She was nodding in agreement, in support, in anything that would keep him talking to her and looking at her and being in any way remotely connected to her, but his next words brought her up short.
“The lies must stop. Yours. Mine.”
She stopped mid-nod, he
r chin down. Her eyebrows went up. “You lied?”
He swept his hand in the air over the table, indicating the chest and assorted baubles. “I lied.”
She exhaled a shaky laugh. “That hardly counts.”
“Oh,” he said grimly, “it counts.”
Scattered across the table were things she’d picked up and held too many times to count, remnants of only God knew what, rings and scraps of fabric, a lock of hair, and the letters she could never read. Now, the leather thong Griffyn always wore around his neck was curled on the table too, its little iron key knotted at the end. Beside it sat the steel one.
She reached out to touch it. “The steel one. How?” She looked up. “How…?”
“De Louth.”
She almost laughed. “What?”
Griffyn glanced at Alex. “De Louth gave it to me.”
“Marcus’s most vile henchman gave you the key I lost a year ago in London?” she clarified in amazement.
“He did. He had a child. She’ll be coming here, in a few years.”
She did laugh now, a brief breath of amazement. “But of course. People come to you, Griffyn, with everything open. Of course he had a child and gave you a key. Of course.”
She touched them briefly. “So, you have two keys.”
“He is the key,” said Alex from the shadows.
“I don’t know what that means,” she said shortly. She didn’t care, either. Griffyn’s grey gaze was on her. The planes of his face were lit by firelight and shadows. Somehow, without moving, he permeated a room, and she’d lost him. Given him away.
“There’s a locked compartment beneath,” she said in a shaky voice. “You cannot see it, but there, at the edge.” She reached forward, pointing.
The room went completely silent. She looked up slowly into Griffyn’s stunned eyes.
“What?” His voice was harsh and incredulous. She nodded.
“Have you seen inside, Guinevere?” Even more incredulity was in these words.
“Of course.”
He sat forward sharply in his chair. “How did you ever do that?”
She shrugged. “Once, when I was young, I found this same little chest and was playing with it. The bottom compartment just sprang open. Papa almost died of horror when he found me. He warned me off in no uncertain terms, and I never saw it again until the day he died.”
She swallowed carefully. “After that, in those awful days, Marcus was ever underfoot, marauding about, hinting at treasures. And weddings. I tried everything I could to open this chest. I don’t know, it just seemed important. And important that Marcus not even know it existed. I even tried holding a fiery hot poker stick to it, to burn it open. Nothing. You can see, it’s not even scorched.
“Then, one night, I was exhausted, touching it—it is so beautiful,” she said again, softly, “and suddenly I recalled what I’d done as a child. I put my hand just so,” she splayed her fingers wide in demonstration, and placed them inside the chest, “and felt around, and pushed, and—”
The lid of the secret compartment sprang open.
Alex inhaled sharply. She looked up. Griffyn was watching her. “Disobedience has some small boons,” she said ruefully.
Something like a smile lightened the measured remove on his face. “I must admit, I ne’er did view disobedience as quite the sin the Church does.”