The Lord Roland blanched, the shock interrupting the desire that had been building within him since he heard her light knock on the door, leaving him tingling and nauseated. “What— what do you mean?” he stammered. “I have never been anything but truthful with you, Portia, foolishly candid, in fact. I have shared with you more secrets than I care to count for fear it would make me realize even more than I already do what a foolhardy idiot I have been.” The chambermaid turned back to him, tucking the tray beneath her arms like a shield over her belly, and regarded him coldly. “What secrets would those be?” she asked, her throaty voice taking on a hint of acid. “Your profound distaste for your wife? That’s no secret— everyone in Roland knows it, just as they know your weakness for trollops and bedwenches, and are well aware of the parade of them that appears each time Lady Madeleine leaves Bethany to visit her family in Canderre. It’s an open joke, Tristan; it would be a truly miraculous happenchance if Madeleine herself doesn’t know it. And I certainly don’t blame you—she is a beast of legendary proportion. But it’s not exactly flattering to be just the latest in a string of nameless whores whom you use to satisfy your lust and vent your frustration. If you’re expecting me to feel grateful, I don’t.”
“You are hardly a nameless whore to me, Portia,” Tristan said smoothly. “You have heard me intone your name repeatedly, in many different places, all the time with a combination of respect and pleasure. And you have never seemed belittled or degraded by our carnal romps. I respect, in fact, admire, your lack of shame, your imagination, your insolence, your vigor, your fire, your contempt for polite sensibilities. You are not my toy; you are very important to me, and I have entrusted you with some of the most crucial of my secrets. You should be honored, not offended.”
The chambermaid’s stare intensified. “Honored? Oh. Perhaps you refer to sharing me with your brother, the saintly benison of Canderre-Yarim—is that what you mean? Should I feel honored to have been entrusted with the secret of our trysts, both with and without your participation? Do you think Blesser’s lack of the celibacy required by bis office might have something to do with the problems you have had in Bethany? Perhaps the All-God is not amused by watching one of his holiest servants using my naked body as a table for his supper, or playing lascivious games of fox and hounds, or knobbing me as you—”
Tristan clapped bis hand over her mouth and glanced over his shoulder, then locked his gaze on to hers. The flames of the fire were dancing in her black eyes, causing their expression to alternate between amusement and cruelty in turns.
“Lower your voice,” he commanded quietly. “Walls of keeps have ears—you should know that.”
“The only ears this keep’s walls have are my own,” Portia retorted. “I have done exactly as you asked, have pressed my ear to every wall, have stood on the eave of every doorway, in the hope of collecting the unspecified information you sought to bring down the man you profess to hate—”
“I do not hate Gwydion,” Tristan interrupted hastily. “I never said that—I only resent his elevation to Lord Cymrian over me.” Anger began to build in his blue eyes, now also reflecting the flames of the fireplace. “I served in that position, without any of the power or the acknowledgment, for twenty years while he was in hiding, pretending to be dead. I’m the one who held Roland together, who kept the Middle Continent from falling into chaos and war. It was I who defended this very keep during the assault of the Sorbolds during the winter carnival four years ago. You are too young to remember—you did not even live in Roland then, I believe. But I gave everything to this land when it was fragmented, protected it when it was vulnerable. And for all the stewardship I put forth, for all my efforts, I was constantly refused the throne, then eventually cast aside in Gwydion’s wake, given a pity regency, stripped of that which is rightfully mine. I trusted you to help me gain it back—and to in turn share it with me. How is it that this offends you?”
Portia’s eyes narrowed to gleaming slits, but her mouth crooked into a smile at the corners. “You’re a liar,” she said, but there was fire in her voice that caused the knots in Tristan’s abdomen to loosen. “Your command that I seduce the Lord Cymrian while his wife was bloated with pregnancy had nothing to do with your desire for the lordship. And you well know it.”
“Of—of course it did,” Tristan stammered.
“Liar,” Portia said again; time her voice was filled with sexual teasing. “I do not doubt you crave the lordship; everyone knows that as well. It’s another of your pathetically obvious secrets. When I first came to Roland, I heard it within a few hours of being here. But that’s not why you commanded me to seduce him. You wanted to disrupt his marriage because you are obsessed with his wife—and you want her for your own.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tristan said, but the heat in Portia’s voice and smile were causing his defenses to give way; he had experienced the sensation before, and it was one of risky relief, something he rarely felt in his tortured existence. He took the tray from Portia’s hands and dropped it to the carpeted floor. “I am not the one who is being ridiculous here,” Portia said, stepping closer. “Nor am I blind to your deception of me. You said that I might be able to use my seductive skills on Lord Gwydion, and in turn have him confide secrets to me that would be useful to you in your bid to replace him on the Cymrian throne. But you knew that would never happen; his wife owns every comer of his soul, and he hers. She has only been in this keep for a few moments in all the time I have been here, and that is apparent even in those few moments. Additionally, he cares little, or nothing, for the power of the lordship; he views it, somewhat distastefully, as an unavoidable duty, and longs for the day when someone else—someone qualified—will take it over.” She reached out a hand and caressed Tristan’s face to soften the sting of her words. “I don’t know why you didn’t just confide the truth to me from the beginning—it would have been so much easier to help you if I had known.”
“H—how?” Tristan asked. The heat of his blood was rising, flushing him with warmth, making him painfully tumescent.
The chambermaid’s smile widened. She turned away from the roaring fire and walked over to the tall windows that led out to the small balcony, stopping to admire her reflection in the glass. “Unlike the situation between you and the Beast, neither the lord nor the lady has the desire to stray—and so that betrayal can only be accomplished through deception,” she said lazily, chuckling at the distortion of her face in the wavy panes. “And deception of either or both of them will be a challenge. One cannot easily deceive two people who have special connections to the truth. The Lord Cymrian has dragon’s blood in his veins, and so his awareness is heightened far beyond the bounds of normal perception. And the word about the keep is that the Lady Cymrian is a Skysinger, a Namer, in fact, and so she has a racial and professional devotion to the truth, which makes her perception of falsehood even keener.” She idly stroked the heavy velvet curtain that dressed the window. “So, then, how will you accomplish this deception?” Tristan asked, his head growing light from lack of blood. Portia turned to face him again, her eyes dancing with wicked light. “I won’t,” she said briskly. “They will accomplish it for me in the only way it can be accomplished—they will deceive themselves. It will be easier, now that she’s gone from this place again. The stupid intensity of their love for each other will be their undoing, and when that happens, it will be shattered forever. How melodramatic. But it’s true. And when it happens, the world will grow brighter for all of us.” She slid her hands into the opening of Tristan’s shirt at the neck, then followed with her mouth.