“No, I know many who war with their brothers for position and power.” Gray shook his head.
Rosalinde nodded. “With women it is the same, although it is a different kind of power.”
“And yet you would do anything for Celia,” he said, watching her face. He asked because he wanted to know. He asked because her answer might help him in his quest. He hated himself for the second reason.
Rosalinde caught her breath. “Right now Celia may not believe that.”
Gray drew her closer in the cold and stepped out to make them move again. He wanted to know what Rosalinde would confess, and he thought she would be more likely to say difficult words when he wasn’t staring at her, making her question what he would do with the information she shared.
“Is that why you were crying?” he pressed gently. “Did you two have a row?”
She was silent for what felt like a very long time, as if she were considering what to do and say. “The truth affects you, I suppose.”
He arched a brow as he looked at her. “Does it?”
She stopped and fully faced him again. The cold had made her cheeks pink, and in the faint light from the house behind him she was pretty as she’d ever been.
“Celia knows about…about what has happened betweenus,” she whispered.
Gray’s entire body tensed and he released her, his hands fisting at his sides. “About you and me?” he clarified.
She nodded.
“About us sharing a bed at the inn the night we met, about us being together since your arrival,” he continued.
She nodded again, this time more slowly. “And she is upset with me,” she whispered.
Gray frowned. This put a new wrinkle on an already complicated situation. After all, Celia was aware of Gray’s disapproval of her. She might be able to use this affair against him as much as he was trying to use the truth against her.
“I’m shocked you would tell her about us,” he said, keeping his tone neutral.
Rosalinde dipped her chin. “You say Stenfax is your best friend. Well, Celia is mine, although I have let her down so many times.”
Gray thought of her grandfather’s words just a few hours before. Fitzgilbert judged Rosalinde harshly for some unnamed crimes, as well as for marrying beneath her station. If Celia felt the same, that only solidified Gray’s poor opinion of the young woman.
“How have you let her down?” he asked, his voice barely carrying in the cold.
She met his gaze, and he saw her hesitation. He hated it, even though he deserved it. “My marriage,” she said softly.
His eyes narrowed. It seemed it was just as he’d thought. “She didn’t like you marrying a man with no standing?”
“No!” Rosalinde shook her head swiftly. “You misunderstand. My grandfather is such a…he’s horrible, Gray. He may pretend to care when it suits him, but he doesn’t.”
Gray’s thoughts turned again to the dismissive words Fitzgilbert had had for the remarkable women standing before him. He’d wanted to smash a fist through the old man’s nose at the time. Now he wished he had when it was clear how much Rosalinde was grieved by Fitzgilbert’s lack of care.
“What does your grandfather’s treatment have to do with your marriage?” he pressed, turning them back toward the house.
She sighed. “I was angry, hurt by him and his slurs against me, against my mother. I met Martin Wilde, who was a shopkeep, and I knew he was beneath what my grandfather would want for me. I admit that was part of the appeal, to defy him.”
She lifted her chin as she said it and her face lit up with the defiance once again. It made her look like a warrior in the moonlight, and Gray had to fist his hand at his side not to touch her right there and then.
“So you married him, despite his standing,” he urged.
She nodded. “I did. I left my sister behind in a fit of pique. And that left my grandfather able to…”
She trailed off and turned her face, as if she had thought better then to tell Gray the truth. As if she’d remember they were enemies, not friends, even if they were lovers.
“So your sister was angry because you left?” Gray pushed. “That seems unfair. You couldn’t have been expected to stay with her forever.”
