“I was at Bluestone?”
“Yes, Miss Olivia.”
I make a face, slack, confused, baffled, stunned—all of it meshed into one ugly look.
Then I huff a breath and scribble Oliver’s name on the card before sticking it to the final wrapped box.
But my curiosity isn’t satiated. “Was it arranged—your marriage?”
Abigail startles.
Her gaze swerves at me, a deer in the headlights, before she clears her throat. “No, Miss Olivia.”
I push aside the parcel. “Lucky you.”
There is no answer to come.
Abigail starts to stack the wrapped gifts into piles to be carried out.
As she draws in all the scraps of wrapping paper and ribbons, I watch her—and realise I didn’t know her at all.
Children and a marriage.
How much she has concealed from me.
I hide just one small thing from my parents, like a visit to the library for a book on deadbloods, and all hell breaks loose in my life. I walk on eggshells, aminefield, and here Abigail is, a servant, but one who might just have autonomy, a freedom I don’t know anything about.
How different our lives must be.
More than I ever gave much thought to.
Is it because we are from different classes that she has more freedom than I do… or is it because her parents actually love her?
Silent, Abigail carries out the gifts, as many as she can manage at a time, until they are all piled out in the corridor, and the soft click of the door tells me she’s gone.
I look at the mantel clock.
I missed dinner.
Supper is soon, but I hardly feel up to it. Sitting at that oval table, facing Oliver, Mother more than an arm’s reach to myright, Father far to my left—surrounded by the orchestrators of my poor fate.
I am more than Abigail.
Not as a person, but in the world.
I am aristos, I am elite.
I am a fucking Craven.
Yet she gets to marry for love, she gets to choose.
I don’t need to wonder. Her parents do love her.
It’s an absolute truth.
One that fills me with bitterness—and then I think of Nonna.
If anyone in the family loves me, it’s her.
