The courtyard was arranged with the kind of deliberate beauty that only wealth and excessive time could produce. Blossom trees stood in careful positions, their branches heavy with pink flowers that had cost considerable effort to maintain in the capital's climate. Beneath one of the larger trees, on cushioned mattresses arranged in a loose semicircle, Duchess Jazmin Akupa reclined with a cup of tea held loosely in one hand and music drifting from somewhere inside the residence through carefully positioned speakers.
She was a woman in her early forties with the kind of beauty that came from knowing exactly how to present yourself to the world and never wavering from that presentation. Dark hair, dark eyes, the kind of confidence that came from spending decades watching men lose their balance when she smiled at them. She wore loose clothing arranged to suggest rather than reveal, the strategy of someone who understood that mystery held more power than visibility.
