“Usha, we haven’t talked about Tamara’s portrait.”
They hadn’t, and Usha had thought the matter forgotten—or perhaps that he’d regretted asking. Whatever the reason, he’d never brought up the subject after the day he first mentioned it. In truth, she’d come to hope the matter of the portrait was forgotten, for she’d never been able to think about it without the image of Tamara walking in the garden behind the Goat. She would not like to take that image to the easel and try to compose the kind of portrait a father would be pleased to have.
“Do you still want a portrait?”
“Of course,” he said, surprised. “Why would you think not?”
Usha moved so that her shadow slipped off the white canvas. She inspected the quality of the whiteness and decided she’d scraped enough. The canvas was ready for whatever would come to it.
She trod carefully in her reply. “You haven’t asked again, and I don’t think Tamara would have much time to sit for sketches. It seems Sir Radulf has most of her time.”
Loren sat very still, the book open on his knee. “Yes. They’re often together.” Then, as if he’d felt a shadow of judgment over her words, he said, “He courts her openly and properly in my home, Usha.”
Stung by his curtness, Usha almost told him that the knight courted Tamara outside Loren’s home as well. She caught herself, unwilling to explain what she’d seen at the Goat. In these days of rumor and unease, it would be foolish to remind him of her connection to Madoc.
Thinking of Tamara with the knight gave her the same kind of chill as thinking of a child reaching out to play with a viper.
Loren turned a page in the book, then another, not reading but occupying his hands, and Usha thought she’d gone so far down this road that she might as well go farther.
“It still surprises me, Loren, that the knight has your blessing.”
He turned another page, the sound a whisper. “My blessing? I don’t think that is the proper word. Sir Radulf does not have my objection.”
Usha tossed the scraping knife onto a table. Loren looked up at the clatter.
“You’re quibbling, Loren.” She came out from behind the easel, wiping flakes of pa’ressa from her hands, hard swipes down the sides of her skirt.
“I am not—”
“Then you’re rationalizing, if you like that word better. Whatever you call it, you’d best look hard at what’s going on.”
Loren’s eyes were like winter ice, gray and hard. With the careful motions of a man controlling himself, he set his book aside. “You’re right. I am rationalizing, and it isn’t worthy of the conversation. My feelings about this should be no surprise to you at this late date. I don’t like the man—gods know I don’t—but I do what I must. For Haven and for my daughter. Let it go.”
She could not. His stubbornness and his willingness to fool himself angered her. Her words tumbled out, long held in and urgent now.
“No matter how much you hope it, Loren, Sir Radulf isn’t going to be your daughter’s savior. Times are changing. You hear the rumors in the city as well as I do. Of course they are only that,” she said, covering what could have become a dangerous lapse. “Just rumors, but they do suggest that people aren’t as willing to tolerate the occupation as they used to be.”
To her surprise, he didn’t didn’t defend himself or his choice. He laughed.
“People are fools,” he snapped. “They run after every rumor of a way out they can find. Times aren’t changing, Usha. They have already changed. The sooner people realize it, the easier their lives will be.”
It sounded like something Sir Radulf might say. “And so you’ve changed your own survival strategy.”
Loren’s eyes grew even colder. “What do you mean?”
“You were willing to trade your influence to the occupation so that all could go easily and well. And now—” She stopped. His face grew pale, his eyes hard. The icy silence between them now was like a challenge and, dared, Usha spoke her heart. “Loren, you traded influence for survival, and now you’re trading your daughter.”
Loren’s head came up with a snap, his eyes flashed warning. “You know nothing about it, Usha.”
It was on her lips to demand why he thought that, and to tell him how much she really did know. She caught back the words, for if she once began to talk about what she’d seen at the Grinning Goat, every question he asked would lead relentlessly to the name Qui’thonas.
Tears pricked suddenly in Usha’s eyes. In her heart a bitter voice accused her of betraying Tamara in favor of Qui’thonas. She could say no more, stayed by loyalty and betrayal. Usha went back to her easel, the canvas a wall between them.
“Loren,” she said, her voice even and cool, “I think you’ll find more congenial conversation elsewhere today.”
He stood with the blue leather book in his hand, his thumb absently tracing the length of the spine. From behind the easel she could see his face only if she moved. She did not.
“No,” he said. “I’m not leaving like this, not in anger.”
“It isn’t your choice to stay.” The canvas felt brittle under her touch, it still smelled faintly of the priming coat. “Please leave.”
Silence spread out between them, and Usha became aware of sounds from the street below—the clop of horses, the rumble of a carriage wheel. A gull cried, and out the corner of her eye she saw it sailing, gray-winged against a small patch of blue sky.
Then, in a mild voice, like someone curious and musing, Loren said, “You accuse your husband of running away, Usha.”
Usha gasped, a sharp hiss, as though she’d been struck. “You have no right to speak of that.”
He ignored her. “You accuse him, but what are you doing now? You order me to leave, but it’s you who are running away.”
Usha flared in anger. “Go! Leave right now.”
But Loren was relentless, quiet and relentless. “You hide, Usha. You’re hiding now behind the canvas.”
Her face flushed, her blood rising in anger. “How dare you? You have no right to speak of Palin to me.” With two long strides, she left the easel and put herself eye to eye with him. “You don’t know a thing about it.”
Loren shook his head, a little rueful smile on his lips. “You’re right. I don’t know a thing about it—or about you. You veil yourself in mystery. Your glances, your sighs suggest regret for a life you won’t let go—or decide to hold onto.”
“Loren, I warn you. Stop it.”
What she warned him against, she didn’t know. Whatever it was, Loren didn’t seem to care. He came closer, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body. “Is he truly gone, Usha? This husband of yours. Is he gone?”
Usha wanted to back away from Loren and from what he was implying, from what he dared to ask. She lifted her chin, refusing to move even half a step.
“You know nothing about it. How dare you speak of it!”
He was implacable now, hunting for something, for an answer. “You say your husband is gone. I see no evidence of it.”
“You don’t know one thing—”
He stood so close to her now that she trembled—with anger, she thought, sheer fury that he would dare to speak of her marriage as though he knew even the smallest thing about it.
Loren shook his head, again the small, almost regretful smile. “I do know one thing, Usha.” Soft, he said, “I know I love you.”
Usha stood still, she heard only the rush of blood in her ears, the hammering of her heart as Loren put a hand on each shoulder, very gently.
She said, “Loren.”
He kissed her, first gently, then with sudden, frightening urgency. She could do nothing else but return the kiss, and she returned it fully.
His voice rough with emotion, he asked the question she’d never adequately answered. “Who are you, Usha?”