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"Samantha, the Linleys sent another silver rattle, can you make sure it isn’t next to any of the ones we already have?”
Sam nods, pulls out her notebook, opens it to the guest list -- she typed extra copies when the Cassidys sent the announcements -- sticks matching numbers to the rattle and the giver’s name, then positions the rattle, engraved card prominently displayed in front of the handloomed cashmere baby shawls from the ffoulkes.
“Samantha, do hurry up, the Nicholsons have sent a sapphire set and there’s nowhere to put it!”
Sam crosses the Blue Parlour to her mother, takes the parure in its velvet box, notes it in the gift list, the daily insurance update, and the list for the security guards, and then exchanges it for the pearl necklace that is the groom’s parents’ gift.
“Samantha, what are you DOING?”
Sam gives her mother a pacifying smile. “Won’t Victoria be wearing these this afternoon?”
“I suppose you’re right. Give them to me, then, I don’t want you to forget.”
Samantha nods dutifully, hands her mother the pearls, opens the notebook, crosses the pearls off the security list, and pencils a hasty “Mama” next to “Location”. Her mother surveys the room for the hundredth time. Samantha braces for the next command, but apparently everything is temporarily in order.
Her cousin Amanda pops a blonde head in. “Can we just borrow Sam? The de Veres can’t come and now the seating chart for their table is unbalanced.”
Mama waves a hand. “Go make yourself useful, Samantha.”
Sam does.
Victoria’s Joining, like all the parties Mama has thrown in the last six months, keeps both sisters in circulation through all parts of the room: Victoria to be congratulated, Sam to keep the wheels in motion. Victoria catches Sam’s eye now and again and smiles in solidarity, but she is -- she has to be -- focused on her own role, solidifying the Cassidy alliances and beginning to forge the alliances appropriate to her Joined and their own position. Sam hurries along the periphery of the conversations, making sure that guests know where they are seated and whom they are taking in, reminding the caterers to charge the glasses at 10PM precisely, and making sure that those seated on the outer reaches of the room nonetheless feel important and respected. She catches wisps of conversation as she goes.
“...poor Sam, at least she’s --” her uncle Norris hastily switches subjects to the odds for the Gold Cup.
“...and then there’s the nuptial flight --” Lady Hastings catches Sam’s eye -- “pas devant les enfants, dear Victoria, you’ll find out yourself how important...”
“...one can always use her help socially, she has quite a memory -- Oh, Sam, how nice to see you, we were just talking about you! How clever of you to wear a high-backed dress, Victoria must be freezing!”
“...it’s not as if they’re wasting a valuable scion, quite good enough for a commoner …”
Sam knows where she stands. She’s useful. Her Chosen is very useful indeed, and Sam keeps him bound to the family’s interests. Sam herself remembers where her mother left the Almanach de Gotha; she knows where the Cassidy Joining bracelets were stored away; she knows that Lady Hastings must not be seated next to any member of the Nicholson family, not after what happened at the Nicholsons’ party in 1993. “I can’t think how we’d get on without you, Samantha.” Unspoken is “... and I doubt we’ll ever need to.”
Samantha isn’t valuable. A valuable daughter would be, like Victoria, wearing a backless dress at this extremely private party, displaying her warm brown wings. A valuable daughter would be giggling with the maidens and being teased by the matrons. A valuable daughter would already be Joined herself, already have a daughter of her own or at least be Nesting. A valuable daughter … would not be Samantha. Wingless Samantha. Samantha who will never have a daughter, or even a son.
Samantha is on her way to tell the servers not to serve Uncle Albert anything more when she passes another group of men. One of them turns, smiles at her, and takes her hand.
“Miss Cassidy! I haven’t seen you to say hello.”
It is her Chosen, Malcolm. Steel-true, blade-straight -- yes, Sam is a romantic, has read about knights and Falcons and Musketeers all her life -- and looking straight at her. She smiles, nods, makes to move on, but he catches her hand. “You look lovely, Samantha. I like that blue on you.”
