "You are. Both of those things."

"I am the image of Alejandro do'Verrada, whomever he may be. One day I may even know myself."

She smiled, but it died. "When shall you go?"

Alejandro sighed. His heel sought the flag again and began to dig. "This afternoon. A rider was sent out. Caza Varra isn't far, and she expects me tonight."

Saavedra sat up. "Then you had best go." Without success she tried to smooth the tear-stained, creased velurro of his doublet. "And change before you leave, or she will know some woman has been crying into your fine clothing."

"I expect she may do it herself, once she knows I mean to marry."

"Then suggest to her-stop digging, Alejandro, or you'll have all the stones up!-suggest to her she use your other shoulder. I am an arrtia, no?- symmetry is important."

He embraced her again, laughing softly into her curls as he gathered her close. "Meya dolcha amora, don't fear I will forget you, or cast you off-if for no other reason than you tend your stonelayer's work so well! I promised you the Marria do'Fantome, and you shall have it. When I am back, I will take the proper steps."

"When you are back from announcing to your mother you mean to marry the Pracanzan girl?

Don't be a moronno, Alejandro, there is no time for that now." She made a placating gesture.

"Later, perhaps."

It did not suit. "But it must be done before she arrives! Merditto, 'Vedra-can you imagine the outrage if I entered into a shadow marriage after I married her in the Ecclesia?"

"Before is better?" She shook her head. "Alejandro, I know you meant it when you said it, and I bless and honor you for it ... but perhaps you should reconsider, in view of what has happened.

Then no one imagined your father would die . . . you are Duke now, and things are complicated."

"I meant what I said, 'Vedra."

"I release you from it."

Something that wasn't humor glittered briefly in his eyes. "I will make the arrangements today before I leave for Caza Varra."

"You can't!"

"No? I am Duke. I can do what I wish precisely when I wish to do it." He rose then, kissed her soundly, turned to depart.

"Alejandro?"

She heard the scrape of gritty tile beneath his boots as he swung back. "Yes?"

In bewildered curiosity, "What are you going to do?"

"Take the first steps toward having the Marria do'Fantome legitimized." "How?"

"By having it painted by the Lord Limner."

She surged to her feet. "Alejandro-no!" But as he registered baffled surprise at her vehemence, she realized she could not explain. What existed between her and Sario was so intangible as to be impossible to define. Not love, not true and passionate love such as she and Alejandro shared, of the heart and soul and body, but of the spirit, of that which shaped their talent, their gifts. No man who does not share it can ever understand. And so she shook her head.

"Do'nado," she said. "Go and do as you will."

It was enough. He inclined his head, kissed fingertips, touched them briefly to his heart, then opened and extended his hand to indicate the blessing included her as well.

"Matra," she murmured as he went from her, crunching across gravel. "Matra Dolcha, let me be wrong . . . but I can see nothing of this but an ending. No man, newly married, should cleave to his mistress."

And no mistress, loving that man, could give him up freely.

TWENTY-NINE.

Alejandro pounded up the stairs after gesturing away the young man who appeared to direct him; he thought by now all of them should realize he at least knew his way to Saavedra's quarters, if little else within the sprawling Palasso Grijalva. At the top of the stairs he went straight to the door that opened into the sitting room, passed through it to the atelierro, and found Sario Grijalva standing at an unshuttered window staring out into the courtyard.

The Limner turned even as Alejandro stopped short at the easel, examining the uncompleted painting. His focused determination bled away into awe as he gazed at the painting. "Matra Dolcha! I was not expecting this,"

"No?" Grijalva's expressive face was pinched and pale; the flat line of his mouth was severe, as if he feared to speak lest he spit. "Well, I am not satisfied with it. I shall begin again."

"Again! But why? This is glorious!"

"It is a mere daub. It does not please me." Grijalva left the window and moved to the easel, sweeping a cloth over the image. "I shall begin again."

The swift appraisal and dismissive declaration set Alejandro back. "But surely if I am pleased-"

"Grazzo, Your Grace, but this is what I have trained for all my life, no? Permit me the chance to admit it is not my best work ... I would never interfere with the ordering of your duchy."

All his intentions came back redoubled. "But I want you to," Alejandro said on a rush. "Is it possible?"

Grijalva blinked, clearly astonished. It was the first time Alejandro had ever seen him so.

"You want me to-interfere?"

"Can you do that?" The mixture of expressions crossing Grijalva's face followed one after another so instantaneously that Alejandro could not begin to name them all. And then he settled on one: sublime self-confidence. "Have they set you to this, Your Grace? Out of fear for you, for Tira Virte?"

"Has who set me to this?"

"The conselhos. Perhaps Marchalo do'Najerra, Conselho Serrano, Conselho do'Saenza . . ."

Dark eyes were limpid. "They have made common cause, no? To mistrust and undermine me?"

The laugh was startled out of Alejandro in a quick, choked blurt. "But this is your opportunity to undermine them."

White-faced, Grijalva turned away abruptly, returned to the unshuttered window, and stared out again. The line of his shoulders was rigidly set, his neck unbending, every minute inflection of his posture cried out his need for careful voyaging, for a discernment of what truths lay beneath the too-obvious surface.

This is none of it going as I expected . . . Sighing, Alejandro went to the chair behind the table and hooked it close with one booted foot, then dropped into it backward, spread thighs embracing the chairback. He folded his forearms across the rim where velurro was brass-tacked to wood and rested his chin upon them. Choosing his words with care, and their inflection, he said merely, "You will serve me in this."