A/N: this chapter and the next are so incredibly short that I'm posting this one early as a present for the anonymous reviewers who made my night. Tell me what you are thinking; I didn't realize how much I love getting feedback until I started getting some!
Chapter 12
If Mérante could have stepped backward in time one minute, he would have. How could his words have twisted so as they'd emerged from his mouth? No longer the elegant declarations he'd been imaging for months, instead they'd become a monstrous reminder of her lowly station. He hung his head in shame as he waited for her rebuke and was utterly unsurprised when it came.
"I intrigue you? I am not a puzzle box, Monsieur, to be solved then discarded. Thank you for reminding me of my station, thank you for reminding me of my debt, for in all this unending work and pain, I'd forgotten them. Thank you, sir, but I am not interested in trading one debtor for another. Please excuse me."
He watched as Odette moved excruciatingly slowly away from him. She seemed to be putting all her effort into merely putting one foot in front of the other. He started after her, then stopped. She'd looked at him with nothing short of contempt when he'd tried, and failed, to bare his heart to her. He straightened, his face hardening in determination. 'I will prove to her I am worthy,' he thought to himself, and turned back into his office and shutting out the world behind him.