Yes. Love. Kennet very nearly looked to him. She very nearly turned in her seat with her breath caught in her chest and looked at him. Yes. Love. At her side, Hadrian pressed the advantage he only barely had, and though Kennet made every effort to follow the war waging around her, she couldn’t hear over the sound of her heart thundering between her ears. Yes. Love.

“I wasn’t aware we were surrendering anything,” Brenna scoffed. “And Baldor Garen would make for a fine match. Nearly as fine as Larcien himself, salt preserve him. I will not have my daughter settle for anything less. I do admire the man you’ve become Hadrian, I mean that. But even you must see that this is a whim—”

Hadrian reached for her hand under the table and Kennet released the breath she was holding, wrapping her fingers around his palm with all the desperation of a shipwrecked survivor reaching for driftwood in the storm.

“I’ve already said yes.” Kennet lifted her chin, cutting through the din of the battle with a banner that was entirely her own.

The line of Brenna’s jaw tensed. “Is that so?”

“It is.” Kennet met her mother’s gaze with an even look while Hadrian squeezed her hand beneath the table. Perhaps Brenna’s approval should not have meant so much to her, but it did. Such was the contradiction that was Kennet Delaney, and Kennet Caern after that. She had spent so long wrapping herself in the illusion of not caring, that indifference—that strength—she had never stopped to teach herself how not to care.

Across the table, Brenna drew in a long, resigned breath. For a moment—a long one—she considered the pair across from her, one greying eyebrow arched a notch higher than the other. “Well then. What is it you expect me to say? You have apparently already made up your mind.”

“I suppose you could try ‘congratulations,’” Kennet remarked, doing her best to smooth the edge from her voice despite the fact she had long-since given up the ruse of a smile.

“How long has it been, hm?” Brenna countered, her arched brow lifting over a keen eye. “A season since you lost Larcien? Whatever this is, grief or loneliness or even just a little fun, I don’t fault you for it. Really, Kennet, I don’t. But I won’t pretend to congratulate what I can’t understand. And I would expect you—” her gaze narrowed on Hadrian—“to know better.” As far as Brenna was concerned, he’d spent more time entertaining other men’s wives than Kennet had spent on this earth, and sitting behind her tea, staring at the pair of them now, she could not find it in herself to fathom what had possessed Hadrian Usher, of all people, to believe she would permit him to make a fool of her daughter.

She simply, frankly, was not having it.

Brenna rolled her eyes, reaching for her saucer with an incredulous huff. “I suppose I admire your optimism.”

Across the table, Kennet straightened in her seat. Brenna plucked the teacup from her saucer, meeting her daughter’s gaze with a pointed, wordless look before washing away the entire ordeal with a curt sip of tea. The look was one that very nearly chased the retort from Kennet’s tongue. She recognized it all too well. ‘See?’ her mother’s arched brows asked. ‘See the mistake you have made?’

Her hand shifted in Hadrian’s, fingers twisting as Kennet dragged another unaffected smile across her features to mask the hurt she knew better than to reveal now. “I believe you’ll find, mama, that the commander can be quite stubborn,” she finally mused, voice grasping weightily for its usual airy affect as she turned a more genuine smile in Hadrian’s direction.

“His sort usually are.” Brenna rose from the table, pushing her seat out from under her with a weary breath. “Waging war is not for the fickle, I suspect. But, then, once the battle is won, what is there to do but move onto the next?”

Kennet met her mother’s gaze as the woman made her way around the table and toward the door. Whether Hadrian realized it or not, Kennet was well aware of the failure they had wrought this morning. Brenna Delaney was a woman more than capable of bending. She had, in fact, spend the vast majority of her life doing precisely that. Bending, deferring, demurring. But it would take a great deal more than the pale flicker of amorous looks and an apparent affair to move her. Hers was a will carved from steel, and Brenna had only encountered a few flames in her life that burned hot enough to tempt it to bending.

“Do enjoy your victory, Lord Usher.” Brenna paused at the door, long enough for the whip of her irony to catch Hadrian and Kennet alike. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have a few remaining guests I should see off.”