Closer to the Heart by Mercedes Lackey Page B

“request” of Lydia, during one of Lydia’s personal open Court sessions. As the fourth in rank in the Royal hierarchy, Lydia was viewed as “important” by those who were power-seekers only insofar as she had unlimited access to Sedric, and through Sedric, to the King. And she was well known as someone who never tried topersuade Sedric to hear a petitioner due to flattery or presents, so the people who were “political” seldom or never attended more than three or four of these gatherings every season. Lydia’s Courts served two purposes; for those who were there for social attention, and those who hoped their petitions would attract her sympathy. These were often people who had causes to espouse, for Lydia was very well known for her charitable works. There were none of the charitable sort in attendance that morning. Instead, the gathering had been as light-hearted and light-minded as a Royal Court session of any sort could get. So when Dia had made her carefully crafted speech about how unfortunate it was that there were so many highborn, yet disadvantaged ladies who were left languishing for lack of anything they were fit for, and that she proposed to train them, and as
what
she proposed to train them
,
the eager whispers started immediately. The more Dia spoke, describing loyal, skilled companions, more trustworthy than a servant, someone that could be confided in, like “my own Miana,” the more the whispers strengthened. Everyone knew Miana. Every woman of rank
wanted
someone like Miana. A lady’s personal maidservant was all well and good, and many of them were highly skilled in grooming and assisting their mistresses with their hair and wardrobe. But . . . one didn’t give confidences to one’s maid. Not unless one wanted those confidences spoken of down in the servant’s hall.
    And if one wished a conspirator in the matter of an extra-marital affair, one
certainly
didn’t look for such a conspirator among the maidservants.
    Oh, of course, a great many ladies did have handmaidens already, picked out from amongst their own poor relations, but often these were . . . unsatisfactory. And they often came with divided loyalties.
    But this idea proposed by Lady Dia meant that one could
apply
for someone who came with few or no family ties at all,and there were many ways, not all of them monetary, by which one could buy that precious loyalty.
    Lydia, who knew exactly what was going on, of course, became quite enthusiastic, proposed that she fund it out of her household monies, and that it be called “The Queen’s Handmaidens” in honor of her mother-in-law. And that she herself would see to placing the young ladies when they were deemed skilled enough to look for appointments.
    That only increased the buzz of excitement. What lady with any Court ambitions at all
wouldn’t
want one of her attendants to be from this elite, prestigious, and exquisitely skillful, group? Why settle for taking on some needy, untrained, bumpkin from your cousins in the country, when you could have a poised, cultured, amusing, infinitely resourceful and always helpful creature like Lady Dia’s factotum? Having a Miana of one’s own meant different things to every lady in the Court that morning, but every one of those purposes was one that currently was going unfulfilled, or only partly met, for most of them.
    Miana made the third of the party bent over papers; in Miana’s case, she was perusing what Dia rudely called the “studbook”; the painstakingly created and updated book documenting every highborn family in the country. Amusingly enough, in other countries, it was the duty of “heralds,” in the sense of that corps of glorified secretaries in charge of the arms and genealogies of noble families, who were responsible for such documents. Not here, of course. Here, that was the duty of the Chroniclers—who themselves were