Chapter 6: Mine to Answer For

His house was on the Street of Lamps, three stories of grey stone behind a wall.

A brown hound lifted its head from the hall rug, looked at me, and went back to sleep.

A housekeeper showed me to a room with a tall bed and a bath already drawn.

Beside the bath was a tray of roast chicken, bread, and a dish of preserved figs.

There was a key on the tray, to the door.

I ate everything, bathed, and sat on the bed in a clean nightgown with the key in my hand.

At eleven, I took it downstairs.

The study was at the back, a long room of books and a fire.

The desk in it was the size of a small boat.

Bastian stood at the window with his coat off and his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He turned when I came in, and I saw his throat work.

"You have a key to your own room," he said. "You should use it."

"I came to give it back."

I held it out.

"You said I keep my bed. I'd like to keep it in yours."

He crossed the room in three strides and took the key from my hand and threw it into the fire.

Then he stopped, a foot from me, and didn't touch me.

"There's something you haven't said," he said.

"Yes."

"Say it."

"You stood up in front of me and read six counts," I said.

"You never blinked. You read the four I didn't do in the same voice as the two I did."

"I did," he said.

"I thought you hated me."

"I told you I didn't."

"You told me in a room with no one in it," I said. "Then you read it out in a judge's voice."

"For a second, on that scaffold, I believed you'd cut my hair."

His face changed.

He had no answer, and he knew it, and he didn't pretend.

"That was cruel of me," he said. "I'm sorry."

"I don't want sorry."

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