Perhaps she would be willing to help expose the one behind all this?

In a few minutes, all four of the women are in the interrogation room with you, in response to your summons. "Yuri has told me everything," you say. "As far as I am concerned, none of you has committed any crime. Yes, you have deceived me, but if we locked up every man or woman who told false stories while courting each other, we would need to expand these dungeons tenfold. You are all therefore free to go, on the condition that you leave the Elyssian Valley and do not return for a full phase of the Moon."

The other girls look stunned. "We will not be held here?" Elainne asks, incredulous.

"Or, you may stay," you continue, "but there is also a condition attached to that."

"What is that?" Isabeau asks, suspicion returning to her face.

"I wish to know who it is who paid for your services, and attempted to humiliate me," you say. "Yuri says that you do not know, and I believe her, in part because I have a good idea of who would have done this and he would not be so foolish as to deal with you personally. But I require certainty, not merely suspicion.

"There is a reception going on upstairs which I have already been absent from for too long. My plan is that I shall return to that reception in half an hour, and all of you will accompany me, in fine dresses and with your hair arranged by Arethousa's handmaidens. You will each look like young noblewomen. I would then have you mingle among the guests, enjoying yourselves and seeing to it that any who speak with you do also."

"I came here to try and escape the life of a whore, Your Majesty," Brigitte said. "You would command me to become one on your behalf?"

"Not at all," you insist. "I do not ask you to raise your skirts for anyone. On the contrary, I want you all to act as refined and ladylike as you possibly can. I want people questioning the truth of whatever rumors have already been spread already. I want them to see you all as charming young ladies, who may have become a trifle too playful while enjoying the bathing pools, but certainly not women of ill breeding or deserving of disrespect."

"And how will this reveal to you who is the mastermind behind the scheme, Sire?" Isabeau asks.

"Simple," you say. "Four lovely women from foreign lands will suddenly appear at a royal reception, accompanied by the King, who then leaves you all to your own devices. I guarantee you will all find yourselves very much sought after for conversation. The one who hired you will be the one who goes out of his way to avoid all of you. But we must act quickly for it to work, before the guilty party has a chance to spread his rumors too far and poisons the other guests against you before you can even arrive. I will also need all four of you, so that you will be able to circulate around the room and engage with as many of the guests as possible. I need to be clear on who is avoiding you rather than who might simply not have had the chance to meet any of you."

Yuri speaks up. "I believe King Xavier to be a decent and honest man," she says firmly. "Another Lord who discovered our deceptions might have had us whipped, or locked in his dungeons for many days, or even kept as his personal harem. He is instead giving us a choice. One of those choices is freedom, but I think that if we take the second choice, we may be able to have what we came here for: a chance at a better life than the one we left behind."

"It is as you suspected, Sire," Arethousa says to you quiety between sips of her wine. "It is Lord Bertrand... it must be. He stays as far away from all of them as he possibly can, and the scowl has not left his face since they came in the door."

"I doubt that the scowl has left his face since he was weaned off his mother's teat," you point out. "But, I concur... he was the most likely suspect from the start, and now I am as certain as I could be without hearing him confess to it himself."

Your return to the reception went as planned; Yuri and her companions, naturally beautiful women, made a stunning impression in their finery and with the skills of Arethousa's servants applied to their faces and their hair. Immediately, they became the life of the party, and Lord Bertrand's reaction to their presence was exactly what you had expected. It has taken some time for you to find a moment in a quiet corner with Arethousa.

"What will you do about it, Sire?" Arethousa asks.

"There is little I can do," you say with a shrug. "Even if Bertrand admitted to everything, there is no crime in his actions. Elyssian law does not forbid the hiring of whores, whether for oneself or someone else. That is essentially all he has done. It is enough to see his scheme fail... and that HE knows that I made it fail."

"And, the ladies themselves?"

"After today, their lives are their own to do with as they will. I would help them to find employment somewhere in the city, but unfortunately, the only recommendation I am equipped to give is for a job none of them wants anymore. If nothing else, they will undoubtedly find husbands; perhaps they are finding them this very evening!"

"All is well, then," she says.

"No," you say to her, shaking your head. "If there is a guilty party here, it is myself, and you are the one who has suffered for my actions. I was careless and allowed myself to be manipulated; I saw a potential danger, but did not take it seriously. The peace of the bathing pools was disturbed, you were compelled to treat a guest roughly, and I was **** to invade the privacy of your rooms. In addition, I had to call upon you once again to help me set everything right. Arethousa, both as King of Elyssia and as a common man, I offer unto you my sincerest gratitude, and my deepest apologies. If there is some way I can compensate you for the troubles I have brought upon you this day, please do not hesitate to tell me what that is."