“You’re a good girl.”
Birdie grimaced. Elizabeth wouldn’t say that if she had any idea what had happened last night.
Birdie had no idea what it made her. Besides desperate.
Her mouth dry, she made her way to the king’s study. Then she took a breath, and pushed the door open. He barely looked up at her.
“Good morning,” he said.
Birdie stopped, her stomach clenched tight like someone had grabbed it, her heart leaping up into her throat. His head was bent over the newspaper he was reading, a dark lock of hair fallen over his forehead and her fingers itched to brush it back. He looked exhausted. The hollows of his cheekbones were more hollow than they had been a week ago. He had circles under his eyes.
She wanted to go to him. Sit on his lap and smooth those lines away. Feel him hot and hard beneath her, his arms around her.
She stood, frozen. And then he did look up. Their eyes met, and she felt like she’d been punched. “Could I get some coffee?”
She stood there, staring.
Oh God.
He didn’t recognize her. He hadn’t known who she was.
She served him every day, and he didn’t knowwho she was.
Last night, it had been dim in the room, and while she would never mistake him for someone else, he simply didn’t look at her close enough on a given day for her to be significant to him.
She had just been a woman. Any woman. Anybody. He had taken her because he needed comfort. He probably had been thinking of his wife.
You foolish girl. You foolish, stupid girl. Of course you don’t mean anything to him.
He’s never looked at you closely enough, all the times you’ve been in here serving him, all the times you thought you were having a moment, he never even looked at you closely enough to know who you were if you changed your clothes or your hair.
“Of course, Your Highness,” she said.
On completely numb feet she stumbled out of the room, making her way toward the kitchen. She went past Elizabeth. “Birdie?”
She ignored her as she went to make coffee.
Well. There was one good thing about this. She wouldn’t lose her job.
At least, that was what she thought. Because of course, he had no idea the two of them had slept together, so why would it matter?
And as the weeks passed, the ache in her chest didn’t go away. And even worse, the cramps from her monthly didn’t arrive.
There was no way. One time. Just one time.
But even still, she stopped at a drugstore far away from her house before she went home from work a month after the queen’s funeral, and bought a test.
She couldn’t risk taking it at home. So she drove from the convenience store to a coffeehouse she never went to, bought a drink and then slipped into the bathroom. She opened up the test and took it. Waiting for the results with bated breath.
It was positive.
She, Roberta Matthews, almost always called Birdie, maid at the palace, servant to a king, was pregnant with the heir to the throne of Basilia.
And the king didn’t even know they’d slept together.
Chapter Three
Four months later
