Page 2 of Prince of Masks (Hearts of Bluestone #2)

My mouth turns down at the corners.

I don’t look forward to being covered in that smell, though it is better than the smell of shit, so… get over it, Olivia.

Dolios hands over three narrow phials to Father, who takes another beat to eye them over before offering them to me.

The witchdoctor gives instructions, “Drink one phial each morning, one hour before breakfast, not with, not after.”

I nod, glass jars and phials clanking in my cupped palms.

With that, Father juts his chin, a dismissal. A frosty one—and so, this melancholy of mine, this state I am in, doesn’t thaw him.

He’s still very much pissed off with me.

My smile is a grimace, the corners of my mouth tucked into my bulging cheeks, as I scoot off the armchair.

Mother makes a face at the leather I was slumped in for so long. Her hand finds her nose, pinches, and she slides a step back.

Mother is probably planning on having the chair burnt to a crisp the moment I’m out of the office.

The whole time in this cerulean office, I didn’t speak a word. I wasn’t asked a single question.

Now, I do speak, and my voice is a croak, “Thank you.”

Mother’s smile is instant. Small, slight, and she shifts her dainty hand from her nose, as though to reach out and touch me, soothe me.

But reality strikes her.

Her mouth slants before she takes another step back, and retreats with her hand finding her nose again.

A faint sigh unribbons from me, sags my shoulders, and I leave the office, my sock-clad feet padding on the floors. My boots were kicked off in the driveway.

I depart the Blue Wing for the Green Wing.

My bedchamber is sage green, soft and country all throughout, from the bedroom and the bathroom to the study, the kitchenette and the walk-in-robe. It’s nice, but all that really matches sage is cream. So, that means, all my furniture is cream.

I dread the stains I’m about to track all over the room, and oh gods, the rugs . I don’t exactly plan on rolling through my room and making a mess, but the slightest tired stumble into the rear of a pale loveseat, or a brush up against the arm of a chair, it worms my gut with worry.

As I thud my way down the runner rug that softens the long, narrow corridor trimmed with gold, a solution starts to chug in my sluggish mind.

From the grates tucked low on the walls, beady eyes gleam at me, watching me closely. The imps, waiting for me to pass so that they can scrub up my tracks.

Sure, I kicked off my rubber boots on the gravel outside before I stepped foot in the foyer, but much of the manure is dried-out now, cracked and flaking, and it just takes some sprinklings of it to fall off my moving body and land on the rug.

The imps will be hard at work, following my path from Father’s office, the whole trek to my room.

Finally, I reach the cream lacquered door, the door to the only bedroom in this corridor.

Oliver is in the Green Wing with me, but two floors up. His room is massive . Extended over time into neighbouring rooms, because ‘ the heir must have his own office and library ’, Father once said when I dared complain.

Not to mention, part of Oliver’s wardrobe is a vault for his timepieces, and he has the better balcony on this side of Elcott.

I’m too tired, too drained, to even roll my eyes.

I face the door, but before I reach for the handle, I start on my solution to protect my chamber.

I strip.

Right here, in the corridor, imp-eyes all over me, I tug off the sweater, peel smeared socks from my clammy and cold feet, then writhe out of the damp sweatpants.

After a few fumbled moments and muttered curses, I stand in only my underwear just as a rattle comes from down the corridor.

Chin touching my shoulder, I frown at the servant hastening out of the dimmer shadows.

The soft lampshade lights bounce off of her coal-black breeches, flickering with each rushed step she takes towards me, and for a moment, it looks as though her uniform is made from embers. The deep red hue matches her crown-braided hair and the flush of her creased cheeks.

Mrs Younge.

Mr Younge’s counterpart. His wife and our family’s steward.

She’s not one to visit me or my room. This is beneath her. Below her duties.

I lower my frown to the tray in her blotchy grip.

I suppose there weren’t many women on staff in the middle of the day to help me, and no male servant is allowed in my chambers.

There might not be many female servants around at all right now, since it’s the school semester, and many of the servants take their holidays around this time, visiting family, caring for their children, whatever their lives are filled with outside of Elcott Abbey.

I wouldn’t know.

I never ask.

And I don’t ask anything now, I just keep my dull, dead stare on Mrs Younge.

The clattering sound grows louder as she nears. It comes from the tray in her grip, a spread of tureens and plates with cloche-lids and cutlery and mugs and a steaming teapot.

The rattling irks me.

But underneath, there’s a rapid thumping sound, growing louder and louder, until I lift my gaze over Mrs Younge’s stiff, slender shoulder—and see a familiar face, flustered.

Abigail, fastening her waistcoat, strands of auburn hair wild around her face, and she’s doing that sort of blend of a run and a walk, where she’s scuffing down the corridor so fast that she might as well just break out into a run.

Abigail is my lady’s maid, if one is feeling old-fashioned, like Grandmother Ethel always is. I prefer to call her my dresser, because I’m a little less formal.

