If You Leave, I Leave novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The King's Table

On Saturday night, the King put another woman in my chair.

The family supper was held in the long hall under the antlers, with sixty courtiers down both sides of the table.

I walked in on time, in my blue dress, with my wrist scrubbed pink.

My place at the King's right hand had been moved to the foot of the table.

Verity sat where I belonged, in white, with the silver wolf at her collar.

"A seating mistake," a steward whispered to me, and did not look at me while he said it.

It was no mistake.

King Hadrian sat at the head, a broad white-haired man in a dark coat, with a face that gave nothing away.

Corwin sat on his left with his bandaged hands in his lap, and he was looking at nobody.

Tilda marched down the table and sat beside me.

"Move down one, I'm sitting with the river girl," she told a courtier, and the courtier moved.

Piers sat opposite us and stared at his plate.

The King lifted his glass.

"To the new face of the house," he said. "To Miss Ravensdale, who has done in one week what some of this family could not do in four years."

Sixty people drank.

I did not lift my glass.

"Our daughter-in-law is not drinking," the King said, in the clear unhurried voice of a man who had never been interrupted. "Four years in this house, and what has Dunmere given the Crown? A debt, a bill and a quiet girl who gave us no heir."

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