The candles in Heartfield Manor had been burning since dusk.
Three hundred of them, at least — suspended in iron chandeliers that the Viscount had imported from the southern provinces at a cost that made his steward quietly weep.
The grand hall smelled of warmed beeswax and imported wine and the particular kind of perfume that noble women only wore when they needed men to remember them.
Silk rustled. Laughter floated upward in careful, practiced arcs. Goblets clinked with the precise delicacy of people who had been trained since birth to make even drinking look like an art form.
The occasion was Elena Heartfield's coming-of-age ceremony.
