...I pulled my cloak tight around me—and shivered at the memory that assailed me, the thing I’d almost managed to forget. Last Night, and the firelight at Highcombe, and the sense that my uncle belonged there, in that small room with me and the master. He belonged there as much as I did, because St Vier loved him the way the old kings were not supposed to love people, and whatever my uncle did with the others, he loved the man at Highcombe almost too much to bear.

Well, if I ever loved anyone that much, man or woman, I would never do what he did. I’d been happy at Highcombe; I knew where I was and what I was doing there. And the duke had come and ruined everything, and dragged me back here where I didn’t belong. He couldn’t stay at Highcombe with the person he loved best in the world, so I couldn’t either. He was a selfish crazy pig and I hated him utterly.