Chapter 88: First day (1)
"Don’t wake him up. Don’t wake him up," Annalise whispered as she slowly turned Rafael’s doorknob to go inside.
The sun was high in the sky, but she heard Rafael and the knights had a late night, so breakfast would be late. Annalise enjoyed not having to run around with everyone so early in the morning.
Annalise poked her head inside the room to get a good look at Rafael’s bed and saw him asleep on his bed with his torso exposed. Annalise eased her way inside and closed the door just as slowly as she had opened it. She wanted to get everything on her list done without waking him.
Mavis told her to open the curtains first to let some light into the room, but Annalise felt that would wake Rafael too soon. She planned to bend Mavis’s list to work for her.
Annalise began to take up the armor placed on his table and move it to where the other armor was on the shelves. She moved her thumb along the puncture marks where Rafael had been struck by something. ’He must have been training with swords instead of a wooden stick. How bold.’
One by one, she quietly moved his armor and carefully slid the shirt he must have taken off before bed off the side of the bed, where it was barely hanging on.
Annalise gulped, keeping her eyes on Rafael, who slept with one hand placed behind his head, the other thrown off to the side of the bed, his chest exposed, and the blanket covering the other half of his body. From where she stood, pulling on the shirt to get it off the bed, it looked like he was also wearing nothing on the other half of his body, but she hoped that was not the case.
Annalise sighed in relief after she got the shirt off the bed without waking him. She balled it up and took it to the basket of clothes she would give one of the other maids to wash. Annalise then proceeded to go inside the bathroom to get his bath started. Each step she took pained her that she was serving Rafael Callahan this way. The only way to get over this shame would be to one day kill him.
At the sound of the bathroom door closing, Rafael woke up. The smallest sound in his room would always make him wake up since it might be a threat.