Chapter 20: On His Knees

The hall took an hour to empty.

Guards walked Lenore out through the side door with her bag held in front of her.

She did not look back once.

Her husband went after her.

He did not take her arm. He walked two steps behind with his hat in his hand.

My mother cried openly for a while, and my father held her.

Then they went to find tea, because my father said even a man who has been proved right gets hungry.

I stayed.

I sat on the edge of the petitioner's bench with the silver wolf in my hand.

The chairs had been shoved out of line. A glove lay on the floor near the rail.

Footsteps crossed the marble behind me.

I knew them. I had known them since I was eight.

"Rowena."

Kendrick stopped three paces away.

He had no coat.

The commission pins were gone, and his collar hung open where they had been.

He looked younger than he had in three years.

"I'm not going to ask for anything," he said.

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I owe you this, and I can't do it standing up."

He went down on one knee, and then on both.

The marble must have been cold. He did not seem to feel it.

"I was a coward," he said.

"I took a story from my mother, a woman who loved me, and believed it because it let me be angry."

"Angry was easier than looking at you."

I said nothing.

"You sat at that table all night. I knew you would."

"I stood in the hall for an hour with my hand on the door, and I left anyway."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Brought His Lover Home, So I Left Him to His Regret from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.