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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 herapron. “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’texpectit. 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. Lookingat 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.
CHAPTER 97
“I simply don’t have time for this right now, Mr. Hassan,” Dr. Ager says curtly.
Jordan hadn’t been expecting the doctor to jump up and down in excitement at his discovery, but he’d definitely thought she’d beinterested. But even as he’s laying out Hannah’s story for her—the group home, the tent city on Twelfth Avenue—she barely looks up from her computer. Instead she’s typing as she talks, working a surprisingly fast hunt-and-peck.
“The New York State Office of Mental Health is investigating our program. The records system needed an update a decade ago. I’m short-staffed, the board is breathing down my neck, and I don’t know what you’re doing in my office when you’re supposed to be on the ward.” Her words come out quickly, distractedly. She hits the Return key with a bang.
“I’m on my lunch break,” Jordan says, but she doesn’t seem to hear him. She’s typing again.
“You don’t even have proof that Hannah stayed at Fillan House, do you? We’ve discussed this before. You’re not a detective, and neither am I or anyone who works at Belman.”
“I understand that,” Jordan says. “But I think knowing what happened might help her get better—”
“A different prescription regimen ismorelikely to help her. So would honest communication with those who are involved in her care,” Dr. Ager says briskly.
“What if she truly can’t remember? What if she needs someone to tell her?”
What if it’s easier for her to believe she’s a time traveler than it is for her to face whatever’s in her past?
Dr. Ager runs a hand through her short, graying bangs. She looks tired. Overwhelmed. “And what would happen then? Do you think Hannah would miraculously recover? I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t work that way. Psychiatry offers treatments, not cures, and there are no quick fixes. Your professors—not to mention your time here at Belman—should’ve taught you this by now.”
She turns back to her computer and begins typing again. He’s been dismissed.
Outside Dr. Ager’s office, Jordan slaps the bright white wall in frustration. Max, who is not trying very hard to settle into life on Ward 6, stalks by with a fistful of markers in his hand. He probably stole them from the art therapy room, but Jordan doesn’t feel any urge to find out.
