My voice came out ragged and raw. “Who is it? Who does the baron court?”
Margery only pressed her lips into a line as she swept dust into the fireplace, making the flames leap and hiss.
“I know I have no right to him,” I said. “But he came to me—here, in my room. And the way he looked at me…”
I was too ashamed to go on. Was I supposed to tell her how he’d pressed his body against mine, close and hot like a secret promise? She must have heard what he’d said, she’d been there, listening in the corner. You are unlike anyone I have ever encountered, Hannah.
“Why won’t you tell me who she is?”
Margery swept more vigorously. I wanted to run over and shake her.
“Please,” I said.
When she finally turned to me, her pale blue eyes were full of sympathy. “My dear, you said it yourself: you’ve no right to him. More than that, you could never deserve him.”
Her words would’ve stung me even if they weren’t so true. “But I want him, Margery. I can’t explain how hate can turn itself upside down and inside out, but it has. I want him.”
Margery set the broom aside and wiped her hands on her apron. “In my experience,” she answered, “what people like us want doesn’t matter in the slightest.”
“I know,” I said. “And yet—I thought he cared for me.”
“He does, in his way,” Margery said. “But when a countess is recently and tragically widowed, what do you expect Baron Joachim to do? Snub her for a peasant and a thief?”
I couldn’t voice my answer. Because of course I expected that.
Or no—I didn’t expect it. But I had hoped for it.
“Where is the baron’s chamber?” I asked.
Margery resumed her sweeping, ignoring me again. It didn’t matter. I knew how to sneak around a castle. I could feel my way through the dark.
Which was exactly what I did.
The moon was a silver sliver in the sky when I crept from my room, barefoot on the cold stones. I went down dark hallways until I came to a door just a bit ajar, firelight flickering on the other side.
It beckoned me in.
I pushed the door open. The room was far grander than my own, and my eye was immediately drawn to the bed. It was ornately carved and seemed as big as a ship. The heavy curtains had been pulled back, revealing the sleeping form of the baron.
I tiptoed to the edge of the bed. And as I stood over him, my heart pounding, I saw that he wasn’t sleeping after all. His eyes were wide open.
For a moment, we stared at each other. Flooded with longing, I began to tremble. And then he reached up and untied the knot at the neck of my shift. With impossible gentleness, he slid the cloth from my shoulders, and it fell in a white heap at my feet. Looking at me, naked in the firelight, the baron sucked in his breath and let it out with a sigh.
“Come even closer,” he whispered.
Without hesitation I obeyed him, lifting the covers and sliding into the bed next to his long, lean body. He rolled toward me, on top of me, and his mouth came down and covered mine in a crush of heat. My arms went around his shoulders and then slid along his smooth back to his hips, pulling them toward me. He moaned into my neck. I thought I might die of desire.
“My name is Hannah Dory, and I am yours,” I whispered.