Reborn as the Villainess's Bodyguard, I Refused to Stop at Bodyguard novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Harrow

They wrote the note on the inn's kitchen table, with the valet watching from a stool and the rider's knife lying in plain view.

Seraphine dictated, and the valet wrote, because Harrow knew his hand.

My lord.

I saw the Lady of Ardwyn alive on the Hollin Road this night, with the Captain of the Guard, and not a ghost.

The Captain lied to the Prince.

Tell him before he is made a fool.

"He will run if you frighten him," the valet said.

"Frightened men write quickly," said Seraphine. "I want him writing to the Prince before breakfast."

The valet rode on to the inn's back door at dawn, with the rider at a distance behind him and the note in his sleeve.

The innkeeper's man, the one Haruka had thrown in the trough, took it from his hand without a word.

He went up the road at a gallop.

After that there was nothing to do but go home.

Merrow Lodge was dark when they came in, and the fire had gone to ash.

Haruka laid it again.

Seraphine sat on the hearth rug with her knees drawn up and watched her do it, silent, chewing the side of her thumb.

"You are being quiet," Haruka said.

"I am thinking."

"About Harrow?"

"About you."

Haruka put a log down carefully.

"What about me?"

"Last night you said something in your sleep." Seraphine kept her eyes on the fire. "Not in our language. I thought it a prayer. A woman's name, I think, and then a sentence I did not understand."

Haruka sat back on her heels.

She had not known she said anything.

"Who is she?" said Seraphine.

"Nobody. A person I used to see. In Tokyo."

"Tell me."

"Seraphine, it was two years ago."

"Tell me." The green eyes came round, and they were bright, and there was a hard little line between the brows. "I have spent a fortnight learning that I am the only woman in the world who has ever kissed you, and I find I am not."

"Did you think I was..."

"I thought you were mine."

She said it, and then looked startled at herself.

Haruka fought down a grin and failed.

"She worked the front desk at my gym. She was sweet and she was funny and she left, because I worked every night and never came home." She shrugged. "She's in a place I can't reach and I'm not sorry. I haven't thought of her in weeks."

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