Prudence Merriweather loathed perfume. It always made the space behind her right eye ache, regardless of the circumstance. Add a ballroom brimming with pudgy earls, pinched-faced countesses, and arrogant lords cloaked in peony and lavender, and her head became a swollen beehive. The sickly-sweet cloud was thick enough to cast golden halos around the gas lamps lining the wine-red walls.

Shoulders back. Chin up. Look like a lady now. She couldn’t falter, not tonight. It was her second Provincial Ball and her first as the Duchess of Talonsbury, Leora’s crown jewel of a city. She had to be perfect.

Pressing back into the too-hard mahogany chair, she flinched as her braided twist collided with the headrest. The diamond pins keeping her chestnut hair coiled around the back of her head jabbed into her scalp, murdering what was left of her patience.

In the time between dinner and dancing, she and her husband Frederick, Duke of Talonsbury and master of Leora’s southernmost province, were expected to listen as the leaders of the city’s inner districts and surrounding villages aired their grievances.

Yet in the last half hour or so, Prudence hadn’t heard anything close to an actual grievance. No starving war widows clutching their children tight, begging for heels of bread or root vegetables hardened by months in manor home cellars. No Holy Sisters from the workhouse in Whitefire Square complaining of little girls coughing up their lungs.

Then again, she wasn’t sure why she’d expected anything else. A person didn’t become a leader of a Leoran district or village unless they had wealth. Problems like crop failures or starving babies weren’t welcome in a place as fine as Talonsbury Estate. No, the people privileged enough to ask their province master for help—Silks, as the commonfolk or Groundlings called them—often requested lower import prices or assistance settling a long-held feud over a strip of disputed land. War widows and sick children couldn’t afford gem-studded gowns wide as doorways or tailored velvet suits, and so their problems didn’t matter.