Charity Begins at Home (41 page)

"And you believed them?" she cried. "Gossip overheard in a taproom? Accusing me of—" She couldn't say the words
betraying you.

"No. They weren't describing, only predicting, and in some detail." With a savage, smooth motion, he pulled out his sword. Instinctively she stepped back from the rush of wind as the blade slashed an inch from her leg. She heard a splash of water, and saw the tip of the sword flash silver, deftly beheading a waterscorpion at the lip of the fountain.

The two pieces held together for an improbable moment, then Nicholas swung up his sword and they fell separately into the water. Allegra gasped as drops splashed on her skirt, and shrank back from the tainted pool.

Automatically, Nicholas wiped the blade of his sword on his breeches and sheathed it. As if nothing had happened, he said, "So tell me, wife, tell me. Where were they wrong? What shouldn't I believe? That you left your home to come to London to see him? That you sent your son away? That Keverne was a frequent visitor to our house—our house—in London? That he got you invited here, and your sisters too as some sort of blind? That the other men at the party are wagering on the night of your succumbing?"

She gazed down at the dead thing in the water and couldn't speak. His recital was such a knot of half-truths she couldn't begin to undo it anyway. Finally she whispered fiercely, "If you won't believe me, I have nothing more to say."

"I don't know what to believe." For just a moment, the anguish rang clear in his voice, then he got control of it. "If you haven't betrayed me—if he isn't your lover, then why are you here? Why are you with him? No." With a sharp gesture, he cut off her protest. "Don't tell me you aren't with him. I have seen you with him, twice now. Oh, nothing compromising, no. But Allegra—"

He put his hand beside her, palm against the wall, his full white sleeve caressing her bare arm. He leaned closer, speaking softly, so that his words brushed her temple. "Tell me. If you knew there was talk of your connection to him, if you knew I would object—and you knew that, don't tell me you didn't, I saw it in your eyes tonight—then why did you persist? Why dance with him tonight, when you knew it would be the talk of the evening, you with that half-dressed rake?"

She didn't look up at him, instead watching the rise and fall of his chest under the white shirt as he took a breath and held it and let it go. "I will not let gossip determine who will be my friend."

"Your friend? He wants to bed you, if he hasn't—" He cut that off. "What does he do that makes you disregard all that? Make you forget you have a child at home, and a husband too?"

The pain in his voice was so raw she was moved to speak with equal honesty, though she knew it was a mistake. "He makes me laugh, that is all."

"Makes you laugh?" Nicholas sounded stunned. He drew back, and she was able to slip away from his imprisoning arm, and edge down the wall toward the opening. "Makes you laugh? Allegra, he's useless. What's he done in his life but seduce women and switch tailors? Laughter! How can you—you are carving me up, all I have been, all I have done, with his laughter!"

There was no use defending Simon; he didn't need it, and it would do no good. She had nothing but the truth, and that would not be enough. "You had better believe this, Nicholas, because I shan't say it again. I have done nothing to betray you."

"Nothing yet, perhaps." He pushed away from the wall and walked restlessly across the little grotto. He stopped where her mask lay, abandoned on the ground, and nudged it with his boot. "But then he might make you laugh again.” He looked up at her. "I will believe you if you come with me now. Come away from here, and from him. Now. Tonight."

"You will believe me then? Only then?" Her fingers were hurting, clenched tight like that, and she forced them to relax, to open, to lie gentle against her chest. "That isn't belief, Nicholas, if I must prove it to you. And I won't try. If you trust me, you will say no more."

He bent and picked up the mask, brushing the dirt off the white feather, studying it as if there was something written there. Now his voice was cool, all the pain stripped from it. "Come tonight, Allegra. Or don't come at all."