The Glittering Court (The Glittering Court #1) - Richelle Mead Page 0,3
went on with my life as though nothing at that party had ever happened.
When a letter came from Lady Dorothy one day, I finally had to acknowledge his existence again. She wanted to confirm a date for the wedding, which was to be expected. What wasn’t expected was her directive to cut our household staff in half and get rid of the majority of our possessions. You won’t need them when you get to Northshire, she wrote. The staff and items you need will be provided, under my close supervision.
“Oh, sweet Uros,” I said when I’d finished reading.
“Don’t take the god’s name in vain,” Grandmama snapped. Despite her sharp words, I could see the strain on her. Living under someone else’s thumb wasn’t going to be easy for her either. “Oh. And Lionel sent you a present.”
The “present” was a container of a proprietary barley cereal blend he ate each morning, with a note saying it would give me a taste of what was to come. I wanted to believe he’d intended the pun, but I sincerely doubted it.
Grandmama began fretting about how to split up the household as I walked out of the room. And I kept walking. I walked out of the town house, out through the front courtyard. I walked right out through the gate that sheltered our property from the main thoroughfare, earning a puzzled look from the servant who was manning it.
“My lady? Is there something I can help you with?”
I waved him back when he started to rise. “No,” I said. He glanced around, uncertain what to do. He’d never seen me leave our property alone. No one ever had. It wasn’t done.
His confusion kept him where he was, and I soon found myself swallowed up in the foot traffic moving about the street. It wasn’t the gentry, of course. Servants, merchants, couriers . . . all the people whose labor helped the city’s rich survive. I fell in step with them, unsure of where I was going.
Some crazy part of me thought maybe I should go make an appeal to Donald Crosby. He’d seemed to like me well enough in our minutes-long conversation. Or maybe I could seek passage somewhere. Go off to the continent and charm some Belsian noble. Or maybe I could just lose myself in the crowd, one more anonymous face to blend into the city’s masses.
“Can I help you, my lady? Did you get separated from your servants?”
Apparently not so anonymous.
I’d ended up on the edge of one of the city’s many commercial districts. The speaker was an older man who carried parcels on his back that looked far too heavy for his slight frame.
“How do you know I’m a lady?” I blurted out.
He grinned, showing a few missing teeth. “Ain’t too many out alone dressed like you.”
I glanced around and saw he was right. The violet jacquard dress I wore was a casual one for me, but it made me stand out in the sea of otherwise drab attire. There were a few others of higher classes out shopping, but they were surrounded by dutiful servants ready to shield them from any unsavory elements.
“I’m fine,” I said, pushing past him. But I didn’t get very far before someone else stopped me: a ruddy-faced young boy, the kind who made his living delivering messages.
“Need me to escort you home, m’lady?” he asked. “Three coppers, and I’ll get you out of all this.”
“No, I . . .” I let my words drop as something occurred to me. “I don’t have any money. Not on me.” He started to leave, and I called, “Wait. Here.” I pulled off my pearl bracelet and offered it to him. “Can you take me to the Church of Glorious Vaiel?”
His eyes widened at the sight of the pearls, but he hesitated. “That’s too much, m’lady. The church is only over on Cunningham Street.”
I pushed the bracelet into his hand. “I have no idea where that is. Take me.”
It turned out to be only about three blocks away. I knew all the major areas of Osfro but little about how to travel between them. There’d never been any need to know.
There were no services today, but the main doors were propped slightly open, welcoming any souls in need of counsel. I walked past the elegant church, out to the graveyard. I moved through the common section, through the nicer section, and finally to the noble section. It had a wrought-iron gate surrounding it and was filled