Stein is reminded of an urgent matter

“Ach! Stein!” the Duchess cried eagerly. “Do come in!”

Stein peeked out from behind the door. “Are you certain I should be coming into a lady’s bedroom?”

“It’s not a lady’s bedroom,” Lili said from her perch on the big bed. “It is a guest bedroom, currently occupied by a knight, and incidentally his lady.”

“It’s the knight that worries me, I admit,” Stein said. “Also, I bid you notice that it is ‘currently’ occupied by four ladies.”

“Also one squire, and zero knights,” Lili said. “What are you complaining about, again?”

Stein laughed. “I’m not complaining!”

Lili noticed Stein looking for a chair, and she patted the bed. “Come sit beside me!” she commanded.

“Now that’s asking for trouble,” he said. “Inviting me into your bed?”

“Onto the bed,” she corrected.

“So, I see! Everything that happens outside of the covers doesn’t count?”

“No! But Hetty is here to guard my virtue.”

“And who will guard Hetty’s?”

“Hattie will,” Lili said, nodding at the Duchess’s inscrutable maid.

“And who will guard Hattie’s?”

“Lottie will!” she said of her own maid, who stood giggling before the mirror, trying to avoid Stein’s eyes.

“We’re all in trouble then!” Stein laughed, for he knew personally how matters stood with Lottie’s virtue, at least.

“Now, not at all!” Lili said. “At least one of us is bound to behave. And if not, that means four ladies for you at one time. I think you might be willing to accept the consequences if you were granted that opportunity.”

“Lili, I don’t know of what feats your husband is capable, but I think four ladies might be a bit much for one young Stein.”

“But shouldn’t it be five?” Lili gasped. “Where’s Sophie?”

“That’s what I’m here to tell you, Lil, if you will stop trying to seduce me for a moment.”

“Very well, but only for a moment.”

“Sophie sends her apologies, but she couldn’t come.”

“Oh! Why not?” Lili wailed.

“She sprained her ankle and couldn’t even get out of bed. Wouldn’t you know this is the second lady’s bedroom in which I have been received today?”

“Only?” Lottie giggled in her corner.

“A slow day,” Stein said dryly.

“But how?” Lili gasped.

“She fell down the stairs. Must have fallen face-​first, because that’s what got the worst of it. Poor girl bruises quite colorfully, just as I do.”

“Ach no!” Lili cried.

“I hope she was not holding the baby!” Hetty said.

“No, unless he bounces,” Stein said. “Little fellow is still all white.”

“But what was she doing, that she fell?” Lili asked.

“I don’t know, Lil! There’s only two things one can do on stairs: go up or go down. She didn’t say which it was. Though, now that you mention it, if it’s Sophie one can never tell. Perhaps she was sliding down the banister.”

“The devil! Now what am I to do for a friend?” Lili moaned.

“But, Lili,” her sister said. “In a few months you will have your baby to keep you occupied.”

“Then you will only be wondering what you are to do for a bit of sleep,” Stein said.

“Rest now, Lili,” Hetty said. “You will only feel like sleeping after the baby comes, and you will not be able to. Already that is the only thing I care to do these days. Also you will not feel like dancing with your friends when your feet are as fat as mine.”

“My grouchy old husband won’t let me dance anymore anyway, because of the baby. But I can still gossip. And with whom can I gossip now? Won’t you come home with me, Stein?” she sighed.

So overcome was she, it seemed, that she fainted away against his shoulder.

This, from as pretty a girl as Lili, would ordinarily have been a delightful development, but in Lili’s particular case there was also the matter of the grouchy old husband.

Furthermore, over the last few weeks, Stein had begun to fear that Lili had continued to seek him out, even though it was now rather clear that Ana was not about to fall in love with Ethelwyn, and Ethelwyn was not about to fall in love with Ana.

“But, Lil,” he said, “I thought you girls primarily gossiped about us boys. So if you have a boy in front of you, I wonder what you will dare say?”

She laughed and bounced the bottom half of her closer to him until her hip was pressed up against his. “I shall simply tell you what I truly think of you! Wouldn’t you like to know what we girls say about you?”

“I’m not certain I would…” He laughed uneasily, thinking of Lottie giggling behind them.

“Of course you would!” Lili said. “It’s only flattering! Isn’t it, Hetty?”

The Duchess appeared too startled to reply.

“Isn’t it?” Lili insisted. “What was the last thing I said to you about Stein?”

“I… do not remember which…” Hetty murmured.

“Yes, you do. I was saying: ‘What is the most delicious thing in the whole world? It is this little wisp of hair hanging down over Stein’s forehead here.’”

She reached up to give it a tweak, though Stein tried to duck away.

“I am always simply dying to brush it back,” she said. “I think he cuts it so, just to drive the girls wild.”

“I don’t cut it,” Stein protested. “Those hairs simply grow that way. They never get long.” He blew on them and tried to glimpse their flutter from below.

Lili sighed adoringly. “Doesn’t he look winsome?”

“Just as sweet as a little baby,” the Duchess said with a sly smile.

“Oh, thank you, ladies,” Stein grumbled. “That is precisely the effect I want to produce on my enemies when I go into battle.”

“In battle you wear a helmet,” Lili scolded. “Anyway, it would be a good trick to play on them. They come to pinch your cheeks, and meanwhile you run them through with your sword. Same trick you play on the ladies!”

“Lili!” the Duchess gasped, though Lottie chortled merrily in the corner.

Lili snorted and laughed, but when she leaned around Stein to reach up and pinch his cheeks, he could smell the wine on her breath, and he was somewhat relieved. Lili sober was already enough of a flirt that such behavior was not surprising on the part of Lili drunk. On the other hand, there was still that grouchy old husband.

Stein squirmed away from her and stood.

“I had not realized,” he said with a bow to the Duchess, “that my hair posed such a danger to the virtue of the ladies ‘currently’ in the room. Perhaps you should excuse me?”

Lili groaned behind him, but Hetty only lifted her hand to be kissed, with a smile that seemed slightly apologetic on her sister’s behalf.

It was true that gentle Hetty was not merely a pretty girl, and Stein decided he would ask her advice once her sister had returned home. In the same afternoon he had been subjected to Leofwine’s suspicious glare and the imagined threat of Lili’s grouchy old husband. If he meant to stay in this valley with hair as treacherous as his, he was beginning to think that it would be wise to procure himself a wife as soon as possible—if only as an alibi.