Chapter 42

The next two weeks were the longest of my life, and I had once spent eight years in a cellar.

In the cellar, at least, I had known the shape of the days. Bread at five. Ledgers at eight. The tray at the top of the stairs at noon, and the iron ring, and the lamp, and the long quiet. Nothing in the cellar had ever pretended to be anything else.

Here, the days pretended. That was the hard part.

The house went on around me as if nothing had happened. The Seelies stayed; the signing was postponed a few days, and then a little longer, and then nobody mentioned it at all, and Isadora took to walking on the terrace in the mornings with her secretary and looking at the hills as though she had all summer. Lucien went riding and came back and went riding again, with two of Caspian’s wolves at his elbow wherever he went, and Saskia at his other elbow glaring at them. Nana Odette cooked. Finn came home from school for the summer and filled the house with noise.