Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1)(75)

But that was going to become harder, because the advance wedding party had arrived. Not only Lady Hypatia, but also her eldest son and his family – the Vernays of Ide, a cadet branch of the Jardine line. Abi didn’t know anything about them, beyond the fact that Ide had been the target of Black Billy’s infamous, doomed revolt more than two centuries ago. With them came the bride-to-be’s widowed father, Lord Lytchett Matravers, and his chum Lord Rix.

These two were an ill-matched pair: one, a Christmas pudding of a man, sherry-scented and full of cheer. The other was rail-thin and suave, given to leaving pluming trails of fragrant cigar smoke in their wake. The other thing that seemed to follow them around was laughter, which made for a pleasant change.

Her dealings with Jenner were still distant and formal. But in every other respect, Kyneston – or was it Abi herself? – seemed to be casting off the gloom of the midwinter months. Sloughing it off like a salamander in the fire. I burn, not shine, she thought.

‘You’re not from round here, are you?’

Lord Rix was leaning against the panelled wall of the corridor. He was watching her, a slender cigarillo between his fingers and a smile on his lips.

Abi had been instructing a pair of house-slaves about the decorations that would transform Kyneston’s East Wing from a debating chamber one day into a wedding venue the next. She tried to flatten her northern vowels. But they came out anyway when she was exasperated – as she had been, faced with two people apparently ignorant of the distinction between ‘bunting’ and ‘garlands’.

‘No, my lord. From Manchester.’

‘Manchester?’ Rix raised an eyebrow.

Abi couldn’t remember the name of his seat, but thought it was in East Anglia somewhere. Kitchen intel had told her that Rix had lots of racehorses but no children, and was godfather to both Matravers girls.

‘Aha, I know – your brother must be that lad Gavar broke out of the slavetown. Quite the daring rescue. You’ll have to point him out to me one day so he can tell me all about it. Precious little else that passes for excitement round here, eh?’

Abi doubted that Luke’s account of six hours in the back of a van would be as thrilling as the Equal hoped, but she nodded obediently.

‘I’ll tell him when I see him. But I’m afraid he’s hardly ever at the house. He’s a groundsman. If you’re outside and see a blond teenage boy with a large axe, that’ll be him.’

‘An axe, eh?’ The Equal put both hands up in mock terror. ‘I guess your masters trust him not to have picked up any naughty ideas from his time in Millmoor. Ha ha. Still, you look like a busy young lady. Don’t let me keep you.’

And Rix sauntered off towards the Small Solar in search of his friend.

Dismissed, Abi.

The Equal was right: she was busy. Her to-do list was long and there was one thing on it she was desperate to get to. But first, she had to find yet another girl who could be spared from general duties. This one was needed to assist Lady Thalia’s maid in going through her mistress’s wardrobe and several trunks of Euterpe Parva’s old clothes.

That was because in a few weeks’ time, Kyneston’s sleeper would awake. And when she did, she apparently had a wedding to attend.

Which was a medical impossibility, surely. People didn’t come out of comas on a schedule.

‘Medical possibility doesn’t come into it,’ Mum had replied. ‘The Young Master is going to do it. And Lady Parva is in extraordinarily good shape. No loss of muscle tone that I can detect. Lady Thalia sits with her every day, and apparently uses her Skill to keep her sister strong. From a mechanical point of view, there’s nothing to stop Lady Euterpe getting up from that bed and going on a five-mile walk.’

Abi understood what Mum wasn’t saying. Silyen Jardine might be able to restore his aunt to consciousness, but would she be in any state to function mentally? People didn’t come out of twenty-five-year-long comas and just pick up where they left off.

The first-year med student that Abi would have been by now desperately wanted to see Euterpe Parva tear up the textbooks on what was possible. Curiosity about how Skill worked, physiologically, was one of the reasons she’d dreamed of doing her days in a place like this. But until she saw it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t believe it.

She had no trouble finding a volunteer to spend the day mooning over ballgowns. Another job ticked off. But still there were more, standing between her and the crate in the library.

Lord Matravers was insisting on sampling all the dishes selected for the wedding banquet, so Abi negotiated a date with Cook. Housekeeping was in overdrive readying for the hundreds of guests attending the three-day debate-ball-wedding extravaganza. Delivery vans would be coming and going non-stop for the next few weeks.

In the servants’ undercroft, Abi was startled to run into Luke heading out.

‘I’m being roped in for the festivities,’ he explained. ‘Everyone is, each year, apparently. Even Albert, that’s how desperate they are. I’ll be carrying bags and serving drinks, so someone needed to measure me for a uniform. Listen, it’s going to be absolutely crazy. A good opportunity for . . . you know.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, quellingly. The effect of her best big-sister glare was only slightly undermined by the fact that she now had to look up at Luke. ‘We’ll talk at home tonight.’