He was likely a clerk of some sort, but he could help her gain the manager’s ear.
Assuming he still wanted to help her after whatever had passed between them last night.
As she knelt at Tiffany’s feet to help her into the heeled slippers, she heard Machara calling for her from down the corridor. She’d have to go help her stepmother get dressed, she assumed, but then she planned on heading to Papa’s workshop for an hour or two to start engraving the heels she’d turned yesterday.
Designs were already flitting through her head, and she was excited to try to capture them. Surely tea with Viscount Blah-blah-blah would distract her stepmother long enough that Ember could enjoy herself for a bit.
Bonnie had stood and was finishing her dressing as well—luckily able to handle it on her own. “I just think, Tiffany, you do not understand what it truly means to be happy. Say you marry Lysander. You have already said you do not want to call him Blah-blah-blah in bed. But from the way you speak, it is histitleyou would be marrying. You are not thinking of him as a man, or even as a person.”
This normally quiet sister of theirs was becoming agitated. Her fists were planted on her hips, and her cheeks were flushed. “IfImarry, I am not going to yell, ‘Aye, milord!’ in bed. I want to call him—oh, I do not know,Lionel,or Robert, or?—”
Tiffany gasped, spinning around to face her sister so quickly, she almost knocked Ember over. “Bonnibelle Oliphant, theheir’sname is Leonidas! Is that who you have been secretly dreaming about marrying?” When her sister began shaking her head, Tiffany pressed her. “Lionelis very close toLeonidas, and neither are particularly common!”
Flustered, Bonnie held her hands out in front of her, palms out. “I did not mean it like that. It was just a name I pulled from?—”
“From your imagination? Or from yourdaydreams?”
Bonnie shook her head so wildly, her coiffure was in danger. “No! No, I just—it was just a name!”
From down the hall, Machara called again. “Ember, you lazy girl, get in here!”
Her sisters didn’t seem to notice, but Ember sighed and accepted she’d better go help her stepmother or deal with her fury. “I’ll just be going then,” she murmured. She was ignored, as she’d expected.
“You expect me to believe, of all the names you could have pulled out of thin air to yell in bed,Lionelwas an accident?”
“Lionel is a very common name,” Bonnie defended.
“Leonidas is not!”
And this time, Machara’s call was a screech. “Ember!”
And so Ember slipped out of the room, leaving Tiffany haranguing poor Bonnie, and went to tend to her stepmother. Hopefully, once Lysander arrived for tea, the three of them would be so occupied fawning over him, Ember would have a little peace and quiet.
