It was her first time, and she couldn’t have regretted it. How could she? He was the object of her deepest desires, and he needed her. But now she had to go to work and face him, and she didn’t know how things would be different.
Combined with all of that, she simply couldn’t bear her stepmother trying to scheme her ridiculous daughters into the palace.
“It doesn’t matter whether I know him or not,” she said. “His wife has been dead for three days. And if you had seen him at the funeral, then you would know how heartbroken he is.”
That was the one thing that hurt. Last night, he could’ve easily been imagining that he was with the queen. Did she even have a right to feel hurt about that? She had moved in on a man who was grieving. He’d needed comfort, and she had provided that. But perhaps part of accepting that was accepting that it wasn’t about her personally, no matter how much it had mattered to her.
“Keep your ear to the ground,” her stepmother said. “We need to know when he plans to take another queen, because you know he will. And you know he can’t tarry.”
The annoying thing was, it was true. He would have to produce an heir sooner rather than later. He was thirty, after all.
There was now a distressing mortality rate among the royalty in this country. His parents, the king and queen, had died when he’d been just sixteen. Birdie had been so young she didn’t remember a time when anyone had been king except for him.
But now, his wife was gone. He’d have to find a new one. Though one thing her stepmother was wrong about was any inkling that she might have a hope in hell at marrying one of her daughters off to him.
Specious royal connections and internet fame did not a queen make.
Of course, Birdie didn’t have a chance at all.
With hate in her heart, and a knot in her stomach, she got into her tiny, ramshackle car and drove to the palace.
Her hands were shaking when she got to the staff lot, and by the time she walked in she thought she was going to throw up.
Elizabeth saw her and grabbed her arm. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Birdie’s own stepmother could not be called a mother figure, not in any capacity. But lovely Elizabeth had been a soft influence like Birdie had never known from the moment she’d started working at the palace three years earlier.
Her dark hair was streaked with gray, her blue eyes glimmering with good humor.
She always looked out for Birdie. In fact, Elizabeth was the reason that Birdie had ended up working in the king’s study. She had thought that Birdie would be good for the job, and had worked to get her in even though she was inexperienced.
“You don’t look okay. I think yesterday was taxing for you.”
Of course it was. The man that she loved was going through an unimaginable pain, and Birdie had guilt-inducing, complicated feelings about it even without sleeping with him. The thing was, even though he wasn’t married now, he was as off-limits as he’d ever been.
A king couldn’t marry a maid.
The end.
No discussion.
The best thing she could hope for was to become a mistress. She wasn’t really sure how she felt about that.
Well.
She had allowed him to take whatever liberties he wanted, and taken many of her own besides. So there was that.
There was also the fact that it was a horrible thing to be even remotely pleased by the vacancy the queen had left behind. She would never say that she was glad she was gone. That was absolutely horrendous.
“No more so than it was for anyone else. I’m fine.”
“He’s in his study already.”
Birdie did her best not to react to that.
“I’ll go check in on him.”
