Page 77 of Dagger’s Shield

“You’re right, but don’t you dare tell anyone I said so.” She stood and stepped into my arms. “I told you if you held me, I would cry.”

“You’re not crying.”

“Give me a minute.”

“Take as long as you want.” I would hold her in my arms until the party started if she needed me to.

When my mobile chimed, Maëlle stepped away so I could read it.

“It’s from Blackjack.”

We’re on for fifteen hundred your time, I read to her.

A second message followed before I could answer the first.

You’ll have company.

Bertrand’s study door stood open the width of a hand. I knocked anyway.

“Entrez.”

He sat behind his desk, with a ledger open in front of him and his glasses low on his nose. He took them off when I sat in one of the chairs in front of him.

“Rourke. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve come to apologize.”

“You are apologizing?” He leaned back in his chair. “Go on.”

“This morning was ugly,” I said. “I’m sorry for my part in it.”

“Your part consisted of standing in a doorway.”

“Standing in a doorway while my fiancée and her father went at each other. Where I come from, a man steps in or he steps out. I managed neither.”

“You are marrying into a French family, Rourke. Guests don’t interfere.” He picked his glasses up. “Is that all?”

“No. There’s a second reason I’m here.”

He studied me. “Ah. I see. And that is?”

“Chantal.”

He put the glasses on. “My wife is not a subject I discuss with guests.”

“Then, discuss her with the man who’ll be your son-in-law. Sir, your wife has cancer. The doctors don’t yet know the stage, but the type is aggressive. Untreated, she’ll be gone inside a year.”

He scoffed. “What do you know about it?”

“Everything I could find. There’s no version of this that ends well without treatment.”

He rose and went to the window that overlooked the courtyard. The clock on the mantel ticked through a minute, then most of another. I didn’t move or speak. Finally, he did.

“Rémy’s mother was thirty-four,” he said, without turning to face me. “By the end, my brother carried her from the bed to the chair by the window so she could see the vines. She weighed less than the blankets they wrapped her in. The treatments took her hair, her strength, everything.” He put his hands in his pockets and said nothing more.

“That was twenty-five years ago. There have been significant advances in beating the disease. Yes, it’s aggressive, but I’ll repeat: it is treatable. She can live through this, Bertrand. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t say it. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

He didn’t move from the window.