Sam can feel the blush rising from her toes. It’s only a casual compliment, the sort she’s heard Victoria receive a hundred times, but it’s a new experience for Sam. “Thank you, Mr. Tucker. I’m so glad --”
“Samantha! Samantha! Go find out what the caterers have done with the hors d’oeuvres.” Sam squeezes Malcolm Tucker’s hand and scurries off. Behind her, she hears him saying “Ah, Lady Cassidy, I’ve an urgent need of a private word --”
And that settles it. He’s going to discard her. Politely -- he’s never been anything other than polite to her -- but permanently. Malcolm Tucker is an important man; he needs a Joined who brings alliances, who can take her place in the elaborate dance that is Winged society. He needs allies; he needs heirs. He doesn’t need Samantha.
The future swims up before Sam’s eyes. She’ll be useful to Mama. To her cousins. To Victoria, although at least Victoria will remember to say “thank you”. And when Sam dies, they’ll think of something to put on her grave. Not perhaps “useful”, but a phrase meaning much the same. Beloved daughter, sister, aunt. Responsible. Reliable.
Sam blinks back tears and strides off to the bar. There’s an hour yet before dinner; she needs to make sure that the alcoholics -- no, the men who can’t hold their liquor -- don’t embarrass anybody else. And then to the table, where she’ll sit next to her Chosen, keeping up the public display, before he discreetly discards her in favor of a girl with wings. Sam’s eyes tear up a bit, but her back is straight. She knows her duty; she’s a Cassidy.
A grey blur appears in front of her. “Miss Cassidy? Samantha?” It is Malcolm Tucker, of course. She draws a deep breath. “Mr. Tucker. I’m sorry, I can’t talk just now --”
His nostrils are flared and a vein is pulsing in his temple. Oh dear, I should have cut him off -- “Go upstairs and pack your things. No, wait, you don’t need anything you can’t get in London. Come with me.”
“What?”
“Miss Cassidy, come with me, I require your assistance in London, and your family --” he shoots a glare across her shoulder “-- have assured me that you are free to travel.” He’s very obviously white-hot with rage; Sam would flinch, but that death gaze is fixed on Papa. When Malcolm Tucker looks back at Sam he looks, unexpectedly, kind.
“But Mama -- “
“Lord and Lady Cassidy have made it clear that they have less need of your services than I do.” Sam must have looked frightened; Malcolm gives her a (very sweet) smile and says “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I haven’t said this properly. Miss Cassidy, I need a new PA in London. Will you come? I’ll take an apartment for you, you’ll have a formal position, all quite above the board. “
“But I’m needed --” a wave of relief is spreading over her.
“You are indeed needed. Her Majesty’s Government needs you, and I’m confident” -- that laser glare again -- “your family will understand.”
Yes. She looks at her mother, who has pasted on a thin smile. Her family may or may not understand, but apparently Malcolm Tucker does. “Just let me pack a toothbrush and some things.”
“Splendid. The car will be here after dinner; I’ll give you a lift up to London.”
Sam has no idea what to expect of her Chosen; she’s had very little contact with him since the age of six, other than polite birthday letters with age-appropriate presents and a ceremonial meal at Christmas. All she knows about Malcolm Tucker is that he’s tall, thin, and terrifying to adults, although very courteous to small Cassidys, even in the awkward years when she’s all elbows and questions. It doesn’t matter who he is, as long as he’s sweeping her off on his … black Government car.
As soon as the car departs he has a mobile to his ear. It’s a good thing Sam has heard her father after a bad day’s shoot; she’s familiar with all the words Mr. Tucker -- “Call me Malcolm, it’s not 1890--” is using, if not with the infinite combinations he seems to have at hand. Malcolm is apparently very angry at Julius --query Nicholson?-- and somebody named Jamie is being tasked to perform quite surprising acts of internal surgery.
“...and stretch his arsehole over a hoop and hand it off to the Taiko drummers.”
Sam can’t suppress a giggle and Malcolm puts a hand over the mouthpiece to say “Sorry, love, can’t help it.”
Love. He doesn’t really mean it, but it’s not something anybody else has said to her, not since Nanny. It’s been a very long day -- some very long months, if it comes to that -- and Sam leans back against the seat and closes her eyes.
