" Her Grace is coming to High Scape,” Karish said quietly.
I scraped some soap from the bar into the sink. “Who?”
“The Dowager Duchess of Westsea.”
I hesitated a moment. His mother. “Well, it’s been a good while since you’ve seen her.” I handed him a soapy dish.
He snorted. “I’ve gone a good seventeen years without seeing her.”
What could I say to that? “Oh.”
“Apparently she had been on some kind of retreat in the country—”
“Flown Raven is the country,” I muttered.
“City slave,” he said.
“Farm boy,” I shot back.
“I’ve never even seen a farm.”
“Don’t trifle me with details.”
“Anyway,” he continued, but he looked a little less grim, which had been the point of the interruption. “The gossip failed to catch up with her at the rustic chalet where she was meditating or whatever,” he sneered at the word ‘meditating, ’ “and she only recently learned that I had abjured the title.”
“Ah.” I could see where this was going. “Displeased, was she?”
The sound he made might have been a breathy laugh. “Furious. Enraged. Maddened. I fear for the life of the poor servant who handed the letter to her.” He opened a cabinet—the correct one, as it happened—and placed the dish inside. "

― , The Hero Strikes Back (Hero, #2)