Madame Bronwyn, the Vice-Chamberlain of the house of Netherlust, runs Netherlust with a practiced nonchalance of a seasoned dinner host, or the sly confidence and unseen tact of a great spymaster running a room. She was born to the Summer Court, and long before she held the keys she was one of Netherlust’s regulars. She runs it now the way a chef runs a kitchen whose every dish she has eaten: she knows what it serves, and what it does to the people it serves. She presents as a woman of thirty-three and has been alive for more than a century: dark hair drawn back, green eyes that give nothing away. She wears sharp designer suits, with hints and nods to the Victorian era with modern cuts, always in the house colors, the grays and olives. Her whole staff wears similar kit, but she wears them better. She is charming to everyone and really known only by one, Valmont.
Parliament’s committee nominated her for the position four years ago, and she accepted for reasons of her own. The job came with a magically binding vow of abstinence: one touch meant with intent toward another ends her tenure and her standing both. The rule that keeps her impartial is the same rule that keeps her alone. She agreed to it with her eyes open. She keeps the house now so others can have what the vow took from her.
The one thing she cannot lock out of the house lives in the penthouse. Valmont built the place, was made to sell it after disastrous financial ruin during the great stock market crash and depression, but he never left; in the sale, he kept the penthouse, and treats the rest of the club like he still owns it, he doesn’t. But he spends his long days testing the boundaries of the house rules. Bronwyn governs Netherlust, a neutral ground, whose whole worth is that nothing here is ever known to have happened, and she is only beginning to count how many people would burn that neutrality to own what sits beneath it.
