Money-Minded and Plot-Aware novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Man Who Signs
On the terrace Hadrian notices she is not the woman he knew, and says nobody has mentioned a rope.
He walked me out onto the terrace and shut the glass doors behind us.
The night air smelled of cut grass and horses.
I held my ruined skirt away from my legs and tried to look like a woman who was not about to be hanged.
"You counted the room," Hadrian said.
"I'm sorry?"
"When the wine hit you, you looked at the chandelier, then the pearls on the Queen's neck, then the plate on the buffet."
"I watched your lips move as you counted."
I had done that.
It was a habit from the office, where I counted the stationery cupboard when I was angry.
"I like numbers," I said.
"You have never liked numbers."
"In six years you have not once looked at a bill."
"Your father's steward told me you sign what is put in front of you and throw the rest in the fire."
"People change."
"They do not change in one evening," he said.
He stepped closer, and the light from the ballroom caught the scar through his eyebrow.
He was bigger than he had been in my head.
In the book, Hadrian was a paragraph of ice, a man who came in at the end and did a terrible thing.
In person he was warm, which I had not prepared for.
He gave off heat like a stove.
"You also did not scream," he said.
"The Rosamund I know would have thrown that glass at the girl's head."
"Maybe I'm tired."
"Maybe you're ill."
"Maybe I took a good look at myself and decided I didn't like it."
His mouth moved, a very small movement at one corner.
"Nobody decides that over a spilled drink."
I looked at his hands, big and gloved, resting easily at his sides.
Those hands would sign my name on a paper in forty days.
I thought of Rosamund in the book, in a cold cell, asking if she could see him once, and being refused.
My knees went soft, and I had to put one hand on the stone rail.
"You've gone pale," he said.
"I'm fine."
"You're afraid."
"Of what?"
"That's what I want to know."
"I'm not afraid of you," I lied.
"I know," he said.
"You looked at me in the hall as if I were a sum you hadn't finished."
"You stood at the wine table and did not look away from me once."
"That's not fear."
"What is it, then?"
"It's an accountant," I said before I could stop myself.
He waited.
"A person who adds up things," I said.
"I was adding up my debts."
He turned that over for a moment, and then he nodded.
"The Prince owes your house a great deal," he said.
"Ninety thousand crowns in war loans."
"I know," I said, and I did.
It was in chapter thirty, in a footnote nobody read.
"How do you know?"
"I can read."
"The Marquess doesn't read it," he said.
"He signs for it."
"He signs for everything."
He studied me for another long moment, and then he looked away at the dark garden.
"The Prince asked me this evening to open a file on you," he said.
"What kind of file?"
"The kind I keep for people who are going to be a problem to the Crown."
My blood stopped in my ears.
That was not in the book.
In the book there was no file at all, only a guard captain, a warrant, a scream.
"What does the file say?" I asked.
"It's empty," he said.
"I wanted to see you first."
He touched the stone rail beside my hand, not quite touching me.
"In forty days it is Midsummer Eve," he said.
"I think the Prince means to have you somewhere, that night, where he can say you did something."
"I haven't done anything."
"No," he said.
"But you're afraid of the rope."
I stared at him.
"Nobody has mentioned a rope," Hadrian said quietly.
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