AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jasper topped off his glass of brandy and went to stare into the fire. Was this what he wanted? If Horn was the traitor, could he really turn him in to the authorities? He closed his eyes and sipped the brandy. He’d put these events in motion, and he was no longer sure he had any control over them.
When he looked up again, Melisande was standing in the doorway.
Jasper drained his glass. “My lovely wife. Where have you been?”
“I took a walk in Hyde Park.”
“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.
