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“I’ve come back to my senses now,” I said.I think.
The baron turned away and paced back and forth in front of the hearth. “You were beyond reason, and you spoke words no one understood. There were some who believed you demon-possessed.” He looked back at me sharply. “What do you have to say to that?”
My heart lurched in my chest. “I was not, and I am not, I promise,” I said. “Though I confess I don’t remember—”
I stopped, because suddenly Ididremember. My legs had turned to stone, the world had gone black, and there was nothing to do but tear at my own flesh and scream.
“Never mind,” I whispered. “I do recall it.”
“My physician had never seen such a fit.” The baron stopped his pacing in front of the nearest tapestry, the one with the white-horned horse tied to a flowering tree. He stared at it while he spoke. “It seems that I have been under some misunderstanding. Or perhaps some … ignorance,” he said haltingly. “I did not understand the desperate nature of your situation until”—and here he turned to gesture toward my half-prone body—“this.”
“Desperate how?” I whispered. What ifhewas one of the people who thought me possessed? Would he summon priests to pray the devil out? If that didn’t work, would they hang me—or burn me?
“Goriot believes that grief and hardship have weakened you in body and spirit. You are neither mad nor in thrall to the devil. You are simply wretched.”
Wretched. I bristled to hear him say such a thing, but it wastrue. I pulled the thin chemise tighter around my neck. “Yes, I am,” I said, “and I come from a wretched place, where we watch our brothers and our neighbors and our babies die, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” My voice dissolved into a sob. I didn’t know how to hold in all the pain.
“But you will do something about it,” he said.
“I have tried,” I said, “and I have failed.”At a cost so great I can’t think of it.
“On the contrary,” Baron Joachim said, “you have shown me the truth. I’ve ordered more provisions to be gathered. Your village will have as much as it needs, for as long as it needs it.”
“Truly?” I was afraid to believe his words. I’d thought he didn’t care about us in The Bend—but maybe it was just that he didn’tknow.
“You should not doubt me.”
I bowed my head as tears of relief rolled down my cheeks and landed on the silken coverlet. I hadhatedthis man—and part of me still did—but here he was, opening his hand to us, giving us back our lives. “My lord,” I said, “I will be forever grateful for your generosity.”
The baron looked at me strangely. After a moment, he said, “But perhaps you are possessed after all. The Hannah I know is not capable of such politeness.”
The smile on his lips was so faint it was almost invisible.
“I have suffered a terrible shock to my system,” I said gravely. “Perhaps I am not myself.”
“Most likely that is the case.”
The next thing I knew, he’d sat down on the edge of the bed. Something shifted in the air, and it did so as quickly and absolutelyas the sun coming out from behind a cloud. I could feel the heat of his body through the covers. Hear the beating of my heart in my ears. He was so near that I could slide my leg over and touch his thigh if I dared. Or if he reached his hand out, he could cup the curve of my hip—
Hannah, stop. You are a peasant, and he is a lord.
“I saw you years ago, when I was but eight,” I whispered. “You came to my village on your fine horse, in your own little shining suit of armor, and you looked down on us like we were no different from the dirt we stood on.”
Baron Joachim nodded slowly. “Ah, yes, the tour of my ancestral lands—I remember that day. It wasn’t as triumphal as it might’ve seemed, let me assure you. What I recall most is being petrified of my father. When I told him that I didn’t want to ride out that morning—my mother was dying, she’d be dead within a fortnight—he beat me.” He gave a hollow laugh. “Well, he had one of his guardsmen do it, so he didn’t sully his lordly hands. Twelve lashes of a leather strap right after breakfast. It was a miracle I could sit on that fine horse.”
So had it been pain rather than cruelty that I’d seen in his eyes as he rode through our village? It changed that old memory a little, tinging it with sympathy.
“My father never laid a hand on any of us, but he wasn’t able to feed us, either,” I said. “Had a full meal been promised me at the end of the day, I could’ve withstood any lashing.”
The baron looked at me without replying, and I felt my cheeks flush under his gaze.
“I don’t mean to suggest I’m stronger than you are,” I added quickly. “Just … more desperate. As we’ve agreed.”
“You don’t have to be desperate anymore,” the baron said. “You’ll have all that you need, today and always.”
My hands twisted in my lap. “I don’t know why you’re being so kind to me,” I said.
His cool eyes met mine. He said quietly, “You don’t?”
