She nodded an acknowledgement to them then looked around the chamber. Thankfully Lord Rix, who was Daddy’s best friend and her and DiDi’s godfather, was waiting over by the Matravers seats. He could keep Daddy entertained with his usual convoluted anecdotes about racehorses. She waved at Rixy and gave her papa a kiss on the cheek, a whispered ‘Be with you in a minute’, and a gentle shove in the right direction.
Then she hurried to hear what Whittam and Gavar had to tell her.
It was nothing she could ever have expected.
‘You can’t be serious?’ she hissed.
‘Silyen informed me of it only last night,’ said her future father-in-law. While he spoke, Gavar was watching the chamber to see if they were noticed, but only Rix was looking their way, concern plain in his face. ‘While buttering a bread roll at dinner, as casual as you like. I assure you, it was as much of a surprise to me as it appears to be to you.’
‘Appears to be?’ Bouda didn’t care for the insinuation in those words. But she couldn’t make sense of what Lord Jardine had just told her. ‘Silyen has bargained with the Chancellor, using Euterpe Parva – and he’s asked Zelston to Propose abolition? We’ll be a laughing stock if this gets out. How could you let it happen?’
‘I let it happen?’ Whittam’s eyes were flat and assessing. ‘You are quite certain your sister has nothing to do with this?’
‘My sister?’
And there, thought Bouda, was the one aspect of her life she couldn’t control: her daft, darling sister, Bodina. Dina was a fashionista, a party girl, and prone to handing wads of Daddy’s cash to ridiculous causes such as animal rescue, international poverty relief – and abolition.
It said much for Bodina’s naivety that the money she was so happy to spend was derived entirely from slavery. The Matravers fortune was maintained by Daddy’s BB brand, named for his daughters. It churned out electrical goods by the million for export to the Far East. It was said that half the homes in China were equipped with BB hairdryers, foot spas, rice cookers and kettles. It was BB’s use of slave labour – the corporation had factories in several slavetowns – that kept prices competitive.
It was a source of fond exasperation for Bouda that despite her sister’s scruples about slavery, Bodina was perfectly willing to live off its proceeds. With her love of travel and couture, DiDi burned through cash.
‘Why on earth would Silyen do something at Dina’s behest? They barely know each other.’
Whittam’s face twisted; he had no answer for that. So this was pure speculation. Relief flooded through Bouda. Her arrangement with the Jardines wouldn’t be ending today, over this.
‘Your sister is attractive.’ The lord of Kyneston shrugged. ‘She has a certain nubile charm that might turn a boy’s head.’
‘If you think that would have any effect on him, my Lord, then you plainly don’t know your youngest son at all.’
At his father’s side, Gavar gave a vulgar snort. Bouda and her husband-to-be might have little in common, but one thing they could agree on was their dislike of Silyen.
‘No,’ she pressed, indignation rising at her future father-in-law’s blatant attempt to shift the blame for Silyen’s outrageous act from his family to hers. ‘All Bodina thinks about right now is her heartbreak, and the next party to help her get over it. You need to look closer to home for an explanation. It was only a matter of time: Jenner, a Skilless abomination; Gavar, father to a slave-born brat; and now Silyen, an abolitionist. Congratulations, your sons are quite the set.’
And she really shouldn’t have said that. Coolness and control at all times, Bouda.
An angry flush bloomed above the salamander-printed neckerchief at Lord Whittam’s throat, and crept up his face. Gavar’s fists had clenched. These Jardine men and their touchpaper tempers.
‘I apologize unreservedly,’ she said, ducking her head and baring her neck submissively. ‘Forgive me.’
She gave it a few moments for her sincerity to sink in, then looked up and met Whittam’s eyes. Beside him, Gavar looked fit to throttle her, but to her great relief his father’s face was composed.
‘You apologize like a true politician, Bouda,’ he said, after a pause in which Bouda was quite sure she did not breathe at all. ‘Promptly and prettily. One day, you may find that’s not enough, but for now it will suffice. We will discuss this later, once we are sure that my youngest son’s words were not some jest in remarkably poor taste. Come, Gavar.’
He turned and Gavar trailed after him to Kyneston’s twinned seat in the centre of the first tier. It was directly opposite the carved majesty of the Chancellor’s Chair. The old joke ran that this gave the Jardines the shortest possible distance to walk to their preferred seat in the House.
Lord Whittam intended for Gavar to sit there one day. Bouda knew that her wealth made her an acceptable bride. But in their arrogance, it hadn’t occurred to the Jardines to wonder why Bouda herself might seek such a match.
She took a calming breath and made her way to the Appledurham estate seat at the centre of the second tier, right behind the Jardines. Its prominent position had been secured through hard work, not heritage. None of Bouda’s ancestors had been present the day the House of Light rose shimmering from the ashes of the royal Palace of Westminster.
No, Bouda’s family fortunes were of more recent date. A couple of centuries ago Harding Matravers, heir of an impecunious and obscure line, had decided to put his derided Skill for weatherwork to good use. He scandalized the genteel Equal society of the day by taking to the seas as captain of a cargo ship, only to sail back from the Indies an obscenely wealthy man. No one had raised a murmur when he did it again the very next season.