Rouse yourself, Hannah. You have a visitor.” Margery’s voice was quiet but urgent.
Blearily I sat up, pushing off the heavy layers of velvet blankets. I rubbed my eyes until the chambermaid came into focus. What happened? What am I doing in this bed?
Margery held out a silver cup. “Drink.”
Obediently I took a sip. The wine filled my mouth with a terrible, cloying sweetness. I could barely swallow it. I pressed the cup back into her hands. “Margery,” I said, “What happened? What day is it?” My throat was raw, and it hurt to speak.
She pressed her finger to her lips, silencing me. “She’s awake now,” she said over her shoulder, turning and curtsying. “My lord.”
She pulled aside the heavy drapes that surrounded the bed. The baron himself was standing, tall and stiff, in the muted light of the narrow window. He wore a deep red doublet and a matching tunic, and a ruby ring flashed on the long third finger of his right hand.
When he stepped toward me, I shrank back against the pillows.
He stopped, frowning in confusion. “Why do you flinch?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
You killed Otto. You killed Mary.
But here you are, taking care of me.
“You have nothing to be afraid of.” Baron Joachim narrowed his cool eyes at me. “You were the frightening one, shrieking like you were blind and mad.”
“I’ve come back to my senses now,” I said. I think.
The baron turned away and paced back and forth in front of the hearth. “You were beyond reason, and you spoke words no one understood. There were some who believed you demon-possessed.” He looked back at me sharply. “What do you have to say to that?”
My heart lurched in my chest. “I was not, and I am not, I promise,” I said. “Though I confess I don’t remember—”
I stopped, because suddenly I did remember. My legs had turned to stone, the world had gone black, and there was nothing to do but tear at my own flesh and scream.
“Never mind,” I whispered. “I do recall it.”
“My physician had never seen such a fit.” The baron stopped his pacing in front of the nearest tapestry, the one with the white-horned horse tied to a flowering tree. He stared at it while he spoke. “It seems that I have been under some misunderstanding. Or perhaps some… ignorance,” he said haltingly. “I did not understand the desperate nature of your situation until”—and here he turned to gesture toward my half-prone body—“this.”
“Desperate how?” I whispered. What if he was one of the people who thought me possessed? Would he summon priests to pray the devil out? If that didn’t work, would they hang me—or burn me?
“Goriot believes that grief and hardship have weakened you in body and spirit. You are neither mad nor in thrall to the devil. You are simply wretched.”
Wretched. I bristled to hear him say such a thing, but it was true. I pulled the thin chemise tighter around my neck. “Yes, I am,” I said, “and I come from a wretched place, where we watch our brothers and our neighbors and our babies die, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” My voice dissolved into a sob. I didn’t know how to hold in all the pain.
“But you will do something about it,” he said.
“I have tried,” I said, “and I have failed.” At a cost so great I can’t think of it.
“On the contrary,” Baron Joachim said, “you have shown me the truth. I’ve ordered more provisions to be gathered. Your village will have as much as it needs, for as long as it needs it.”
“Truly?” I was afraid to believe his words. I’d thought he didn’t care about us in The Bend—but maybe it was just that he didn’t know.
“You should not doubt me.”
I bowed my head as tears of relief rolled down my cheeks and landed on the silken coverlet. I had hated this man—and part of me still did—but here he was, opening his hand to us, giving us back our lives. “My lord,” I said, “I will be forever grateful for your generosity.”
The baron looked at me strangely. After a moment, he said, “But perhaps you are possessed after all. The Hannah I know is not capable of such politeness.”
The smile on his lips was so faint it was almost invisible.
“I have suffered a terrible shock to my system,” I said gravely. “Perhaps I am not myself.”
“Most likely that is the case.”
The next thing I knew, he’d sat down on the edge of the bed. Something shifted in the air, and it did so as quickly and absolutely as the sun coming out from behind a cloud. I could feel the heat of his body through the covers. Hear the beating of my heart in my ears. He was so near that I could slide my leg over and touch his thigh if I dared. Or if he reached his hand out, he could cup the curve of my hip—
Hannah, stop. You are a peasant, and he is a lord.
“I saw you years ago, when I was but eight,” I whispered. “You came to my village on your fine horse, in your own little shining suit of armor, and you looked down on us like we were no different from the dirt we stood on.”
Baron Joachim nodded slowly. “Ah, yes, the tour of my ancestral lands—I remember that day. It wasn’t as triumphal as it might’ve seemed, let me assure you. What I recall most is being petrified of my father. When I told him that I didn’t want to ride out that morning—my mother was dying, she’d be dead within a fortnight—he beat me.” He gave a hollow laugh. “Well, he had one of his guardsmen do it, so he didn’t sully his lordly hands. Twelve lashes of a leather strap right after breakfast. It was a miracle I could sit on that fine horse.”
So had it been pain rather than cruelty that I’d seen in his eyes as he rode through our village? It changed that old memory a little, tinging it with sympathy.
“My father never laid a hand on any of us, but he wasn’t able to feed us, either,” I said. “Had a full meal been promised me at the end of the day, I could’ve withstood any lashing.”
The baron looked at me without replying, and I felt my cheeks flush under his gaze.
“I don’t mean to suggest I’m stronger than you are,” I added quickly. “Just… more desperate. As we’ve agreed.”
“You don’t have to be desperate anymore,” the baron said. “You’ll have all that you need, today and always.”
My hands twisted in my lap. “I don’t know why you’re being so kind to me,” I said.
His cool eyes met mine. He said quietly, “You don’t?”
My heartbeat quickened. I couldn’t answer him—I was not that brave.
Baron Joachim smoothed the covers of the bed with his hand. “You are unlike anyone I have ever encountered, Hannah. I do not like to see you go, and I hope you will return. Of course, the next time you are invited to dine in the great hall, you must be sure to keep your dress on.”
I held my breath as his fingertip traced a light, teasing trail up my leg. When he next spoke, his voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Whether or not the dress stays on elsewhere, however, is a different story.”
Desire swelled hot inside me, sudden and unexpected and thrilling. I reached for his hand—