The Villainess Offered an Apology, the Duke Wanted the Truth novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Who Sits There
Cyralise demands a plain correction with no invented excuse and no offer of friendship, and Maerielle keeps trying to place a chair where it will make the moment look right. A note arrives: Belsienne refuses to meet her.
Maerielle had no prepared answer for an apology being refused.
That was the first useful thing Cyralise had given her.
She looked at the untouched brooch and the flowers blocking half the hall.
"You can refuse," she said.
Cyralise watched her hands rather than her face.
Maerielle wanted to hide them behind her back.
She left them where the other woman could see them.
"I need my name corrected," Cyralise said.
"Where you damaged it."
"At the ball," Maerielle answered.
The words sounded more frightening now that they belonged to an obligation instead of a plan.
Thessa brought a chair from the nearest room.
She put it against the wall, out of the bearers' path.
Maerielle immediately moved it toward Cyralise.
"Please sit while we discuss it."
The chair stood on the small step leading into the drawing room.
Cyralise looked at the raised seat.
"Am I being examined?"
Maerielle moved it down.
The bouquet now hid the chair completely.
"Buried, perhaps," Cyralise said.
Tavrian looked away, and Maerielle suspected he was enjoying her difficulties.
She resented that even while knowing she'd earned the difficulty.
She moved the chair again.
Now it faced the wall.
Thessa came forward and turned it toward the room.
"It's a chair," she said quietly.
"We can leave it to be one."
Maerielle took her hands off the carved back.
She felt absurdly exposed without anything left to arrange.
Cyralise sat down because she chose to, not because Maerielle had finally arranged the chair correctly.
Tavrian remained by the door.
He asked whether Cyralise wished him to stay.
She said yes.
He didn't ask Maerielle the same question.
That stung.
It was also the right question to have asked the right person.
"There must be no suggestion that I misunderstood you," Cyralise said.
Maerielle nodded.
"You didn't."
"No invented servant who misplaced the brooch."
"There wasn't one," Maerielle said.
"And no request that we become friends afterward."
Maerielle looked at her.
She had planned tea after the correction.
There had been a private room, cakes, and a conversation in which everyone understood the new beginning.
Maerielle was ashamed that Cyralise had needed to say it.
Maerielle told herself to stop making an audience out of her.
"No request," she said.
The other woman's shoulders lowered a little.
It was the first sign of relief Maerielle had seen since arriving.
She wanted to keep it without collecting it as a reward.
Tavrian picked up a fallen lily from beside his boot.
He held it toward Thessa.
The companion took it and laid it on the table.
The duke found the vase too crowded for the fallen lily.
He offered it to Maerielle.
Her face warmed before he added, "You're nearest the empty jug."
She took it and put it in the jug.
Thessa supplied water before Maerielle could order a matching silver pitcher.
The jug was plain brown pottery.
The lily remained entirely satisfactory.
Both of them had found ordinary uses for their hands.
Maerielle wished she could stop noticing his.
She had liked those long fingers long before becoming someone who might deserve a civil conversation.
Liking him hadn't made her kind then.
It wouldn't make the correction easier now.
Cyralise got up.
"I'll attend the ball," she said.
"I'll decide where I stand."
Maerielle stepped aside to leave the doorway clear.
The bearers moved with the bouquet at the same moment.
For an instant, the escape route vanished behind roses.
Maerielle stopped them with both hands.
Cyralise walked past while the flowers remained firmly against the wall.
Tavrian went with her.
He didn't look back to check whether Maerielle approved.
Thessa picked up the brooch from the table.
"There's another answer," she told her employer.
She held out a folded note from Belsienne Orvalis, the musician Maerielle had promised and then denied a public performance.
The reply declined a private meeting.
It offered no explanation for the refusal.
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