Stranger At The Wedding by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online Page B

immediately… Algeron!” he bellowed, turning, and, framed in the amber lamplight at the end of the passage, Kyra saw the young man who had been on the kitchen steps with Alix. His white shirt, daubed here and there with triple-refined flour and stains of vanilla and milk, was unmistakable, as was his fair, shoulder-length hair. Seen clearly now, he had the appearance of a youthful angel, the more so because his gentle, dreamy face completely lacked awareness of its own beauty. He nodded obediently to the cook's blustered commands, now and then making a suggestion, such as that the garlands of blossoms that had been in preparation all evening in the drying room ought to be moved down to the ice cellar as well.
    “Good heavens, who's to do all this?” Gordam demanded furiously. “Bill, Lerp, and Paskus are going to be out all night taking messages to everyone we've invited… Sam and Trobe, too, once they've done getting his lordship's horses put to—”
    “I'm sure Neb Wishrom will send over Heckson and Fairbody,” his wife said, always practical, naming, Kyra presumed, two of their neighbor's footmen, and Master Peldyrin threw up his hands in annoyance at all these small machinations. The gesture affected Kyra curiously, for she knew it from her tiniest childhood—knew, too, that it was her father's way of surrendering to her mother's judgment without admitting that she was better able to cope with domestic matters than he.
    Beyond him, in the lighted body of the hallway, Kyra could see the little knot of departing guests: Esmin Earthwygg pouting under her mother's irritated glare, Master Spenson helping his father into his cloak and making awkward small talk with Alix. Alix was nodding and rattling on in her usual magpie fashion, but Kyra could see her eyes follow Algeron's straight shoulders as he crossed to the kitchen quarters.
    “You could at least have tried to catch him alone!” Lady Earthwygg snapped in an undervoice to her daughter as Briory conducted them to the outer door. “Good heavens, girl, I spent fifty crowns on that potion.” There was a stir of farewells, and Kyra, seeing her chance, slipped through to the kitchen and heard no more of what went on.
    Surrounded by Who-Me? spells, she crossed the corner of the kitchen between the door and the narrow entrance to the back stairs. The three chambermaids—blond, brunet, and redhead—who'd been sitting at the big table helping the musicians finish off dinner leftovers were too busy clamoring with protest at Algeron's news to notice Kyra. “All those tartlets and roulades to the ice cellar? It'll take us all night!”
    “You mean the wedding's been put off?” asked the laundry maid, a thin, colorless woman with her arms full of folded shifts and petticoats—undoubtedly, Kyra thought as she ghosted around the door and into the steep well of the back stairs, the elaborately lace-trimmed garments suited to Alix's crimson wedding gown.
    Quietly, she ascended the stair.
    The second floor was deserted, shrouded in shadow now that the footmen had cleared the supper dishes and the maids had laid tomorrow's fires in the drawing-room hearth and the porcelain stoves in the library, study, and breakfast room. On her way into the dining room Kyra looked through the breakfast-room doorway to see the elaborate tub of enamel and gold, with its canopy frame taken down and its prescribed pennons rolled neatly into corners, in which Alix would take her ritual bath before being gowned for her wedding. The air—warmer in these smaller upstairs room—was sweet with cinnamon and lilies, as the Texts ruled it must be. Cinnamon for this world and lilies for the next, Kyra remembered from her distant religious training, and shook her head again over the mysteries of people, like Tellie Wishrom, who wanted to be married in the strict form. Reaching the third floor again, she made her way along the ill-lit gallery to the yellow guest room, which was tucked like a poor