breakfast

Iobel gets up fairly early. There's a large table full of work from yesterday available, and she thinks Edarial sleeps later than she does - so Adarin probably does too, and so even if Isabella's awake, she can't visit without disturbing her.

She orders two people's worth of breakfast - hot cereal with fruit, fried eggs, buttery toast, on a hexed platter to keep it warm, the palace is practically lousy with expensive hexes - and nibbles slowly on her half while she goes over yesterday's notes and what still remains to be done.

She has drafted a letter to her great-aunt (who is, after all, a countess and related to her and occasionally inclined to remember this, and may be able to help in some ways with some things - the loan of this property in the moors, these words in those ears, her recommendation on who to hire for this project) for review by her husband before she sends it, and begun to tediously pick apart some of the incoming mail full of requests and separate out the sincere from the strategic from the insane, by the time Edarial is likely to so much as wander out of his bedroom.