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FORTY-SIX

ROSE

I wait until it’s a reasonable time to storm over to Harriet’s room. Not because I particularly care for her sleep, but because I want time to sit with my theory, just in case I find holes in it. The more I think about it, though, the more convinced I am. Even if I allow for the possibility that Harriet simply saw the rumors about us online and was throwing it in my face, it doesn’t fit neatly. Harriet was too confident, too quick.

Harriet, I’m certain, didn’t suspect something. She knew something.

She is up and dressed already when I bang my fist on her door, and she opens it with a look of alarm. “Rose? What—”

My heart begins to thud. If I’m wrong, my next words will destroy everything. I would be giving my most dangerous secret to the person who has more reason to want revenge on me than perhaps anybody I know. But if I’m right, it’s the only way to ensure the truth. I wait until she’s closed the door behind us, then I lower my voice and say, in the most threatening tone I can muster, “I just want to know why you thought it would be okay to kiss my girlfriend with me in the next room.”

Harriet goes pale and she sits on her pristinely made bed. Good Lord, her room is spotless. “I… I’m sorry. I wasn’t… You two weren’t visiting each other as much anymore, and you kept going out with Alfie, and you didn’t even speak at Florence’s party. I thought you might have broken up,” she finishes. She looks sheepish at her poor reasoning—I’m sure she knows as well as I do that it’s not appropriate to kiss a taken person simply because you suspect they might have broken up with their partner. But I couldn’t care less about her thought process. She’s inadvertently given me the answer I’m really here for.

“But you did know we were together at one point,” I continue. “Somehow.”

Her eyes widen as she realizes her mistake. Fear flashes across her features.

“Because you’ve known since November,” I say. “When you contacted the palace to tell them I was seeing Danni Blythe.”