The dinner at Lord Fenwick's estate was the kind of occasion that filled the court's social calendar in the winter months, when the formal political season was quieter and the gatherings were smaller and more personal.
I had come to find these occasions more interesting than the formal functions because people said things at winter dinners that they would not say in larger, more scrutinized settings. The informality was itself a form of information.
Lord Fenwick was a genial host with a genuine interest in the duchy's northern trade situation and a habit of seating guests in configurations designed to produce interesting conversations rather than safe ones. I had been seated between Lady Morrow, who had strong opinions about the administrative reorganization of the eastern territories and was not shy about sharing them, and Lord Carven, who was a third-generation landowner with a historian's interest in recent shifts in court power dynamics.
