Risa just winked. At least someone was looking forward to the next day, Cordelia thought. Every time she thought about her wedding, she wanted to jump out of the window.
Tomorrow she would sit for the last time in this room, while her mother and Risa wove silk flowers into her long, heavy hair. Tomorrow she would have to appear as happy a bride as she was an elaborately dressed one. Tomorrow, if Cordelia was very lucky, most of her wedding guests would be distracted by her clothes. One could always hope.
Risa smacked her lightly on the shoulder. Cordelia rose obediently, taking one last deep breath before Risa tightened the laces of her corset, pushing her breasts up and straightening her spine. The nature of the corset, Cordelia thought irritably, was to make a woman aware of every minute way that her shape differed from society’s impossible ideal.
“Enough!” she protested as the whalebone stays cut into her skin. “I did hope to eat at the party, you know.”
Risa rolled her eyes. She held up a green velvet dress and Cordelia stepped into it. Risa guided the long, fitted sleeves up her arms, adjusting the frothy white lace at the cuffs and neckline. Then came the process of fastening each of the tiny buttons that ran up the back of the dress. The fit was snug; without the corset Cordelia would never have managed it. The Herondale ring, the visible sign of her engagement, gleamed on her left hand as she lifted her arm so that Risa could arrange Cortana across her back.
“I should hurry down,” Cordelia said as Risa handed her a small silk handbag and a muff to warm her hands. “James is hardly ever late.”
Risa nodded briskly, which for her was the equivalent of a warm hug goodbye.
It was true, Cordelia thought, as she rustled down the stairway. James was hardly ever late. It was the duty of a fiancé to escort a lady to parties and dinners, fetch lemonade and fans, and generally dance attendance. James had played his part to perfection. All season long he had faithfully partnered her at all sorts of eye-wateringly boring Enclave events, but outside of those occasions, she barely saw him. Sometimes he would join her and the rest of his friends for excursions that were actually enjoyable—afternoons in the Devil Tavern, tea at Anna’s—but even then he seemed distracted and preoccupied. There was little chance to talk about their future, and Cordelia wasn’t sure precisely what she’d say if there was.
“Layla?”
Cordelia had reached the sword-and-stars-tiled entryway of the house, and at first saw no one there. She realized a moment later that her mother, Sona, stood by the front window, having drawn back one of the curtains with a narrow hand. Her other hand rested on her rounded belly.
“It is you,” Sona said. Cordelia couldn’t help noticing that the dark shadows under her mother’s eyes seemed to have deepened. “Where are you off to, again?”
“The Pouncebys’ sledding party on Parliament Hill,” Cordelia said. “They’re dreadful, really, but Alastair’s going and I thought I might as well keep my mind off tomorrow.”
Sona’s lips curved into a smile. “It’s quite normal to be nervous before a wedding, Layla joon. I was terrified the night before I married your father. I nearly escaped on a milk train to Constantinople.”
Cordelia took a short, sharp breath, and her mother’s smile faltered. Oh, dear, Cordelia thought. It had been a week since her father, Elias Carstairs, had been released from his confinement at the Basilias, the Shadowhunter hospital in Idris. He’d been there for months—much longer than they’d first expected—to cure him of his trouble with alcohol, a fact that all three other members of the Carstairs family knew but never mentioned.
They had expected him home five days ago. But there had been no word save a terse letter sent from France. No promise that he would return by the day of Cordelia’s wedding. It was a wretched situation, made more wretched by the fact that neither Cordelia’s mother nor her brother, Alastair, was willing to discuss it.
Cordelia took a deep breath. “Maman. I know you’re still hoping Father might arrive in time for the wedding—”
“I do not hope; I know,” Sona said. “No matter what has waylaid him, he will not miss his only daughter’s wedding.”
Cordelia almost shook her head in wonderment. How could her mother have such faith? Her father had missed so many birthdays, even Cordelia’s first rune, because of his “sickness.” It was a sickness that had gotten him arrested in the end and sent to the Basilias in Idris. He was meant to be cured now, but his absence so far was not promising.