With each day a marvel of challenges and societal graces, Elizabeth rarely found a private moment to thus enjoy with her inner circle of well-bred ladies. However, though one may have complained at this lack of solitude or isolation, Elizabeth had found it quite the breath of air needed to swallow the melancholy that had plagued her since the news of Lady Dudley’s quickening. So it did not help then, that she found herself more than often with either the lady who had brought her the intrigue in the first place or the assailant’s sister-in-law and by Elizabeth’s own reckoning, her love’s younger sister. For most of her career beneath the Princess and from within her prestigious household, Kismet Dudley had been offered and presented with luxuries and favouritism that the Princess could not give directly to the Earl himself. She was given leave whenever she wanted, or made to complete such tasks that heightened her name before other wanting courtiers. But with the fall from grace, Kismet had been pushed aside for one of the first times.
So far, Elizabeth had deemed it necessary that Kismet was kept from her audience till the very first and last hours of the day — when not taking buckets of hot water to her linen lined bathtub or preparing the ointment that another pressed into her skin, Kismet was kept apart from her Royal Highness. This unfortunate turn of events would ripple onto her family, that was, if the distance was kept within renewal, and though some took it upon themselves to tread openly onto the past roles Kismet had once boasted off, some mentioned her in whispers. Why was it that Kismet Dudley had suddenly fallen so far? Had she not been, alongside Elizabeth’s childhood companion Meg Welles, but a favourite of her flock?
As the day drew into night, Elizabeth returned to her rooms where the other maids began the usual routine of undress. As nimble fingers unwound the ties that kept her sleeves taut and her bodice tight, Elizabeth cast her stare around the room to find the shadow of Kismet. Biting back a hot-headed hiss of temptation, the Princess and presently the Lady Regent, lifted a hand to pause her girls before banishing all but Kismet from her rooms, the private audience an affair barely ever kept since the night Meg had sought it for herself two months previously. “Unbind my hair,” she commanded, sitting atop her stool before a looking glass, her hands clasped together upon her lap, her eyes unblinking as she watched Kismet through the reflection. “How is it, Kismet, that you are finally beyond your brother’s shadow and yet have nothing to show for it?” She asked, her patience thus worn thin before she removed her sleeves by her own two hands, relieving the pleasure of doing so for anyone else. “I should congratulate you on your family’s good luck…” @kismctt
