Author's Note:
This story begins around Midwinter, two and a half years after the events of Lady Knight. I have re-used some characters from my other story Younger Sons that I made up to populate Dom's family, though this story begins on an entirely new timeline so please disregard the events of that other story.
Also, family gossip. My family has a particularly well-oiled gossip machine maintained principally by my dad's sisters, but we are all complicit. :-P
Lady Lavinia of Masbolle to Baroness Ilane of Mindelan
My dear Ilane,
It was such a pleasure to renew our acquaintance after all these years! How fortunate it was that we were at the Palace at the same time, what with your husband's post and my usually remaining at Masbolle. It seems like just yesterday that we were fresh-from-the-convent debutantes! I do believe we bored the children with our reminiscing.
But what a lovely ceremony it was. I am so happy my nephew has found such a suitable match in Lady Yukimi, and both of them such a solid friend in your youngest daughter. I have heard much about Keladry from my youngest son, Domitan. He's the one in the King's Own. It was incredibly lucky he got leave to attend the wedding; he and Nealan were as close as brothers growing up.
It was a real pleasure to finally meet your daughter Keladry after hearing so much about her. You must be tremendously proud of her. A lady knight! The first to openly achieve the honour in over a century! My oldest girl, Katrine, often played knights with her brothers when she was small, but she lost interest as she got older. She would enlist her little brother Domitan as her squire and together they would defeat their brother Garret the wicked sorcerer. He was the only one with the Gift before Alise and Irenie came along, you see. Domitan never wanted a knighthood, but he seems to be happy to stay in the Own with no plans to settle down just yet, though he knows my thoughts on the matter! You too must know the feeling well with so many of your own children in active service.
But I digress. Since you are in Corus for the winter I trust we will see one another with some sort of regularity over the next few weeks.
Yours sincerely,
Lavinia of Masbolle