Chapter 24: The Front Steps

The morning I came to take my house, I walked up the front steps.

They were white marble, cold beneath my boots, and I climbed without rushing.

I had been in this house for twenty-four years, and I had only ever gone through the kitchen door.

My knees did not even ache.

Doran walked a pace behind me, in his gray coat, and did not touch my arm.

Morna came after him with her stick, grumbling about the stairs.

The great doors stood open.

In the hall, the whole household waited in two rows, from the steward at the top to the scullery girls at the bottom.

Nobody looked at the floor.

A heavy woman in a stained apron stood at the end of the line, with her hands knotted in front of her.

It was the head cook, who had slipped me honey bread through the kitchen hatch every night of my childhood.

She had never once said my mother's name aloud in that house.

"Miss Liora," she said, and her voice shook. "Your Grace. I am sorry. I never knew how to help."

"You fed me," I said. "Every night."

"It was only bread."

"It was the bread I had."

She began to cry, and I put my hand on her shoulder, and the line of servants let out a sound that was not quite a cheer.

The cook wiped her face and took a flat paper packet from her apron.

"The Duke left this with me, the night he went to the abbey," she said. "He said it was for his wife's daughter."

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