Chapter 15: What He Said

Mina's POV

"You can't invoice me," said Ansel. "You cannot hold a pen."

"Then I'll dictate."

"To whom?"

"To you. It's your chair."

He looked at the ceiling, and then he fetched the ink.

He wrote forty gold for the chair in his square hand, and then he wrote it again, because I made him add the date.

It was the third morning.

My arm lay on a pillow in a thick bandage, and he was still in my room, because no one had been able to move him.

Greta had stopped trying. She brought him bread, and he ate it standing.

I had not yet asked him the question I had been carrying for six months.

I asked it now, because I was bored and my hand hurt.

A fire takes the patience out of a person.

"Do you remember our wedding night?" I said.

He put down the pen.

"I remember it."

"You walked me to my door."

"I did."

"You said good night and went to the west study.

"I heard you tell Bertram on the stairs that the Duchess has no duties and no claim."

The room went quiet.

I had said it exactly. I had been saying it to myself for half a year.

"You heard that," said Ansel.

"I was standing at the top of the stairs in my wedding dress. I had been up since four."

"I did not know you were there."

"That doesn't make it better."

"No," he said. "It makes it worse."

He did not defend himself.

I had expected the speech.

It would be stiff and formal, with a long part about duty and the Empress.

There would be one clause of apology at the end that I could price.

He sat down on the edge of the table and held his hands between his knees.

"That night I had signed a contract on the back of a priest. Four hundred people had watched me do it."

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