"You girls go on out for now!"

The Fourth Prince waved a hand, and the girls who had been waiting on him left the room.

Then he poured Ning Chen a cup of wine and said with a smile, "A fair number of men at court have been impeaching me lately for loose living and for haunting the pleasure quarter."

Ning Chen turned the cup over in his fingers. "And you still dare come?"

The Fourth Prince raised his cup and touched it against Ning Chen's, smiling.

"I spend the whole year with the army, surrounded by rough men, and I'm not married... I finally get back to the capital. Is it too much to come here and have a few girls keep me company?"

"If they like writing memorials, let them. Once you and Huai'an are married I go back to the western frontier anyway."

Ning Chen smiled. "Then you have only a few days left."

His Majesty had told him the wedding with the Ninth Princess was set for the seventh of next month. Counting generously, that was seven or eight days.

The Fourth Prince looked thoroughly unhappy about it. "I'd like to stay longer. But my mother the Consort insists I go back to the western frontier as soon as I can."

Ning Chen smiled. "You're at the western frontier all year. I suppose the turn of the year is the only time you get back to spend with Her Ladyship Consort Zhao?"

The Fourth Prince nodded and complained, "Exactly. Every year I come back wanting to stay longer and see more of my mother the Consort... and every year she hurries me out the door."

"If you weren't marrying Huai'an this time, I'd have been shipped back to the western frontier long ago."

"Why is that?"

The Fourth Prince looked utterly glum. "Who knows what my mother the Consort is thinking? Something about the western frontier needing me and how I should hurry back."

"Other princes' mothers are busy arranging marriages for their sons. Mine doesn't ask and doesn't care... Huai'an is getting married and I'm…