Duchess prompted, from the stool she’d slid over next to the small, gray-haired woman. It was the third time she’d turned Ferroc back to the topic she suspected the older woman wanted to avoid. She’d thought to go to Ferroc the first thing that morning. Dealing with Jana’s problems was a welcome diversion from her own. Ferroc and Nieces was in the Shallows, but its proprietor did as much business as any seamstress in the city. Certainly her workroom seemed busy enough, filled with long tables at which girls and women from nine to ninety bent to their tasks under the light of lanterns hung from the ceiling. Duchess had always imagined such work to be drudgery, but the seamstresses in Ferroc’s shop chatted gaily as stitched and sewed. Although Ferroc herself did not join the talk she seemed unruffled by the constant conversation. Her own table stood upon a dais, facing the rest of the room, a perch from which she could oversee the activity without rising from her chair. Ferroc shot Duchess a quick glance from brown eyes deep under a wrinkled brow.
