Reborn as the Villainess's Doomed Maid, I Keep Getting Caught by Her Knight Brother novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Greenhouse

They talked Verena back through the gate and into the front hall.

She stood on the black-and-white marble in her dusty cloak, with her bundle at her feet, and refused to take it off.

"I will tell the Queen I wrote it," she said. "I will tell her tonight. That ends it."

"It ends you," said Caspian.

"It ends the Prince's game. He wants a hanging with a bow on it, Caspian. I will give him a short one."

"No."

"I am your sister, not your ward."

"Five days," Mio said.

They both looked at her.

"Give us five days, my lady. If we have nothing by then, you can go to the Queen, and I'll carry your cloak."

Verena's violet eyes searched her face for a long time.

There was a flicker in them, a quick bright flash of something that looked, to Mio, like pain.

"Five," she said at last. "But Tilda, hear me. You are not to be hurt. I will not have you hang for my sins."

She picked up her bundle and went up the stairs, very straight, and the guards fell in behind her.

Mio stood in the hall, her throat tight.

A warm hand slid into hers.

"Come with me," Caspian said.

He did not take her up the stairs.

He took her through the kitchen and out the back door, across a dark garden, to the old greenhouse behind the stable.

It was a long glass house with an iron frame, thick with ferns and orchids and lemon trees in tubs.

The air inside was warm and wet and heavy with the scent of earth and flowers.

Rain had started to patter on the glass roof, softly, then harder.

A single lantern hung from a hook by the door.

Beneath it stood a stone bench with a cushion, and above the bench an iron rung ran along the rafters, for hanging baskets.

Caspian shut the door and turned the lock.

He took off his coat and hung it on the hook.

He still wore his black gloves and his white linen cravat.

Nothing else had changed, but the look in his eyes made her mouth go dry.

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