Except something had gone wrong with that pithy maxim, if what the woman was saying was to be believed.
Gavar had listened carefully enough for the first few minutes. Word of Zelston’s asinine Proposal had somehow not only leaked, despite the Silence, but had reached at least one of the slavetowns. The inhabitants of Millmoor were kicking up a fuss and demanding that parliament vote in favour of the Proposal.
It was all too ridiculous for words. What on earth did they think they’d achieve? Nothing, except years on their days. And for the ringleaders, perhaps slavelife and a generous re-education at the hands of Lord Crovan. Anyone insane enough to risk that was probably a danger to society by default.
Crovan was an honorary member of the Justice Council, but thankfully never attended. He rarely left his Scottish castle, Eilean Dòchais, which stood on a small island in a large loch. There he lived alone, apart from a few house-slaves – and the Condemned, the very worst of those sentenced to slavelife.
Whatever Crovan did to the Condemned (no one ever asked) kept him pretty busy. He only turned up at Westminster once a year for the opening of parliament, which was once too often in the opinion of his Equals. Even the House of Light seemed darker when he sat in it. And of course, the man always attended the Third Debate at Kyneston.
When Gavar became Chancellor he would necessarily have dealings with Crovan, he thought unhappily, tuning out the droning narrative of the Millmoor Overseer. The sentence of Condemnation was always uttered by the Chancellor, before the prisoner was delivered straight to his new master.
Gavar wasn’t sure when the practice of turning the Condemned over to Crovan had first begun. Had Father started it? But the man was present at every sentencing, eager to claim his new property. It was all faintly distasteful and one more reason for questioning whether the top job was all it was cracked up to be, despite Father’s insistence that the Chancellorship was a Jardine family birthright.
The whole point about birthrights, Gavar thought resentfully, and not for the first time, was that they came to you automatically. You didn’t have to do anything, except be who you were. To hear Father talk, the Chancellorship was just as much a Jardine prerogative as a place at Oxford’s Domus College. So if it was coming to him anyway, why did Gavar have to serve this tedious political apprenticeship? Did he really have to attend endless councils, committees and legislative debates?
His eyes roamed listlessly around the table. All the usual suspects. His future father-in-law, Lytchett Matravers, had his eyes closed in what he doubtless hoped was an expression of intense concentration, but was almost certainly trapped wind due to a rushed breakfast. Next to him was Lytchett’s chum Lord Rix, who appeared every bit as bored as Gavar felt. He noticed Gavar looking and sent him a comradely roll of the eyes.
Rix was all right, but sat on his other side was Gavar’s bitch-queen fiancée. She was scribbling down notes as if any of this actually mattered. Bouda had placed herself next to Zelston, at the top of the table. If Father was mistaken, and securing the Chancellorship required a modicum of effort even for the Jardine heir, Gavar felt sure his future wife could take care of greasing the wheels.
After all, there had to be some benefit to marrying a harpy like Bouda. As Father had reminded her that day Zelston dropped his little Proposal bombshell, it wasn’t like they really needed the Matravers millions. And Gavar wasn’t currently getting any other benefits either. Bouda had tried to slap him when he had made a perfectly reasonable suggestion following the First Debate dinner. It was so much easier with commoner girls, when you never had to bother asking.
Not unless you actually cared about them.
Gavar clenched his fists beneath the table. He wasn’t going to think about Leah. It only made him furious – and that was what had caused the whole horrendous mess in the first place.
He breathed deeply, feeling his chest strain against his crisp white shirt. Then relaxed again, rolling his shoulders.
It was easier here in London. His anger was always much worse at Kyneston. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was the burden of expectation of it all. There was the house he’d inherit; the portraits of dead ancestors who he would have to live up to. And for what? So he could watch his own heir trudge the same path he had, and in time pass on the estate to them, just as Father would to him, as Grandfather Garwode had to Whittam.
It was all spectacularly pointless.
‘And what can you tell us about the perpetrators?’ he heard a voice say.