Several more excruciating minutes tick by as we eat eel and potato salad.
Duchess Balzac says, slicing delicately through a piece of eel, “I do hope you’ll be able to keep your job.”
My hackles prickle. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that things are precarious in Paravel, and you’ll need an income if you want to marry Sachelle. Her money until the Duke and I are gone is barely enough to keep a cat.”
“I never thought about Sachelle’s money, and I’ve no doubts about my job. I’ve been working for the King for more than ten years.” Some of that work would turn the Duchess’ hair white if I began describing it at her dinner table.
The Duchess shrugs one elegant shoulder. “If you say so, though it’s disturbing that no one’s been arrested for that bomb that was thrown at Sachelle. Or the truck that ran you both down. Serious lapses, Mr. Rasmussen.”
My eyes narrow. Be disturbed, then. The only person I have to explain myself to is the King.
Someone slams their knife and fork onto the table. To my surprise, I realize it’s Sachelle. She’s glaring at her mother and breathing hard. “Mum, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Duchess Balzac’s eyes open wide. “What do you mean? Has someone been arrested?”
“No, but there’s a lot more going on than you or any of us know about.”
Duchess Balzac stares open-mouthed at her daughter, and then sets her teeth with an expression that says, I thought we were on the same side, young lady.
I glance at my fiancée, who has her hands clenched in her lap. I thought they were, too. A warm feeling breaks through me. Could she be on my side?
The Duke glances at me. “You must have served the King well while he was in exile to be appointed to so important a position now.”
“I did my best.”
“There must have been important operations to help set the King back on the throne after Varga’s death, when so many people wanted his son or daughter to rule Paravel. I suppose you were involved in those, Mr. Rasmussen?”
Mind your own business, you nosy bastard.
The Duke gives me the opportunity to answer as he takes a sip of his water. “It’s a shame you weren’t put in charge of rescuing the Levanter brothers and Reynard Desjardins from execution. That was a complete cock-up, I hear.”
A muscle in my jaw ticks. When I look at the Duke again, I see that his gaze has sharpened.
“Who was in charge of that mission?”
I stab my fork into a piece of potato. “Their first job was secrecy. They should never have been apprehended in the first place.”
One of those men couldn’t keep his mouth shut to the several women he was sleeping with, and it got them all killed. It nearly got me killed, too, but that’s the past. It doesn’t matter anymore.
I wish it didn’t matter anymore.
I reflexively tug at the collar of my shirt, feeling the burn of rope that’s haunted my nightmares ever since that terrible day.
“A wishy-washy answer, Mr. Rasmussen. Deflective. Unmanly.”
I take a sip of my wine. Go fuck yourself, you pompous old ass.
The rest of the meal passes in tense silence. At my side, Sachelle barely eats and keeps casting me glances that I don’t know how to read. She’s so close that I could reach out to her beneath the table, but the Duke has his beady eyes fixed on me, and I think he’d leap up and attack me with his fork if I touched his daughter in front of him, weak heart or not.
As soon as the meal ends, Sachelle stands up. “I want to take Jakob out onto the terrace. Wedding discussions,” she adds, and leaves the room before anyone can reply. She doesn’t even look at me. It’s almost as if she can’t.
With a dull, sinking sensation, I get to my feet. She’s going to tell me that I’m not the man she thought I was, and she can’t marry me because I’m weak and she needs someone strong to protect her.
Before I’m a few feet away from the dining room, furious whispers erupt behind me. I’m sure the Duke and Duchess have a lot to say to each other about me.
The terrace is wet with rain and plastered with leaves. Sachelle is bundled up in a coat, her arms folded tightly across her chest and her face lit by the interior lights.
“I wanted to talk to you where they couldn’t overhear us,” Sachelle says, and then falls silent, studying my face. Finally, she bursts out, “Why didn’t you tell me Briar was being held at the guard station of her own free will?”
“I couldn’t, little fox,” I say gently. “Not when her life depended on no one knowing she was my informant. Tieman was showing an alarming interest in that part of the city by asking you to steal that map, and I had to assume he suspected her.”