Glass Town Wars by Celia Rees

Author:Celia Rees [Celia Rees]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782691648
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2018-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

AUGUSTA WAS STILL in her petticoats, still debating what to do. The clock was chiming the hour. The soldiers might have been banished to the corridor but Zenobia’s ladies were still there, her secondary jailers. She’d tried to persuade them to leave her, that their own mistress would be needing them and she had Annie, but they had no intention of going anywhere. She could hear them chattering through the door, ordering Annie to bring them this and that. They’d even banished Keeper. He made them nervous, so he’d been removed to the servants’ hall.

“He’ll be all right down there—the kitchen boys are making a fuss of him,” Annie had told her. “Giving him bones. He’s quite happy.”

How simple life was for dogs.

“I haven’t had a minute,” Annie said as she came in, carrying the dress that had been delivered for Augusta.

She laid it on the bed, smoothing out the pale lilac organza. The high bodice was sewn with seed pearls, the hem embellished with roses. Lilac didn’t suit her, draining the colour from her face. Besides, it was a colour she loathed. Zenobia would have chosen it especially. It was perfectly hideous. Not something she’d wear at all. A stand on the dressing table held the diamond tiara, too like a crown, the necklace of sickly yellow topaz that clashed with the dress and earrings of the kind Zenobia favoured, long and dangling.

Augusta frowned and bit her lip. She couldn’t see herself in any of this. A petty war within the greater. Who knows what is happening outside? Confined within these walls, she’d had no news.

“That shade won’t do owt for you.” Annie looked down critically. “Tack every bit o’ colour.”

“Where’s Tom?” Augusta asked quietly. Zenobia’s ladies’ hearing was acute.

“Don’t know, milady,” Annie whispered back. “Ent seen ’em.”

“Go and find out, would you?”

“What about this?” Annie picked up the dress. “And yer hair, and that? Do you want Lady Zenobia’s ladies to do it?”

“God forbid! It’s not as if I’ve never dressed myself, is it?” Augusta despised the helplessness of court ladies, their dependence on others to do every little thing for them. “You can do my hair when you get back.”

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