A Brother's Price

Eldest and I asked around to dig out the dirt.”
    “It was still rude,” Jerin bowed his head in embarassment.
    “Yes, but I thought you might want to dance with someone else,” Corelle came to a stop, loosing her hold on Jerin’s hand. “Your Highness, you asked for a dance?” Jerin looked up in surprise at Ren’s smiling face.
    “Your sister has given me permission for this dance.” Ren said.
    Jerin ducked his head again, this time to hide the grin that bloomed uncontrollably across his face. He slipped his hand into the princess’s, and she squeezed it slightly before leading him out onto the floor, where Summer was partnered with Cullen.
    * * *
    There would be, Jerin reflected, a profound lack of things to do in his new life. True, they had slept in after a late night dancing, but after brunch, as rain started to drizzle down, there was nothing to do. No dishes to clean up. No dinner to get ready. No clothes to wash. No knitting or mending to be done. No children to keep entertained.
    The suite had several musical instruments, none of which they played. It was also devoid of reading materials, except the newspaper and a score of books on profoundly dry subjects such as Land Improvement via Introduction of Fertilizer , and Primer of Livestock Breeding Practices . Either the royal family didn’t know about the existence of novels, or had formed an undeservedly high opinion of the Whistlers’ intelligence level.
    The siblings took turns swapping newspaper pages between them, occasionally murmuring, “Did you see here that it says…?” and getting their fingers black from the ink. One by one, they finished the newspaper and then hunted through the loose pages, hoping for something they’d missed, something more to read.
    Jerin was beginning to understand why Cullen had been so bored.
    They had hunted out writing paper to play code breaker, devising quick cryptograms and handing them off to the next person to break. Corelle had just won the first round, as usual, when a knock at the door provided a welcome distraction. It proved even more welcome when it turned out to be Cullen and Lylia.
    “We’re bored,” Jerin told them. “We just read the Herald to death.”
    “Yes, yes, that’s a dead newspaper.” Lylia nudged a rumpled page aside with her foot. “You can read? How wonderful. I’ve tried to teach Cullen in the past, but he refuses to learn.”
    “You’re a lousy teacher.” Cullen pouted. “Besides, what’s the point? My wives probably won’t let me read.”
    “Why not?” Eldest asked. “Whistler men all read— doesn’t make them cross-eyed or sterile or anything.”
    Lylia shrugged. “I guess it’s like the poor who don’t want their daughters going to school. The girls make more money by working alongside their mothers.”
    “Oh, like you see noblemen out weeding fields every day,” Cullen said.
    “I didn’t say it made sense,” Lylia murmured, tweaking him gently with her thumb and forefinger. She turned back to the Whistlers and gave them a bright smile. “How about a tour of the palace?”
     
    The palace proved to be more rambling than Jerin had imagined. The tour ended in a suite of rooms that his youngest sisters would kill for. Called the nursery, it held a room of fanciful beds, a well-stocked schoolroom, and a playroom. One wall of the playroom contained windows, and the rest of the walls had shelves to the high ceiling, filled with toys. Baby toys were put up, and the floor was now littered with toy soldiers. Tiny cannons, a fleet of warships on a blue painted river, even supply wagons, accompanied the soldiers to war. The five red-haired, youngest princesses, Zelie, Quin, Selina, Nora, and Mira, were just settling down to battle.
    Lylia introduced Jerin to the five, and then went off to chaperone Cullen in the schoolroom with Jerin’s sisters.
    Zelie was the leader of the youngest princesses. With a regality that fitted her position, she announced, “We’re reenacting the battle of Nettle’s Run.”
    Jerin smiled. The soldiers might be tin instead of wood, the cannons might articulate and fire, but it was one of the same battles his sisters engaged in on long winter afternoons. He glanced over the troops. “Where’s Peatfield?”
    “What do you know about playing with soldiers?” Mira, the obvious baby of the sisters, asked.
    “My grandmothers were under Wellsbury,” Jerin explained, pointing to the mounted general flanked by her younger