The Villainess Woke Up Mid-Confession novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Margrave

The table raised its glasses because nobody knew how not to.

Ravielle's father raised his and didn't drink.

The Margrave drank his in one swallow and wiped his red mouth with the back of his hand.

Ravielle stood up.

Her chair scraped on Vaelhart's floor, loud as a shot.

"I'd like to add to the toast," she said.

Damien's smile stayed exactly where it was.

"Of course, cousin."

She lifted her glass to the Margrave.

"To the new Margravine," she said. "May she have better luck with your doors than the last one did."

The old man's glass stopped halfway to the table.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your third wife, my lord. She died on the steps of your hall, in January, four winters ago."

The bishop set his fork down very slowly.

"She'd gone out to the chapel after dinner," Ravielle said. "When she came back, the door was barred from inside. She knocked until morning. Her maid heard her and wasn't allowed to open it."

"That's a filthy lie."

"Her maid told her sister. Her sister told me, over cards, because she owed me forty crowns and had nothing else to pay me with."

Ravielle had kept it for four years.

She had meant to use it on him one day, for the hand on her back when she was sixteen.

It turned out she had been saving it for something better.

"I've never repeated it," she said. "Not once. Ask anyone at this table whether I ever kept a piece of gossip to myself."

Nobody laughed.

They all knew she never had.

The Margrave turned to the head of the table.

"Vaelhart. Will you let a traitor slander a guest under your roof?"

Kyrian hadn't moved through any of it.

He turned his glass a quarter turn on the cloth.

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