Across the hall, at the Fayle table, Baron Erling shifted in his chair for the fourth time in as many minutes.
His mother, Lady Ragna, placed a hand on his arm without looking at him, the way she'd done when he was a boy squirming through temple services. The gesture was so familiar that it almost made him smile, except that tonight, the thing making him squirm wasn't boredom or a stiff collar. It was the way Baron Loghlan kept glancing toward the doors.
Loghlan sat three tables away, at the head of the Dunn delegation, his broad shoulders squared and his weathered hands resting flat on the table in front of him. To anyone who didn't know the old baron, he looked perfectly relaxed, a man attending a ceremony with the unhurried confidence of a lord who had nothing to worry about.