Sam spends the night at the Connaught; in the morning, there’s the elaborate intake procedure required for an employee of Her Majesty’s Government. Sam has never had a National Insurance number. She doesn’t have a passport or a copy of her own birth certificate. Fortunately, she was registered for a driver’s license, so that she could run errands when the chauffeur was busy. Now Sam is enrolled into the vast machine that is the modern economy, and it is oddly reassuring, an affirmation that she exists, separate from the Cassidy Flock and its interests.
After all the boxes are ticked and she’s a cleared Government servant, Malcolm sends a taxi for Sam and she arrives at the office.
“This is Jamie MacDonald, my deputy. If he gives you any trouble, let me know and I’ll kill him.” A pair of wide blue eyes looks her up and down, followed by a grin that is five parts appraisal and three parts lust. “Drop it, Jamie, or I’ll drop you.” The grin only intensifies, and Malcolm sweeps her on through a whirl of names and introductions. Thanks to her mother’s training, Sam doesn’t forget one.
Sam has a desk of her own outside Malcolm’s office. Malcolm really does need an assistant -- apparently his last PA fled in tears two weeks ago and he hasn’t been able to find a replacement.
By mid-morning Samantha realizes that Malcolm needs her quite badly. His list of contacts is grossly out of date -- a former Deputy Whip is still filed under “Mr. Jones” instead of “Lord Selwyn”, Peter Mannion’s official mailing address still lists his first wife as contact, and Helen Annesley’s entry still lists Cassandra FitzClarence as the plus-one when Samantha knows for a fact that they haven’t spoken for months. By teatime Samantha has sorted out the telephone system, entered the next six months of Malcolm’s daybook into the computer so that it’s readily updatable, and ordered a new packet of Tea House Assam to replace the stale tin she found in the pantry. By Tuesday Samantha knows which documents should be put into the shred bin after Malcolm has reviewed them, which should be hand-carried to the office shredder and personally supervised until they’re in tiny diamond pieces, and which documents should never be printed at all.
By Thursday Malcolm is shouting “Sam! Get me the idiot in charge of BIS and book a wheelbarrow to cart away the corpse afterward”, and Sam is replying “He’s on line 1, and it had better be a very large wheelbarrow,” rewarded by Malcolm’s terrifying cackle before he presses the button and begins evisceration. Jamie is leaning casually on the desk and saying “Where has Malcolm been hiding you?” and Sam is using the governess-taught skills she had never needed before to smile and turn him away lightly.
Two weeks in, mysterious presents have begun to arrive on her desk. Not from Malcolm -- Sam already knows that fancy biscuits aren’t his style -- but from people who want Malcolm’s favor and think they can bribe Sam to get it. She would take offense, except that Malcolm spots a packet, snorts, and says, “See if you can get him to pay in photos, those we could use,” and somehow it’s an affirmation of what Malcolm thinks she’s worth, that they both know she can’t be bought with chocolate or trinkets.
A month in, at 5:30, Malcolm pops his head round the door. “Miss Cassidy? Can you come in a moment?”
Sam freezes. She’s always Sam, to everybody in the department. Is he going to send her back home? She forces a smile, comes in the door, and closes it behind her.
Malcolm looks shifty. “This… this is a bit awkward, actually.”
Sam smiles non-committally. At least he feels guilty enough not to bluster.
“Sam, I don’t know -- well, you can't have -- well, the truth is --”
Sam realizes that the great Malcolm Tucker is speechless. She’s sent his shirts to the laundry (light starch on collars and cuffs, none on the body), ordered spare socks, and put clean smalls in the pantry -- what on earth can he be ashamed to mention to her now?
“Mr. Tucker, I’m sure…”
“Ach, Sam, don’t do that. I don’t have a valet. Not the right image, couldn't stand it anyway. But my wings -- it’s hard making time to get to a preener, and I was wondering --”
“You want me to preen you?” I can see your wings? Touch them?
“I know it’s not part of a PA’s remit, not even remotely, it’s insulting even to ask but --”
I’m not just your PA, Malcolm, or have you forgotten? “I’d be delighted. Do you have a favorite grooming oil?”
He looks sheepish. “Penhaligon. Blenheim Bouquet.”
“I’ll pick up a bottle over lunch. Shall I book an hour every Friday?”
“I’d be very grateful. Sam, I don’t know what I’d do without --”
“Don’t worry about it.” You’ll never have to.