“No one is going to fuck me tonight based on how I look. I’m a childless heir. I could go in a burlap sack and still get mobbed.”
“Then get out of bed and put on your damn sack.”
Lila didn’t budge.
“Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph,” Alex crowed, her hands on her hips. “You will get out of bed this instant.”
“I might be tempted out of bed if you brought me something to eat,” Lila said, her stomach choosing that moment to growl. “Did you bring me something to eat?”
“No.”
“Well, then go away until you do.”
“Oracle’s wrath! This is like rooming together at Bokington all over again. Who knew that four years as your college roommate would prepare me for my future life as a housemaid?”
Lila grunted in reply.
“Chef put aside a plate for you at lunch. I can bring it up while you’re in the bath. Soak for a little while. Perhaps it will wash away your mood and all the red in your eyes. Go,” Alex said, flipping through the rack full of crimson dresses and coats.
Lila trundled off into the bathroom. Pinning her hair, she sank into in the water, moaning as her muscles unclenched in the tub. She let her arms fall into the water and stared at the soap on the lip of the tub.
It was much too far away to bother.
Everything was too far away to bother.
Her bedroom door opened and closed several times.
Still she did not bother.
“Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph, you get out of that tub this instant!” Alex shouted, smacking on the door much too soon. “You’ve been in there for twenty minutes!”
“All right, all right,” Lila answered. She washed quickly and hopped out, grabbing a robe on her way back into her room.
Alex pointed at the plate on her desk.
Lila forked a few bites of chicken salad, surreptitiously making sure that all her Liberté data had been hidden away in her secret compartments between Alex’s suggestions. Then she stepped forward to inspect the crimson coats and dresses, all stitched with the family coat of arms in white thread. Such garments had less to do with fashion and more to do with status, though no one had ever told the designers. “There won’t be a single surprised eyebrow among the entire bunch when I show up in one of these.”
“You suspect that they’ve been warned that you’re attending?”
“Not all of them, just enough. Senator Dubois’s political career might be finished after he marries Jewel, but it would still look bad for him not to warn his brethren against committing too early for the season. He would either be labeled a fool for not knowing or selfish for withholding it. Too many would be slighted. You know how it is.”
“He won’t be a senator much longer.”
“Old habits die hard. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few know that I’ll be prime,” Lila said, wondering about her own habits: hacking, snooping, and breaking into places she did not belong.
How would she manage those in a whitecoat?
The answer was simple.
She couldn’t. It wasn’t punishment from the gods. It was merely time to put away childish pastimes.
That would be her life, as soon as she wrapped up her father’s case with the Baron.
“Senator Dubois will never have children,” Lila said. “The only thing he has, will ever have, perhaps, is his reputation. He wouldn’t want to ruin it.”
“Your mother will make good use of him.”
“So will I. He’s far too good a politician to waste, and his connections in the senate cannot be ignored. It’s too damn bad he never made it into the Saxony High House, but many of his cousins and friends are well placed. He even has a few in Unity. Jewel made a useful match.”