The Villainess Woke Up Mid-Confession novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Cousin

Damien lays out his terms and the household obeys him, not her; only Hanne holds the door, and inside a hollow prayer book Ravielle finds the stranger's notebook.

"Liliane," Ravielle said. "What does Liliane have to do with it?"

Damien sat down in her reading chair.

He crossed one leg over the other.

"The Margrave of the north has asked for her hand twice," he said. "Your father refused him twice, because you begged him to."

"I begged him."

"On your knees, in the study. It was very moving."

The Margrave was sixty-one.

He had buried three wives.

Ravielle had danced with him once, at sixteen.

He'd put his hand so low on her back that she'd ground her heel into his foot until he moved it.

"He's offered to forgive Ardentis its share of the border tax for ten years," Damien said. "Your father likes that number very much. I've been holding him back for your sake."

"How kind."

"I am kind, cousin. Ask anyone."

He smiled at her.

"Finish the sentence tomorrow, and I'll keep holding him back. Go off to the Sisters of the Faith, and Liliane stays home and marries whomever she likes. Some nice boy who writes her poems."

"And if I go to the Assize instead?"

"Then the family will need friends in the north, won't it? With a traitor in the family?"

He spread his bare white hands.

"She'll be a margravine before you're on the block. You can wave to her from the scaffold."

Ravielle looked at him for a long time.

She had known Damien her whole life.

He'd been a soft, pleasant boy who agreed with whoever had spoken last.

She had thought him harmless.

She had thought him furniture.

"Why would I care what happens to Liliane?" she said. "I've never liked her."

Something flickered in his face.

"You've doted on her for three years," he said. "You've taught her the household books. You let her sleep in your bed when she has bad dreams."

"Then you don't know me very well."

"I know you very well," he said. "You're the one who's been confused lately."

Ravielle walked to the bell pull by the fireplace and yanked it twice.

Two footmen came in so fast they must have been waiting on the stairs.

"Master Damien is leaving," she said. "Help him out."

The footmen looked at each other.

Then they looked at Damien.

"Thank you," Damien said pleasantly. "That's all."

They bowed to him.

They bowed to him, in her rooms, and backed out, and shut the door.

Damien didn't laugh.

Ravielle almost wished he would.

"I've held the keys to this house for three years, cousin," he said. "You gave them to me. You said you weren't fit to carry them."

He stood up and reached for his gloves on the prayer stool.

Ravielle got there first.

She picked them up by two fingers, walked them to the fire and dropped them in.

The dove-grey kid curled and blackened.

It smelled awful.

Damien looked at the flames, then at her.

For a moment, just a moment, he looked like someone else entirely.

"Well," he said quietly. "There you are."

The door opened.

Hanne came in with a jug of hot water and stopped when she saw them.

"Hanne," Damien said, smooth again. "Help your lady to bed. She's overtired."

"I will, sir," Hanne said. "After you've gone."

She set the jug down.

Then she walked back to the door, opened it wide and stood holding it.

She didn't look at him.

She looked at a spot on the far wall, the way a good maid does, and she didn't move.

Damien took his time.

He paused in the doorway beside her.

"Tomorrow, cousin," he said over his shoulder. "Wear the beige. His Majesty likes you penitent."

Hanne shut the door on his heels.

Ravielle's shoulders finally dropped.

"Thank you," she said.

Hanne looked at her sharply.

Then the maid unlaced Ravielle's gown without a word.

She brushed out Ravielle's hair, a hundred strokes, the way Ravielle had liked it at eighteen.

She remembered that.

Then she went around the room and lit every lamp.

She lit the candles on the mantel, the lamp by the bed and the lamp on the windowsill beside the prayer books.

The room blazed.

"What are you doing?"

Hanne paused with the taper raised.

"You sleep with them lit, my lady."

"I sleep in the dark. I always have."

"Not for three years," Hanne said. "Not once."

She finished the last lamp anyway, curtsied and left.

Ravielle sat on the edge of her bed in all that light.

Somebody had lived in this body and begged for Liliane, signed whatever Damien handed her and couldn't stand the dark.

Ravielle was going to have to answer for every bit of it.

Ravielle got up and blew out every lamp but the candle by her bed.

Then she went to the window to throw the prayer books out into the garden.

The first one was a saint's life.

The second was psalms.

The third was too light.

She opened it.

The pages had been cut out in a neat square, and in the hollow lay a small notebook bound in brown leather.

She carried it back to the candle and opened it.

The hand was hers, the way the confession had been hers.

The words weren't.

"My name isn't Ravielle," the first line said, "and I know how her story ends."

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