She clasped her hands in front of her, still trying to play the innocent. “I came into the study the next day and you clearly didn’t know. I thought you did. I—”
“Liar. Go to my office. I must finish here, and then I will go and find you.”
She shook her head. Gathered the dress in her arms, and moved away from him. “No.”
He took a step toward her, rage driving him. “You dare to defy me?”
It was her turn to hold her ground, that innocence transforming then to outrage. “I’m not going to subject myself to more of your scorn. I’ve had enough of it. For the whole rest of my life. I’ve taken it from my family for years, I’ll be damned if I take it from you. If I ever expose my child to such a thing.”
She pulled away from him, stepping back and tripping in the grass, before kicking her shoes off. Then she turned and ran from him. Leaving him shocked. He moved slowly over to where she had discarded the first shoe, bending down and picking it up, holding it in his hand.
He heard movement behind him, and he turned. Andrei was there.
“How much of that did you hear?”
“I only heard a yell, and came over.” He looked down and saw the shoe in Onyx’s hand. “I take it that didn’t go well.”
“I need you to send your guards to her house.”
“Who? The woman that you…”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
He looked grimly at the empty expanse of darkness that she’d vanished into. “The maid.”
Chapter Six
She couldn’t goback to the palace. She knew that. She was in abject misery, and she knew that the only reason her stepmother hadn’t thrown her out into the street was that she was trying to play all of this to the best of her advantage.
She was pregnant with Onyx’s child, and even though her stepmother hadn’t told her stepsisters, she knew that she was weighing how to use it. That she had realized it. Even without the two of them speaking of it. When she had arrived home that night after the dreadful encounter with Onyx, where he had accused her of all manner of unfair and unimaginable things, when he had turned not into the cherished lover or beloved king that she had known before, but into a monster, her stepmother had met her at the door.
“I take it that didn’t go to plan.”
“No,” she said, looking her stepmother full in the face because she had no intention of being cowed. She could not be more humiliated than she already was. She couldn’t even face Elizabeth. Even though the other woman had known there was a possibility this could happen, even though Birdie had known, it was the vitriol in his voice, in his face, that had truly wounded her. It was unconscionable to him that she was the mother of his child. That she was the one he’d slept with.
“Poor Birdie. At least you’ll always have your family.”
It had been a threat, not a comfort, and Birdie was simply waiting for exactly what might happen.
Would her stepmother sell her story to the press? Would she attempt to blackmail the palace? Any of those things were possible for her stepmother, also secret, maniacal options that Birdie—as a normal human being—couldn’t fathom.
And so she had been waiting. Until the day the king arrived at her house.
“Go upstairs,” her stepmother said.
“Absolutely not,” Birdie said. “I have to speak to him.”
If he was here, then it meant maybe they could have a reasonable conversation. Maybe. Even if they couldn’t quite rise to the level of reasonable, as she had been sitting with all of this for the past few days, she knew that she did need to see him again. Because they had to come to an agreement about how they were going to handle this. Even though she was bitter at him, hated him almost as much as she’d ever loved him for the way that he had hurt her that night, she knew that they had to have a conversation.
He was a king, and she had very little power.
She also had no money to take care of her child. Her child’s father was a king, and that child was owed his father’s money. Status. It had nothing to do with what Birdie wanted for herself. Everything to do with the fact that as it was in her power, she would make her child comfortable.
Undoubtedly, the king would see that as evidence that she was a gold digger. She didn’t care. Her own father had left her with nothing to her name. Her stepmother had control of absolutely everything—such as it was. It had left Birdie vulnerable to this abuse by her family, and one thing she would never, ever do was leave her child vulnerable. Nor would she allow a father to dodge his financial responsibility. To put anything before that child.
She loved her father. It was difficult for her to admit to herself that he had let her down. Easier to blame her stepmother, who was still here, and actively causing harm in her life. But the truth was, her father could have protected her. He should have known his wife well enough to have seen that she would give everything to herself, and her own children, that she would never treat Birdie like one of her own.
