Reborn as the Villainess's Bodyguard, I Refused to Stop at Bodyguard novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The House at Ardwyn

The Queen heard it, because the whole hall heard it.

"Clerk," she said. "A pen."

A pen was brought, and a sheet.

Queen Imelda wrote four lines standing at the foot of her own throne, with the court watching and her cough catching in her chest.

She pressed the Crown's seal into the wax herself.

"Ardwyn is returned to its Lady, with every acre, from this hour," she said. "The council may quarrel about the creditors for a month. I am not waiting a month for a girl to find her bed."

She held the paper out.

Seraphine took it in both hands, and her fingers shook.

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Don't thank me. Go home, Lady Ardwyn."

The house stood on a hill above the village, long and low and grey, with two wings and a wide front step.

They reached it at dusk.

The roof was patched with sailcloth where the lead had been peeled away, and the front door hung open on one hinge.

Seraphine stopped on the gravel.

"It was never this quiet," she said. "My father had forty servants."

Then someone shouted from the side lawn.

An old man in a steward's black coat was running across the grass with his arms out.

Behind him ran a cook with flour on her sleeves, a groom, three maids, and a boy with a dog.

They had come back that same afternoon, every one of them, when the news reached the village.

Seraphine was embraced and kissed on both cheeks before she could say a word.

The steward wept openly.

"We hid what we could, my lady," he said, wiping his face. "The groom has your mother's bed in the hayloft. The cook has the silver in the flour bin."

"The portrait..."

"The Prince's men burned it." He lowered his eyes. "I am so sorry."

Seraphine looked at the pale rectangle on the plaster of the hall where her father's face had hung.

"Then we'll have him painted again," she said, "from the way you remember him."

By dark, the household had gone to the kitchens to argue about supper, and the big house was empty around the two of them.

The staircase was bare, and the windows had no curtains, and the floors rang under their boots.

Seraphine took a candle from the steward's table.

She went from room to room, and Haruka followed her.

In each room she touched the flame to every lamp, every sconce, every stub of wax she could find, until each window was gold.

She did the library, the long gallery, the dining room, the empty nursery, and the stair.

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