Today Elaine White learned, for the first time in his life, that he too was capable of receiving a letter of annulment.
An old, done-to-death plot device. Elaine had genuinely never imagined it would happen to him.
Grey daylight came in through the old window glass and left his face looking washed out.
Clean, fine brows and eyes, a straight nose, lips a shade too pale; when he went quiet there was a cold, clean sort of beauty about him. He was simply too thin. The black coat sat heavy on his shoulders and only made the line of them look frail, and the wrists showing at his cuffs were narrow past the point of comfort.
The parchment laid out in front of Elaine was brand new, its edges tooled with gold, the Roland family's silver rose stamped into the lower right corner. Someone had even misted the envelope with perfume.
A letter of annulment done up that carefully, set against the ruin of the house Elaine was sitting in, made for a very sharp contrast indeed.
Elaine sat at the other end of the long table with his fingertips resting on the rim of his cup.
The cup was silver. It had been, at least. Now there was a dark stain on the side that would not scrub out, and a small chip missing from the lip. Back when the old butler was still here, he always turned the chip away from the guests. The old butler had been gone half a year. Elaine hadn't been paying attention when he poured the water this morning, and so the chip was now aimed squarely at the Roland family's Maid Officer.
She had certainly seen it. And she was certainly pretending she hadn't.
That was the last scrap of dignity the other side was leaving him.
Dignity handed over like pity was the part that stung.
"Young Master Elaine. This is my lady's wish."
The Maid Officer pushed the letter across to him. Her voice was soft, and her manners were so complete there was nothing in them to fault.
Elaine looked up at her.
She wore a clean dark blue uniform. Not a crease in her white gloves. The silver rose buttons at her cuffs were bright enough to sting the eye even under an overcast sky. Her carriage stood just outside the door; its wheels had rolled through the standing water in front of the White house on the way in, and the mud they had thrown up hadn't dried yet.
Elaine's own black coat had been altered last winter.
The cuffs had frayed into fuzz, and the button on the right one wasn't quite the right colour. He had sewn that button on in a hurry this morning and hidden the stitching badly. He had assumed the width of the table would cover for him.
Now he was fairly sure the Maid Officer could tell which way the loose thread was sticking up.
"She isn't coming herself?"
Only once the words were out did Elaine notice how much hoarser his voice was than he had expected.
The Maid Officer inclined her head.
"My lady is preparing for the charity banquet in the capital. Her schedule does not permit it."
The charity banquet. Elaine nearly laughed.
The Roland girl was busy handing bread to the poor in a warm, well-lit hall and collecting compliments on her mercy from the rest of the nobility. Meanwhile the Maid Officer she had sent was sitting in the draughty White receiving room, dissolving her engagement to a ruined young master on her behalf.
Elaine picked the document up. It was fine, really. House White had already fallen — thoroughly, inside and out — and the whole family had come down to Elaine alone.
As for what the letter said: in view of the changes in both families' circumstances in recent years, the social foundation upon which the old covenant rested no longer existed; and so, to avoid further misunderstanding and burden in the future, House Roland was willing to dissolve the engagement in a dignified manner.
Elaine looked at "in a dignified manner" for a while. Beautifully written Lorenian.
Though compared with what it actually said, most of his attention was on the gilt ornament running along the letter's edges and corners. What he was working out, at that moment, was how to scrape the gold leaf off it without losing his dignity.
While Elaine was busy pretending to read closely, the Maid Officer drew another sheet from her folder and set it down beside the letter.
"This is the register of the gifts House Roland presented to House White at the time of the betrothal. My lady's wish is that the ordinary gifts need not be recovered. Only the engagement ring, the silver kite brooch and the three family ceremonial pieces are to be returned, as the old covenant provides."
Elaine's fingers went still.
The engagement ring. The silver kite brooch.
The three family ceremonial pieces.
With every item she read out, the air in the receiving room seemed to drop another degree.
The ring had gone to a pawnbroker three months ago. The silver kite brooch had gone last month to the Sealed Object Tribunal, against arrears on the stabilisation fees for the underground collection.
As for the three ceremonial pieces, which used to sit in the display cabinet on the second floor: one had been sold to an auction house, one was still in a creditor's hands, and the last one was the truly awkward case. A few days ago its silverwork had been stripped off and swapped for brass. At a distance it passed. Up close it looked like the commonest sort of counterfeit dignity in noble society.
Elaine had a sudden urge to turn the chipped silver cup upside down on the table. He genuinely did not know what his elders had done. A house that size, an estate that size, and it had come down all at once, and then the members of House White had begun meeting inexplicable accidents, one after another, until they were all dead.
Elaine suspected, of course, that what had happened to his relatives had in all likelihood been planned. But the wreckage House White had left him no longer allowed him the energy to look into it.
"The ring isn't with me at the moment."
Start with something realistic, Elaine thought, and said it. Across the table she wrote it down on the sheet of parchment she used as a notebook.
The scratch of the nib across the paper was very quiet. To Elaine it felt as though it had gone across his face instead.
The two attendants standing behind the Maid Officer said nothing. One of them let his gaze travel over Elaine's cuffs, then across to the empty display cabinet against the wall.
That cabinet used to be full of House White's low-risk Sealed Objects.
A bronze chess piece that moved itself three squares at midnight, for instance. A small mirror that would only show you your own back.
A silver box that let out a stranger's weeping when it was opened. A crystal wine glass that had you telling the truth for as long as you held it.
All gone now. All that was left inside was a film of dust that wouldn't wipe clean.
House White had once been a famous collecting family — Sealed Objects, Relics, Sacred Objects — which was also exactly why Elaine had gone bankrupt so quickly.
Never mind. He would stop thinking about the depressing things for now.
He set the letter back down on the table and pressed a fingertip to the corner of it, working to look like a man who could still be negotiated with.
"Ah... I'll find a way to redeem those."
"Young Master Elaine needn't strain himself." The Maid Officer softened her voice further. "My lady does not mean to press. This is only a matter of procedure."
It came out the way a rising noble house extends a thread of pity to a fallen one.
Elaine picked up the pen. His name had already been written out for him at the signature line.
Elaine White.
Last heir of House White.
He looked at that line, and something in him turned faintly uncomfortable.
He had used that name for years.
The old butler had called him that. His tutors had called him that. So, in his memory, had the adoptive parents who raised him.
The Roland girl used to write now and then, and she would open with "Dear Elaine."
Elaine pressed the nib down. The ink went onto the paper, clear at first.
Two breaths later, the edges of the strokes had gone faintly white, as though they had been left to soak.
The Maid Officer had already bent to straighten her papers and didn't notice.
Elaine didn't say anything. He set the pen back down and slowly drew his fingers away from the signature.
The Maid Officer gathered up the documents and left a copy behind.
"Thank you for your cooperation."
She stood and bowed to him, exactly as etiquette required.
"House Roland still respects the old honour of House White. My lady hopes that all goes well for you hereafter."
Listening to that, Elaine felt he ought to say something.
Anything at all would do, so long as it held the scene up.
In the end he only nodded.
Because he was afraid that if he opened his mouth, what came out first would be laughter.
After the Maid Officer left with her people, the receiving room went completely quiet.
The sound of the carriage wheels drew away, and outside the portico there was nothing left but the cold wind that comes after rain. The white kite statue at the White family gate had taken a splash of muddy water up one side; dust had settled in the gap in its left wing, and its eyes had been worn smooth by the years. The statue had been past repair for a long time, and Elaine couldn't even scrape together the money to have it removed. Standing there broken at the front door, it made House White look like it was keeping up appearances.