Note: this was cut from a longer discussion about Maxim and Chloe dealing with the possibility of being too closely related to marry. Parts of this backstory may reappear in some other part of Hunter Healer King 3 This is dictation transcribed by Whisper and cleaned up by Claude AI, without additional revision. You may spot some misspelled place names below and some examples of why I feel obliged to revise and rewrite after dictation cleanup.

“They mostly seemed concerned about whether we were closer than third cousins.”

“Well, I know all my third cousins,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you’re not one of them.”

“They said my grandfather adopted my mother, and they didn’t have good records on where she came from before that,” Chloe said.

“I’ve never heard you mention your mother,” I said. “Do you know if she’s still alive? I’m afraid I had always assumed you were an orphan.”

“I grew up thinking she had died,” Chloe said. “I can remember her as a very tall, beautiful, well-dressed woman when I was a child of five or so. And then she wasn’t there anymore. At first, I thought she had died, but then my father explained that she had gotten tired of life in Silburn and that she had gone back to Noricum.”

She continued, “I thought my maternal grandfather had died and left me what he owned—basically a decent bank account and Wolf Island. That was a year or two before I came over here. Neither my father nor I wanted to come to Noricum to straighten it all out, so we let the lawyers handle it. Then the revolution happened and father sent me over here. The sensible thing to do seemed to be to look into what the lawyers wanted me to do with this estate. That’s how I met you.”

“But didn’t your grandfather mention your mother in his will?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, not a word. That’s part of why I thought she was dead. Although I suppose if she quarreled fiercely enough with my father to want to return to Noricum, she could have quarreled with my grandfather—or adopted father—as well.”

“What reason do they have to think that your mother is still alive?”

“Well, her name was Jordis, and I guess that’s a somewhat unusual name in this part of the world. Apparently, there’s a woman by that name who moves in high society here in Halpstad.”

“Did they have any pictures of her?” I asked. “Sometimes the newspapers would include illustrated supplements of this or that grand party or social event. And anyone in politics would also show up in the political cartoons.”

“They didn’t show me one,” Chloe said. “Apparently they’d only just made the connection between me and this Lady Jordis around the time we got on the Daydream.”

“Well, it should be easy enough to check,” I said, “now that you’re in Halpstad.”