I Became the Bride of a Grand Duke Who's Obsessed with His First Love novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The List
"It is in your hand," said Ansel.
"Yes."
"Scene three, Tea in the Garden. Crossed out. Scene five, the Hunt. Crossed out."
"Yes."
"Scene eight, the East Wing Burns." He turned the paper to the lamp. "You crossed that out in the yard, with a stub of pencil, while I was holding your head."
"I said it was admin."
"What is it?"
I sat down on the foot of the bed, because my knees had stopped agreeing to hold me up.
I had planned this conversation twenty ways, and in none of them was I wearing a nightgown with a fern on it.
"It's a list of everything that was supposed to happen to me," I said. "In a book."
He waited.
"I came here the morning of the wedding. Before that, I was a clerk in an office, in another world, and I read a novel on the way to work. This is the novel."
"And the Duchess?"
"The Duchess is a woman who gets one sentence. She dies of winter fever at the Midwinter Ball."
His face did not change.
"She's me," I said. "That's why I made you sign things. That's why I was in the pantry. Everything I did was to be somewhere else when the book needed me."
"The tea."
"The Empress's tea. Foxglove. The book never said so, but I knew it had to be. A woman doesn't die of fever in a day."
"The hunt."
"The saddle was cut. It's in the book, and then I stopped it."
"The fire."
"Her lady-in-waiting. She did it on orders."
"Whose?"
"Odile's."
He stood up.
It was the quietest movement I have ever seen him make.
"No," said Ansel.
"I know how it sounds."
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