Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1)(95)

‘Jackie, Steve, you and Abi will need to pack your bags quickly. You’re being sent to Millmoor this afternoon.’

‘Millmoor?’ Dad looked baffled.

But Mum had caught the word that Jenner hadn’t said.

‘Daisy too, you mean.’

Jenner looked up at the ceiling, as if the words he needed might be written along the wooden beams. They weren’t, of course.

‘Daisy stays here. At Kyneston.’

Abi’s head snapped up. She hadn’t seen that one coming.

Mum roared furiously and launched herself at Jenner, battering him with her fists. Abi didn’t move to help him, nor did Dad try to pull Mum away. Jenner ducked and dodged the worst of her blows, then caught both her hands in his, waiting until she’d fought herself to a standstill.

‘You’re taking my children,’ Mum sobbed, wiping her snotty nose on her dressing gown sleeve. ‘You’re not human. You’re monsters.’

‘It’s not permitted,’ Abi said to Jenner, more to have the matter over and done with, than in any expectation of a comforting reply. ‘The law says that children under the age of eighteen can only do days with their parents. Although I remember your mother forgetting that in Luke’s case, too.’

‘Abi, my father is the law. He can say whatever he likes. Gavar asked, and Father agreed. Daisy will move into one of the rooms in the servants’ wing, and Libby will have a nursery next door.’

Daisy sat mute and motionless at the table. She twisted round to look through the kitchen door, to where Libby was bashing plastic bricks on a rug in the living room. Her expression was unreadable. She loved the little girl dearly, Abi knew. But Daisy was still a child herself, not yet eleven.

Would Gavar become a substitute family for her – a strange combination of older sibling and parent? After the wedding, how would Bouda Matravers take to her husband’s unorthodox household?

Daisy said nothing.

‘We need regular contact,’ Abi rapped out. ‘Letters weekly. Telephone conversations whenever possible. None of this three-month waiting period; it has to happen immediately. You can ensure that.’

Jenner looked chastened. ‘I will.’

‘And I need to come up to the house now. There are things of mine in the office.’

‘Of course. I was going to suggest that.’

‘Mum, Dad, get the bags packed. I’ll be as quick as I can. I don’t want to miss a moment with you, little sis.’

Abi and Jenner were away from the Row, but not yet over the rise to Kyneston, when Jenner kissed her. For a brief, traitorous moment Abi let herself melt into him. Wondered, madly, what would happen if she begged him to beg his father to allow her to stay.

‘I did ask for you already, you know,’ he said, somehow intuiting her thoughts. He cupped her face and looked down at her with those warm brown eyes. They were filled with the same regret he’d had when he’d warned her not to be curious, on that very first day. ‘I didn’t want you to think that if Gavar could get permission for Daisy, that I hadn’t tried.’

‘I believe you,’ she said, and stretched on tiptoe to kiss him again. She wouldn’t make him say it. Wouldn’t spell out what they both knew – the fact of Jenner’s powerlessness. Gavar was the heir. His alliance with Lord Jardine was an uneasy, volatile one, but father and son needed each other. No one needed Jenner.

Not even me, Abi told herself fiercely. She wondered how many times she’d have to say it before she believed it. And how many more times after that before it became the truth.

The things she was after were in several spots around the office, not just her own desk. So she encouraged Jenner to look through the workbooks and databases she’d set up, to make sure he understood them. While he was occupied, she moved around opening drawers, unlocking cabinets, occasionally announcing what was where, for Jenner’s benefit.

She asked him not to walk her back to the cottage, and they said their goodbyes there in the Family Office. Jenner wound his fingers in her long hair as if he never wanted to untangle them again, and she pressed her face to his chest and breathed him in.

‘I want this,’ she announced, tugging at his scarf when they separated. He knotted it round her neck, kissed her cheek, and watched her go.

The Hadleys’ final hours together were subdued. They didn’t discuss Luke. His absence was too awful to speak of just yet. Mum and Dad held Daisy desperately, trying to remember every inch of her. By the time they saw her again, their baby would be a grown woman of twenty.

‘It’s not uncommon for kids Daisy’s age to be away from their parents,’ Abi tried to console their dad. ‘It’ll be like she’s at the world’s most exclusive boarding school.’

‘Only with no one checking my homework,’ Daisy chipped in. ‘And I’m the one doing the teaching.’

Dad laughed, then halfway through the laughter turned into excruciating weeping. For the millionth time Abi cursed herself for talking them into applying to Kyneston. If it weren’t for her, they would all have been in Millmoor: underfed, poorly housed, bored out of their minds – and together.

Jenner came back just after lunch and led the four of them to the wall, where the Young Master was waiting on his black horse. The gate shimmered into existence. Abi hated that its appearance was every bit as miraculous as it had been the first time. There was a car visible on the other side, another silver-grey Labour Allocation Bureau vehicle.