The Villainess Woke Up Mid-Confession novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Beige
Home, she finds three years gone, her rooms gone beige, her mother's sapphires given away and a half-sister who adores her; she snaps, and her cousin Damien drops his smile to threaten that sister.
"Two years," Ravielle said.
"Yes, my lady."
"What year is it, Hanne?"
The maid told her.
Ravielle counted it off on her fingers in the carriage home.
She had walked out onto her balcony in the rain.
Then she had woken up on her knees in front of the Emperor.
She turned her hand over and counted the knuckles again, to be sure they were hers.
Everything in between belonged to somebody else.
Hanne watched her count and said nothing.
She had always been good at saying nothing.
That was half the reason Ravielle had hired her, and she had still thrown the girl out over a splash of wine.
The carriage stopped in front of the Ardentis townhouse.
The front steps were the same.
The door was the same.
The footman who opened it bowed and said, "Welcome home, my lady," with a warmth Ravielle had never once heard from a footman.
She went straight up to her rooms.
Someone had wrecked them.
Her red curtains were gone.
In their place hung something the color of weak tea.
The gilt mirror over the fireplace had been taken down, and a painting of a saint with a lamb hung in its place.
There were prayer books on the windowsill.
There was a prayer stool in the corner, with a cushion worn flat by knees.
Her knees, apparently.
Ravielle opened the wardrobe.
It was all grey silk, fawn wool and oatmeal velvet.
She saw a dozen pairs of beige gloves before she shut the door on them.
"Hanne, where are my clothes?"
"You gave most of them to the Temple, my lady. For the poor."
"The poor don't need red silk."
"No, my lady. I believe they sold it."
Ravielle crossed to the dressing table and opened the cedar box where she kept her mother's sapphires.
It was lined in blue velvet.
The velvet was empty.
Her mother had died when Ravielle was two.
The necklace and the two drop earrings were the best things of hers Ravielle had.
"Where are they?"
Hanne's voice went careful.
"The foundling house at the Temple, my lady. You gave them to the matron, last winter. The children got a new roof."
Ravielle shut the box very gently, because otherwise she was going to throw it through the window.
"And my mare?"
"Lady Liliane rides her now."
"Of course she does."
The door banged open.
Liliane ran in, skirts in both fists, and threw her arms around Ravielle.
"Ravi!"
She smelled of rosewater and tears.
She held on as if her sister might float away.
Nobody had held Ravielle like that since her nurse.
Liliane certainly never had.
Ravielle put her hands on the girl's shoulders and set her back.
"Don't call me that."
Liliane froze.
"Nobody calls me that," Ravielle said. "I don't know who told you that you could."
Liliane's round, freckled face went white, then red.
"You did," she said. "You told me to."
"Well, I'm telling you not to."
Liliane's mouth trembled.
Ravielle watched it tremble and felt the old, ugly satisfaction rise in her chest, the one she used to feel every time her half-sister cried.
It didn't feel the way it used to.
It felt small.
"Liliane," said a voice from the door. "Leave her."
The duchess, Ravielle's stepmother, stood in the doorway with her hands folded.
She was a handsome woman with her daughter's brown eyes and none of her daughter's softness.
She had hated Ravielle since Ravielle was three, and Ravielle had made very sure she had reasons.
"Madam," Ravielle said.
The duchess flinched.
Actually flinched, as if she'd been struck.
"Three years you've called me Mother," she said. "I see that's over too."
Ravielle had no idea what to say to that.
So she said nothing, which the duchess seemed to find worse.
"You've made your sister cry within an hour of coming home," the duchess said. "At least that's familiar."
"Aunt! There you all are."
Ravielle's cousin Damien came in past her, all warm smiles, in dove-grey gloves.
He kissed the duchess's cheek.
He kissed the top of Liliane's head and tucked her against his side.
Then he took both of Ravielle's hands in his and pressed them.
"Cousin. You gave us all such a fright today."
His gloves were soft as kittens.
"I gave myself one," Ravielle said.
"You're tired. Of course you are." He turned to the others with a gentle face. "Let me sit with her a little. I'll get her settled. I'll take care of everything, the way I always do."
The duchess gave him a cool, evaluating look.
Then she took Liliane's arm and steered her out.
Liliane looked back from the doorway, eyes swimming.
Damien closed the door behind them.
He stood with his back to it for a moment, still smiling.
Then he took off his gloves, one finger at a time, and dropped them on the prayer stool.
The smile went with them.
"What was that, cousin?"
"A refusal," Ravielle said. "I'm told I've gotten out of practice."
"Three years," he said softly. "Three years you've signed everything I put in front of you. You've thanked me for it."
"Have I."
"You knelt on that step this morning and read every line of that paper, exactly the way we agreed."
He came closer.
He smelled of clove and clean linen.
"His Majesty will still take a free confession before the Assize," he said. "So you'll go back tomorrow morning and finish the sentence."
"And if I don't?"
He reached past her and straightened the empty sapphire box on the dressing table, very neatly.
"Then Liliane pays for every word you didn't say."
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