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“You have enough money to buy ten houses. Go wherever you like.”
He eyed her a long moment, as if he still thought he could come up with some argument that might move her, and then he nodded. “Give me an hour to collect my things. Do you want me to send you word of my new address?”
“Certainly. It would be useful to have if I ever find myself with the desire to speak to you again.”
He shouldered past the two of them and paused at the door for a parting shot. “I’m sure you will,” he said. “I expect it will be at your wedding.”
She and Jayla waited in the dining room for the entire hour it took him to pack a few bags and gather his necessary papers. Between her headache and a rising nausea, Madeleine couldn’t bring herself to eat, but she nibbled on a piece of toast just to have something to do. Two of the servants crept to the door as if they wanted to clear the table or sweep the floor, but she just shook her head and they backed away. She wondered how much of the argument they’d heard. The door had been cracked open just enough to allow Jayla to monitor their conversation—because Jayla had predicted her father would try to hurt her—and Jayla had been standing guard that whole time. Madeline didn’t think anyone else could have caught the incendiary accusations about the priesthood and the god. She didn’t think any of the servants had heard her call her father a murderer.
But everyone would know she had kicked him out of the house.
This story would be all over Corcannon before noon. She would have to invent some way to explain it to her own circle, since she obviously couldn’t tell the truth.
She caught the sound of her father’s footsteps descending the stairwell, heard him give an instruction to the footman. The door opened—he spoke again—and the door closed.
That was when Madeleine sank bonelessly to the floor in a puff of fabric and buried her head in her hands.
Chapter Twenty-five:
Madeleine
Tivol was the first to arrive, not two hours after her father’s departure. Madeleine briefly entertained the thought that he was dropping by for a casual visit, and she was tempted to have Ella tell him she was too unwell to see him. But that would just make him suspicious, and Tivol could be as persistent as Reese. He might actually run upstairs and barge into her room—and if she asked Jayla to throw him out, Madeleine would give away the whole game. She had to come up with an explanation that he would believe. And that would preoccupy him so much he wouldn’t probe deeper for the truth.
So she agreed to receive him in the downstairs gilt room, but she presented herself as sick and suffering. When he strode through the door, she was lounging on a sofa, resting her aching head against a pillow and letting all her weariness show on her face.
“Madeleine! My darling!” Tivol exclaimed. He came over to give her a quick kiss on the cheek, then pulled up a footstool to sit on. He took both her hands in his and said, “You are always beautiful, of course, but you look as dreadful as a beautiful woman possibly could.”
She wanted to wrench her hands away; she wanted to scrub his kiss from her face. Instead, she lay there quiescent, allowing her lips to tremble. “I have such a headache,” she said.
“I am so sorry to hear it! I won’t stay long. But Madeleine—I have heard the most extraordinary tale—”
She turned her face away. “I’ve quarreled with my father.”
“And demanded that he leave the house? What could possibly have brought you to such a pass?”
It wasn’t hard to make her voice wavering and woebegone. “I told him—I told him I’m not going to marry you next month.”
There was a short silence, then Tivol rubbed his thumbs along the backs of her hands in what he seemed to think was a comforting manner. “It’s been a lot, I know,” he said. “To have this decision so suddenly thrust upon us! Trying to plan the wedding, and looking for a house, and thinking about how everything will change—but, darling, don’t be overwhelmed by all the details.” He kissed her knuckles. “Just think about finally starting our lives together. Something we’ve both wanted for longer than I can even remember.”
Still staring at the back of the sofa, she said, “I told him I wanted to marry Reese instead.”
Now the silence in the room was profound. Tivol’s hands all of a sudden seemed stiff and bony; he released her. “I see,” he said.
She covered her face. “I’m so confused!” she wailed. “Reese makes me so angry—and yet I can’t stop thinking about him—and he tells me he loves me. And I think I love him, but I’m not sure, but I think I do.” Now she pulled herself into a smaller shape and presented herself as one wretched ball of misery. “And I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t see how I can marry you if I want to be with another man.”
It was a long time before he answered. She had to imagine that he was furious but trying hard not to show it. She was too valuable a prize to lose; he would have to placate and cajole her, aim to keep her friendship even as she spurned his love. He had to try to win her back. The thought was sickening.
“Well, this is a blow,” he said in the unconvincing tones of a man trying to use bravery to cover an almost fatal wound. “Give me a moment to absorb it.”
“It’s not like I meant it to happen,” she whispered.
“No. I don’t suppose you did. Love is like that sometimes.”
It was such a generous thing to say that for a moment she was pierced with doubt. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he wanted to marry her simply because he loved her. But then she remembered the cardu bread and the knife and the blood, and anger filled her again with cold certainty.
“And I told my father and we had a terrible fight and he said the most awful things to me—and so I asked him to leave. And he did.”
“You will reconcile with him soon enough, I’m sure.”