Either way, Abigail should be a relief to my eyes.

But I have no smile for her. No acknowledgement. Only a slight, weary breath that begs for sleep.

Abigail is the one who will help me apply the balm.

And, if she didn’t know before seeing me in the corridor, brown streaks and scrapes all over my cheeks, chin, neck, hands, that she was to help me wash, then she figures it out now—one look at me, in this dusky light, and she knows I’ll need an extra set of hands to really scrub my back.

I feel better knowing I have her. Can’t stand the thought of a mere speck of manure on me before I climb into bed.

I imagine I won’t feel clean if I have less than an hour of a scalding, soapy shower.

I’m ready to get that over with, lest I pass out now in the corridor, in my underwear.

If either Mrs Younge or Abigail are offended—or even taken off guard—by my standing here in just underwear, shit-smeared clothes piled around my feet, they don’t show it.

Abigail spears around Mrs Younge for my door and fists her grip around the handle. She’s quick to push the door open and let me pass.

Mrs Younge follows behind me, then Abigail.

I don’t loiter.

I make straight for the grooved door across the lounge of my bedroom, and out the corner of my eye I see Mrs Younge setting down the tray to prepare my meal at the coffee table.

“I’ll eat in bed,” I grumble, and it’s a wonder she even understands the gravelly croak of my voice.

But she does, and she’s quick to sweep the tray back into her grip.

Abigail rushes to reach the bathroom door before me. Her laces are undone, I notice. A whirl of unfastened buttons and unkempt hair.

Must have been off-duty when she was summoned. Maybe not even on the grounds when it was first decided I would be returning to Elcott, and so she has rushed her way through veils from her hometown in Wales to get back in time for me.

Mute, I follow her to the shower encased with tiled and sheeted glass walls. Once in, I hand over the phials and the jar I’ve been cradling to my midsection.

I don’t watch her set down the phials or unscrew the lid of the jar or gather a loofa and soap. Turning my back on her, I peel off the last of my layers.

Plain white underwear falls to the tiles.

The water comes down like rainfall from the ceiling fixture, a column of warmth that’s maybe slightly too hot. Just how I like it.

I shut my eyes on the wall of mint-green tiles, letting the water rinse over my whole body.

Abigail takes a few moments to wrap herself in the raincoat that she fishes out from the cupboard, then swap her leather shoes for rubber slides.

By the time she’s ready and in the shower with me, kicking aside my underwear, most of the manure has been rinsed off.

I don’t wash myself.

I let her do all the work.

And it is soothing. The lathering along my shoulders, the fingers massaging my scalp, the rough scrub of a brush raking down my back, grating off a layer of my skin— I need this .

At Bluestone, I’m on my own. No help, no support, no one there for me. Here, at home, I have a team.

Maybe it’s that I really miss.

Here, I feel safe.

And, after a long while of this, the work of Abigail, I feel clean.

Relaxation has kneaded through my whole body to the point that my shoulders are sagged when the water turns off.

The faint click of a switch comes before a gradual mist starts to billow out of the vents around me.

Steam. Really opens the pores. And once the steam is thick around me, a threat to choke me, I feel the cool touch of menthol on my shoulders.

Abigail starts to rub in the balm.

I shut my eyes and, swaying on the spot, try not to fall asleep.

She buffs it over my flesh, like I am silver and it’s polishing day. No manure contaminated my feet, not through the boots and socks, but that doesn’t stop her. She oils them thoroughly with the balm; no manure got on my thighs, but she massages it in all the same.

It takes a while.

By the time she’s working the balm between my fingers, my forehead is pressed flat against the tiles, and it’s taking all my might to stay upright.

I drift off, even if only for a moment, because when Abigail wraps a cotton robe around me and mumbles something about imps retrieving my belongings from school, my lashes flutter as though stirred from a deep sleep.

I push my dead-weight arms through the sleeves, then—ignoring the slippers she set out for me—drag myself to the bedroom.

Mrs Younge is gone, back to her much higher duties than tending to my meal deliveries. But on the foot of the canopied bed, sits the tray, silver and gleaming.

I don’t know what’s in the tureen or under the cloche-lid. I don’t find out, either.

I snub the tray just as I snubbed my slippers and as I now snub Abigail hovering behind me.

I climb under the covers.

The bed is so large that my toes under the blankets don’t even graze the weight of the tray.

Abigail knows me. She’s been my dresser for years, since I was just fourteen. Without a word, without any direction from me, she shuffles across the room to the long windows and shuts the curtains. Then she builds the fire to battle the cold of England’s autumn air.

The fire in the hearth licks over a fresh log, the heat not yet strong enough to fill the suite. The feathery quilt, on the other hand, warms me just fine. I’m toasty by the time Abigail takes the untouched tray and leaves.

I sleep.

That’s all I do for the rest of the day and the night that follows—and then some more.

I just sleep.