“Not to virtuous women, you mean?” she said, leaning forward with her hands on her hips. “Women like Agnes Stafford?”
“Precisely.”
“I suppose she is just the sort of woman you want.” She clasped her hands under her chin and batted her eyelashes. “One who will sit at home meekly awaiting your bidding.”
“I will for certain not have to worry about finding her in other men’s bedchambers, doing God knows what!”
His words were like a blow. She stepped back, tears stinging at the back of her eyes. In a low voice, she said, “I would never bed another man.”
“But you damned well would let him think you would,” he hissed at her. “What man wants a wife who lets other men believe she will bed them? Or who will let them get that close?”
He was so angry she could hear his ragged breathing.
“You could not have believed I would accept your going alone to Gloucester’s bedchamber,” he said, his eyes burning holes into her. “Nay, you just thought I would never find out.”
The truth of his words cut through her. Still, she tried to defend herself. “If you understood my need to find justice for my grandfather, I could have told you. But you never wanted to listen. You never wanted to hear it.”
“The dead do not want or need your justice,” he said. “Could you not sacrifice this dangerous obsession for me? For the life we could have together?”
“And what sacrifice would you make for me?” she asked in a choked voice. “Must all the sacrifice be mine?”
“You have sacrificed nothing!” The bite of bitterness was hard in his voice. “I will not have a wife who will lie to me and bring shame upon my family and upon my children.”
The harshness of his judgment made her spirits drop so low that her limbs felt heavy and weak. Still, she forced herself to step closer and touch his arm.
“Jamie, is there no hope for us?”
He jerked his arm away as if her touch had singed him. “How could I do my duty and return to France? I cannot be wondering who my wife will cozy up to as part of some foolish scheme of hers while I’m gone.
“And I will warn you,” he said, narrowing his eyes and jabbing his finger at her. “You may find that when you lead men to water, there are some who will insist on taking a drink.”
He spun away from her and began striding back toward the castle. Linnet had to hold her skirts high and half run to keep up with him.
“What else did you keep from me?” he spat out without turning to look at her. “How many ways did you make a fool of me this time?”
“ ’Twas just the one time, I swear it.” She held on to her headdress with one hand as she trotted beside him. “And I did not make a fool of you. You know there is no one else.”
“What I know is that once again there was something more important to you than the bond between us.”
“ ’Tis not true.”
“More important than the life we could have had together.”
“Nay,I—”
“More important than keeping your word to me.” “But I also made a pledge to my gran—”
“More important than me.”
“Nay, not more im—”
“And there always will be something more important than me.”
“But I love you,” she pleaded. “I love you with all my heart.”
He halted and turned on her, his eyes blazing. “I’ve seen how it is between my mother and father, and between Stephen and Isobel, and I can tell you this: True love does not come last. ’Tis not what you consider after every other blessed thing.”
He lifted his hands palm out and began stepping backward. “I am done waiting for you to put aside the hate that will surely destroy you. I am done with all of it. I am done with you.”
