Chapter 21: The King's Court

Rosalind's POV

Ansley's cell was a storeroom behind the great hall with a cot and a bucket and a high barred window.

She sat on the cot in last night's grey silk with her hair down.

She had stopped crying. It was the first time in my life I had seen her face with nothing arranged on it.

"You came," she said.

"Say what you wanted to say."

"I found the strip in his coat the first winter, when I brushed it for him." She said it to her hands.

"I read it, and I understood it, and I put it back, and I thought: she'll never need to know.

"I told Hortense. We kept quiet."

"Quiet for whom?"

"For us." Her mouth twisted. "You got his house, Ros. His name. Six years of watching you have it, and you thought I was kind."

"You poured the tea."

"A pinch." She looked up. "Say you'd have forgiven a pinch."

"No."

"Then there's nothing to say."

"One thing," I said. "Why my cup?"

She blinked at me.

"Because you'd take anything from my hand," Ansley said. "You always did."

I turned and went out.

Caleb was waiting at the end of the corridor, and he took my hand without asking, and I let him.

The king's court sat at noon, with the hall packed to the walls.

Hortense went first, standing, in a plain grey dress with her hair undone.

She would not look at me.

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