Reborn as the Villainess's Doomed Maid, I Keep Getting Caught by Her Knight Brother novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Good
In his study the knight reads her hands, and what starts as an interrogation ends with his fingers under her skirt and the first word of praise he has ever given anyone.
The study was on the second floor, and it was the coldest room Mio had ever seen.
There was a desk of black wood, a map of the kingdom on the wall, a sword on a stand, and one chair for visitors.
Caspian did not offer her the chair.
He closed the door, locked it, and set his lantern on the desk.
"Hands," he said.
She held them out.
He took them in his gloved ones and turned them over under the light, palm and back, and she realized he was reading them.
"Calluses on the heel of the palm," he said. "That is a wrench, used for years. Black under the nails, from grease, and old."
His thumb moved across her second finger.
"Ink here. A pen, used every day. Most of my household cannot write their names."
"I was taught," Mio said, which she hoped was true.
"Who taught you?"
"Your sister's old governess."
"Hm."
He let go of one hand and kept the other.
He had not let go of it entirely.
His thumb rested on the inside of her wrist, right on her pulse.
"Tilda Quill," he said. "Eight years in this house. Farrier's daughter. My sister's maid since she was twelve and you were fourteen."
"Yes, my lord."
"In eight years you have never once touched a carriage."
She said nothing.
"Tonight you were in the shed at two in the morning with a spanner, and the Saint rides in that carriage in six hours."
"I wasn't hurting it."
"I know. I watched you for four minutes before I came in."
Mio's stomach dropped.
"You were not loosening that bolt," Caspian said. "You were closing it. And you checked the other three afterward with your thumb, like a smith."
"Maybe I'm a careful person."
"Maybe."
He let go of her hand at last and sat on the front edge of the desk with his arms crossed.
She stood in front of him with nowhere to look but up.
"Who sent you?"
"Nobody sent me."
"Someone loosened that bolt before you came."
"Either you did it and changed your mind, or someone did it and you are cleaning up after them."
"Both make you a person who knows what is about to happen."
Her heart hammered.
He was so close to the truth that it was frightening.
"My lord," she said carefully, "if I told you I wanted to keep your sister out of trouble, would you believe me?"
"No."
"Then I don't know what to say."
"Say the truth."
"I'm tired," Mio said, and her voice shook.
"I've been scared since I woke up, and I'm in a locked room with a man who could have me hanged."
"And you keep looking at me like that."
Caspian went still.
"Like what?"
"Like you're deciding something."
It was true.
He was looking at her mouth.
He saw her notice, and he did not look away.
"I am deciding whether to search you," he said quietly.
Her whole body went hot.
She did something she would not have done in her own life, which had been small, careful and polite.
She lifted her chin.
"Then search me."
For a moment he did not move.
Then he uncrossed his arms and stood, and he was so tall that she had to tip her head back to hold his eyes.
He put his gloved hands on her shoulders and ran them down her arms, slowly, to the wrists.
He turned her by the hips to face the desk, and the heat of his chest was against her back.
He found the apron ties and undid them.
He put his hands into the pockets of her dress.
He found a hair pin, a stub of chalk and half a lump of sugar, and set them on the blotter one at a time.
"Sugar," he said against her ear.
"I get hungry."
"Hm."
His hand slid up her ribs, along the line of her stays, and stopped just under her breast.
She leaned back into him before she knew she had done it.
She felt him breathe in.
He was hard.
She felt it, pressed against the small of her back through the black wool of his trousers, thick and unmistakable, and her knees nearly went.
"My lord," she said.
"Tell me to stop."
It was not a question.
It was a dare, low and flat.
He said it like a man who was sure she would not say it.
"No," Mio said.
His breath left him in a rough sound.
He turned her back around, put his hands on her waist, and lifted her onto the edge of his desk.
The blotter slid.
The pins and the chalk fell to the floor.
She had her knees apart around his hips before she thought about it, and her skirt rode up her thighs.
His gloved hand went to her knee and stopped.
"Take that off," she said, and nodded at the glove.
He looked at her.
Then he pulled it off with his teeth, and dropped it on the floor, and set his bare hand on her thigh.
His palm was hot and rough with sword calluses.
It slid up the inside of her thigh, over the stocking and the garter, onto bare skin.
She shivered so hard that the desk creaked.
"You are soaked through your drawers," Caspian said, in the same level voice, and she moaned.
His fingers found the slit in the linen and went through it.
He touched her wet pussy with two fingers, slow, up from her entrance to her clit, and she grabbed his coat with both hands.
"Oh, God."
"Quiet."
"I can't."
"You can." He circled her clit once, lightly. "My sister's rooms are below. You will be quiet."
She bit her lip.
His fingers moved in slow circles, exactly where she needed them.
Soon she was panting against his shoulder, and her hips rocked into his hand.
He kissed her then.
It was not gentle.
It was a hard, hungry kiss, his bare hand tangled in the hair at her nape.
She kissed him back so fiercely that she heard him groan.
He pushed two fingers inside her.
She cried out into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound.
He curled them forward and rubbed, and his thumb stayed on her clit, and she felt the heat build and build in her belly.
She had never been touched like this.
Not in her real life, not by any man who had ever wanted to be done quickly.
Caspian watched her face the whole time.
He watched her.
"Look at me," he said.
She opened her eyes.
His grey eyes were dark now, almost black, and his scarred eyebrow was drawn down.
"Come for me."
That was all it took.
The pleasure crashed over her, hard and white, and her whole body clenched around his fingers.
She cried into his shoulder, shaking, and his arm held her up while her thighs trembled around his hips.
He kept stroking her through it, slow and exact, until the last shudder left her.
When she could breathe again, she lifted her head.
His mouth was close to her ear.
"Good," Caspian said.
Just that, in his cold flat voice.
It went through her.
She had been praised before, in her life, for sorting a shelf or finishing a report.
She had never been praised like this, with his fingers still inside her and his breath unsteady, and she shuddered all over again.
He drew his hand out of her, slowly, and she whimpered at the loss.
He looked at his wet fingers for a moment.
Then he took a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped them.
He straightened her skirt.
He did up the button at her collar that had come loose, with the same patient hands, and he put the glove back on.
"This does not mean I trust you," he said.
His voice was cold again, and his face had closed, but his hand on her hip was not quite steady.
"I know," Mio said.
She slid off the desk on shaky legs and caught the edge to hold herself up.
Her eyes fell on the paper that lay under the lantern, where her fingers had knocked the blotter aside.
It was a sheet with the Queen's red seal at the bottom.
She could read the first line upside down.
"By order of Her Majesty, the Commander of the Queen's Knights will investigate any threat against the Saint."
The next line said he would report before the Midwinter Trial.
Mio looked up.
Caspian was watching her read it.
"Five weeks," he said softly. "Do try not to be on my list."
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