Alex arrives to Chelam's - Carlota's - dinner party an hour early, and begs a meeting with the Duchess if she's free.

"Carlota. You are a very capable politician. We haven't been at this convention together for two whole weeks and already you've saved the country a great deal of hardship, as I reckon it. You organized a raid to capture a lich on almost no notice. You predicted and preempted the attempt to pass censorship laws that would spend a great deal of the state's resources punish its people for crimes that are not, at their heart, evil or lawless. And you rescued me from my own personal folly.

…I would like to marry you. I realize this is not a very passionate proposal of marriage. That's - intentional, in a sense. I don't want you to accept imagining that this is an act of passion. I don't love you, yet. I probably will, but at the moment it's - pragmatic. Political. I think you are an excellent political ally, and we work well together, and we both very much need to get married and - passion will come. I think."