Chapter 14: In My Chair

Ansel's POV

The physician said she would keep the hand, and I sat down in the nearest chair.

It was a small chair covered in blue silk, and it belonged in a lady's sitting room.

I stayed in it for the rest of the night.

We had put my wife in the blue guest chamber, because it was the only bedroom with its windows on the south side and no smoke.

She slept with her right hand wrapped to the elbow and resting on a cushion.

Her left hand, the old one, lay on the quilt with the palm turned up.

I had looked at that palm more than once since the wedding.

Tonight I did not look away from it.

Riders had gone out at midnight for the lady-in-waiting. Her grey cloak was found in the stable yard, and her horse was gone.

She had set fire to a house with the Duchess asleep in it.

Until yesterday I had been sure she acted alone, to spare the Empress some trouble.

I was less sure now, and I had no answer to give myself.

So I gave my attention to the box.

It sat on the table, a plain tin box with a scorched lid and a ruined hinge.

Inside was the paper she had gone back into the fire for.

The edges of the Terms were brown. The ink was whole.

My signature sat under hers, where I had signed it on the priest's back.

I read it by the lamp. It was short.

I had read it before, in the carriage, as a man who thought he was being cheated.

Article 5 was twenty thousand crowns and her father's debts.

Six months ago I had decided that was what a woman wanted who had married a duke to be rid of him.

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