“Did you?” He crossed to the decanter and poured himself more brandy. “Out meeting demimondaines again?”
Melisande’s face grew cool. “Perhaps I should leave you by yourself.”
“No. No.” He smiled at her and raised his glass. “You know how I hate being alone. Besides, we must celebrate. I am close to accusing an old friend of treason.”
“You don’t sound pleased.”
“Au contraire. I am ecstatic.”
“Jasper . . .” She looked at her hands, clasped at her waist, as she gathered her words. “You seem obsessed with this hunt. With what happened at Spinner’s Falls. I worry that the hunt is harming you. Would it not be better to . . . to leave it be?”
He sipped the brandy, watching her. “Why would I do that? You know what happened at Spinner’s Falls. You know what this means to me.”
“I know that you seem caught by what happened, unable to move beyond it.”
“I watched my best friend die.”
She nodded. “I know. And perhaps now you should let your best friend go.”
“If it were me, if I’d been the one to die there, Reynaud would never rest until he found the traitor.”
She watched him silently, her tilted cat eyes mysterious, unfathomable.
His lip curled as he drank the rest of the brandy. “Reynaud wouldn’t give up.”
“Reynaud is dead.”
His entire body stilled, and he slowly raised his eyes.
Her chin was tilted up, her mouth firm and almost stern. She“mosowl looked as if she could face down an entire hoard of screaming Indians.
“Reynaud is dead,” she repeated. “And besides, you are not him.”
MELISANDE BRUSHED OUT her hair that night and thought about her husband. Vale had left his study without another word this afternoon after they’d argued. She stood up from her dressing table and roamed the room. The pallet was ready for their bed, and the decanter of wine on the side table had been newly filled. All was in readiness for her husband. Yet he wasn’t here.
It was past ten o’clock, and he wasn’t here.
He’d shared supper with her. Surely he hadn’t gone out again afterward without telling her? That had been his habit in the first days of their marriage, but things had changed since then. Hadn’t they?
Melisande drew her wrap about herself and made up her mind. If he wouldn’t come to her, then she’d go to him. She crossed with determined steps to the door leading into his rooms and twisted the handle.
Nothing happened.
Melisande stared at the door handle dumbly for a moment, not quite believing what she’d felt. The door was locked. She blinked, but then pulled herself together. Perhaps it had been mistakenly locked. After all, she didn’t usually go from her rooms to his. Normally it was the other way around. Melisande went out into the hall and walked to Vale’s door. She tried the handle and found that it, too, was locked. Well, this was silly. She rapped on the door and waited. And waited. Then rapped again.
It was perhaps five minutes before the truth dawned on her: he wasn’t going to let her in.
Chapter Eighteen
It was late by the time Jack hurried back to the castle. He barely had time to put away his suit and armor before rushing to the kitchens and bribing the little kitchen boy once again. Then he ran to the royal banquet room where the court had already sat down to eat their supper.
o;I think I do,” Melisande said slowly. “If the man or the woman holds all the emotional power, then they cannot truly love. I suppose one must lay oneself open to love. Let oneself be vulnerable.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but I think you must be right. Love is essentially a surrender.” She shook her head. “It would take courage to surrender like that.”
Melisande nodded, looking at the ground.
“I’m not a very courageous woman,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said softly. “In a way, every choice I’ve made in life has been out of fear.”