“I never left,” she said in a deadened voice.
He turned and quickly dressed, cursing his trembling hands. He strode to the chamber door, paused, and said over his shoulder, “You are mistress of Wolffeton, my lady. I expect a decent meal. Rouse yourself and see to it.”
He heard her quickly indrawn breath, and added harshly, “And bathe yourself. You smell of horse sweat.”
And fear, he added silently. She smelled of fear.
“Did you hurt her?” Guy demanded.
Graelam drew a sharp breath. “If I killed her, ’twould be no more than she deserved,” he said, eyeing his knight coldly.
“My lord, she told the truth. There is naught but honesty in her. If I can see it, you, as her husband, cannot be blind to it.”
“Guy, you are a fool,” Graelam said wearily, forgetting his jealousy of the younger man. “The necklace is gone.”
“The necklace from Al-Afdal’s camp?”
“Aye,” Graelam said shortly. “Damn her,” he added softly. “I would have given it to her.”
Guy studied his master’s face. He is suffering, Guy realized, shocked with his insight. For the first time in his life, he is suffering for a woman. He said no more, wanting to think. If Kassia had not taken the valuable necklace, then who had? The answer was not long in coming to him.
The evening meal, if not excellent, was at least more palatable than it would have been had Kassia not been at Wolffeton. But her movements, her instructions, were mechanical. She saw vaguely that there was pity and concern in some of the eyes that looked at her. In others, there was puzzlement. Nan regarded her with contemptuous triumph.
And there was Blanche. It had taken her benumbed brain several hours before she had realized the perfidy of the other woman. She didn’t know what to do. If she confronted Blanche, she most likely would sneer at her and call her a liar. If she told Graelam what she believed . . . She shuddered. In his eyes, Blanche was everything Kassia was not. Never would he believe her. She didn’t know what to do.
Her silence that evening in the great hall was seen by most as the proper response of a chastised wife. She avoided Graelam’s eyes, not wanting to see the distrust, even the hatred he must feel for her. She ate little, unable to stomach the blandest of the vegetables.
“So, you will dwindle away with your sulking?”
Her head snapped up at her husband’s taunting voice.
“I do not sulk,” she said, and quickly amended, “at least I haven’t for some five years now.”
“Just as you do not lie. Then eat.” He eyed her closely, and added on a harsh drawl, “When I told you you had filled out a bit, I did not mean that you had grown presentable. You still scarce have a woman’s body.”
She flinched. So that was why he had not forced her. He found her so repulsive that he could not bring himself to take her, even in his rage.
She knew she should be ecstatic, but tears sparkled on the tips of her thick lashes.
“If you cry in front of everyone, I shall truly give you cause to do so.”
“You already have,” she said, gulping down the hated tears.
“You amaze me, Kassia,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. “Do you never tread warily?”
She said nothing, merely stared fixedly into her goblet of wine.
“Perhaps I should return you to your father. At least your absence would bring me some peace.”
The response he knew he would gain from his words was swift in coming. “Nay, please do not.”
“Ah, anything to save your father. Anything to save Belleterre. This man who felt so sorry for you, Kassia, you say it was he who told you that to return to Belleterre would lose all?”
“Aye, that is what I said to you.” She raised weary eyes to his mocking face. “Why do you torment me? I have told you everything.” But she was lying, not telling him about Blanche, and he saw the lie in her eyes.
A surge of rage swept through him, and he gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles showed white.
“Leave me,” he said finally, his voice harsh, “and know, my lady wife, that I can make your life a hell if you do not admit to your lies.”