Chapter Two
Birdie was terrified she was going to lose her job. She had no idea what she’d been thinking. Well, sadly she actually did know what she’d been thinking. Or at least, what she’d been feeling.
Onyx.
Oh, that man had a hold on her that surpassed reason and sense. He had from the first moment she’d seen him and then…
When she got up the next morning, and put on her pale blue uniform, she felt…different. Altered fundamentally. Changed.
She avoided her own reflection as she got ready. Didn’t even look herself full in the face when she brushed her teeth. Until she couldn’t stand it anymore.
She lifted her gaze and looked herself in the eyes.
Her blond hair was wild.
She looked… She did look different. Her cheeks had more color in them than she’d ever seen, her lips still looked bruised from kissing him.
The king.
Terror, desire and grief clenched her heart in a fist.
What was going to happen when she walked in today?
She showered, trying to ignore how sensitive her body felt, then stepped out and dried her hair as straight as possible, and ruthlessly pinned it back into the bun she wore every day at work. Well, every day but yesterday, when the staff had been asked to look nicer for the funeral.
She borrowed one of her stepsister’s black dresses out of the back of her closet because she knew she’d never notice. Both of her stepsisters had so many different outfits from brand deals, and they usually only wore an outfit once.
She’d left her hair down and curly, and worn a dress much tighter and shorter than she normally would.
Now she was put back together. The woman she’d been last night successfully hidden beneath her loose-fitting uniform.
Still, she was very apparently her. What was he going to say?
There was really only one way to find out. But first, she had to run the gauntlet of her house.
This clattering old home, where she slept in the attic with one threadbare blanket and a mattress that could hardly be called that.
She sighed heavily and walked out the door, the noise of the day already blaring up the stairs.
“I’m filming a get-ready-with-me, get out of the frame.”
“I have more followers than you. It would help you if I was in your video.”
“Girls! Take turns filming.”
She did her best to paste a smile on her face, because she didn’t want to have a conversation with her stepmother, or her stepsisters.
She just wanted to get to work. To her job, which paid for quite a lot of the bills around here, in spite of the fact that her stepsisters fancied themselves to be influencers.
It wasn’t that she’d ever been thrilled with her stepfamily, but she’d been content with them as long as she’d believed her father was happy.
Her mother’s death had destroyed him. He’d gone from being a chaotic ball of fun to being stressed constantly, perennial circles beneath his eyes as he tried to manage being a single father, and realizing his dreams for the future.
Then he’d had a windfall, he’d met her stepmother and he’d seemed very nearly like happy, and that was good enough for Birdie.
She tried to be happy and optimistic as much as possible. If for no other reason than that she knew her mom wanted her to live happily. Even dying, her own mother had held onto optimism, not false hope, but a kind of joy that made Birdie want to live with as much of it as possible.
That didn’t mean it was easy.
After losing her mom everything had been different.
Day-to-day life had been easy if not idyllic when her father had been wealthy in cryptocurrency, but then it had collapsed suddenly overnight, giving him a heart attack and killing him with the stress of it, leaving her with her stepmother—a woman who considered herself nobility because of some specious relation to a minor British royal, and her stepsisters.
All of whom felt that they were above doing actual jobs.
That was why Birdie had gotten work at the palace when she was seventeen.
Birdie’s father had been a self-made man, one who had come up from nothing, and that made Birdie a commoner in the eyes of her stepmother.
That meant she was responsible for practical, steady work while her sisters focused on becoming niche internet microcelebrities.
If they knew what she’d done last night…
That made Birdie smile even more resolutely. She walked into the kitchen and saw Alana standing at the counter with a giant puffy headband holding her hair back, and a large light illuminating her face, her phone right in front of her.
“Don’t walk into my shot,” Alana said.
“I won’t,” said Birdie, deftly moving around her and making her way to the fridge to grab her sack lunch and a cup of yogurt.
“You got back late last night,” her stepmother said, eyeing her closely.
“It was the queen’s funeral,” Birdie said, her chest getting so tight it was almost impossible for her to breathe. “We had a lot of extra work to do.”
“Of course,” she said. “I know that. But I assume that you have information about who is visiting. And about that poor man.”
If there was one thing her stepmother was, it was fake. Asking after another person’s well-being wasn’t in her repertoire. “Do you mean…the king?” Birdie asked.
“Of course. This must be such a devastating loss for him!” Her pause was artful. Very nearly believable. “But obviously he will have to marry again. He didn’t have an heir.”
Birdie’s cheeks went hot. She didn’t need to say anything. She didn’t need to say anything. She didn’t need—
“He’s only just buried his wife. I don’t think that it’s the right time to talk about his next marriage.”
Her stepmother narrowed her eyes, and Birdie took some satisfaction in watching all the places her Botox failed to keep her skin from wrinkling. “Don’t talk like you know him, Roberta. You probably never even see him in that massive palace.”
He’s been inside me, actually.
She did not say that.
She also didn’t tell her stepmother that she spoke to the king fairly regularly. She wished that she didn’t. She wished that he were distant. Instead, at seventeen she’d been assigned work in his study. Often bringing him food when he was in there.
She wasn’t his personal maid or anything like that, but during the day she was the one that attended him. Not that she’d ever shared that bit of information with her stepmother. Nor would she.
Developing a crush on him was easy. He was a beautiful man.
His cheekbones high and well-formed, his eyes black like onyx, like his name, his mouth compelling.
But he was also kind. Interesting. Funny, even.
It wasn’t like they had long conversations.
It was just little exchanges here and there. But she’d fallen for him.
She might’ve felt guilty about being in love with a married man except it was honestly a lot like having a crush on a celebrity.
Yes, she did see him, but he was as unreachable as he might’ve been if he were on the silver screen.
At least, he had been. Until last night.
It had all been too much for her to bear.
She’d walked into the room, just to get a little bit of solace after the overwhelming sadness of the funeral, of all the proceedings, and he’d been in there. All she’d wanted to do was comfort him.
But it was difficult to remove that from how much she wanted him. And then, when he kissed her…
She would’ve given him anything. She had given him everything.
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.”
“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 know who 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.