The house was dead silent. The only sound in Ines's dark bedroom was the feathered ticking of the mantel clock and the ragged sound of her own breathing.
She was not in her bed. She was on it, lying on top of the covers in her simple linen nightgown, staring up at the dark, oppressive rectangle of the canopy. She clutched a large, down-filled pillow to her chest, holding it as if it were a shield.
"Why?" she whispered to the ceiling. "Why did it turn out like this?"
Her mind, a cruel and efficient torturer, replayed the entire day. The library. The dropped roses. The look on his face. The paper.
"If I hadn't dropped that stupid, stupid paper," she muttered, her eyes stinging. "If I hadn't been in the library at all. If I hadn't written an erotic novel in the first, stupid, idiotic place!"
