“What are you saying, Blanche?” she whispered. “You know I did not hire those men. How could you ever believe that?” Her voice rose in her disbelief. “You saw them come after us. Surely you knew that they meant us harm. Their leader, Edmund, he raped you! Surely you realized they—”
“Yet you are returned safe and unharmed,” Graelam interrupted her smoothly.
“Kassia,” Blanche said urgently, “you are here again, safe. It is obvious that they meant you no harm.” She shrugged. “I was not certain if you were fleeing from them when they rode toward us. I thought that you were . . .” She paused, leaving a delicate, damning silence.
“That I what, Blanche?” Kassia said harshly, disbelieving what she was hearing.
“That you had hired them to help you escape Wolffeton and your husband. Forgive me if I misjudged you.”
Kassia stared at the circle of disbelieving faces around her. Edmund had warned her, but she had not understood. “But the man raped you, Blanche. How could you believe that they would do less to me?”
“He did not rape me, Kassia. No man save my husband has ever touched me. He merely . . . fondled me for a moment, and that made me scream. I believed he was in a hurry to return to you.” That, she thought frantically, must surely have been the truth!
“Kassia,” Graelam said very quietly, “you will cease your act.”
Act? What am I acting?
She struggled to her feet and looked at the faces around her. She saw Guy reach out to take her hand, saw her husband shove him away.
“Listen to what she has to say,” Guy said to Graelam.
“I will listen,” Graelam said. “Sit down, my lady. And talk.”
Kassia sat down again in the chair, her eyes staring blankly ahead. It was a nightmare, she thought vaguely. In a moment, she would awake, and she would be safe and warm.
“Speak,” she heard Graelam say.
She raised her eyes to her husband’s cold, set face and said very softly, “Blanche and I went riding yesterday morning. We were without escort, but on Wolffeton land. Three men came toward us. We tried to escape them, but they caught us. The leader, Edmund, told me he had raped Blanche and let her go. He took me up on his destrier. I thought he would rape me or kill me, or hold me for ransom, but he did nothing. He was . . . kind to me. He brought me home.”
Graelam regarded her silently. “Such a pitiful little tale,” he said finally. “Surely you had ample time to invent something more believable.” He turned to Guy. “Well, chivalrous knight, have I given her enough of a hearing?”
Guy had been watching Blanche’s face. He saw fear and something else in her eyes. Kassia’s story had been so unbelievable as to be the truth. He said quietly to Graelam, “If Kassia hired these men to return her to her father, what did she pay them?”
Blanche smiled, her relief so palpable that she quickly lowered her head so no one would see it.
“And why did she have them return her to you, my lord? If indeed she did hire them to escape you, the fact that she changed her mind must mean something.”
“Perhaps,” Blanche said, knowing that she must say something, hating herself for the damning words even as she spoke them, “she paid the men with her body.”
“No!”
Blanche scented victory. She must not succumb to pity or regret now. She said calmly, her eyes thoughtful on Kassia’s face, “And perhaps they did not like the bargain and thus let you go.”
You have been such a fool, my girl. Such a fool. Kassia gazed at Blanche helplessly. Slowly, the words forced from her mouth, she said, “My lord, I did not try to escape you.”
“I have heard enough for the moment, my lady,” Graelam said calmly. “Go to our bedchamber. I will come to you soon.”
Guy, who knew his lord much better than did Kassia, felt shuddering alarm at Graelam’s passionless voice. He touched his hand to Graelam’s sleeve. “I believe her,” he said.
“Do you indeed, Sir Guy? Do you not question why a man would kidnap a woman only to return her unharmed? It is foolishness.”
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“I believe her,” Guy repeated, more firmly this time.
“You,” Blanche hissed at him, wanting to strike him for his obvious concern for Kassia, “are a besotted fool.”
Kassia grabbed up her skirts and fled up the stairs to his bedchamber. I should have begged Edmund to send me to Brittany, she thought. She shook away the thought. No, she would convince Graelam of the truth. After all, she was his wife. Surely that must mean something!