Page 12 of Dagger’s Shield

I waited for her to continue. A minute passed, then another.

“What else, Maëlle?” I asked.

She drank the second whiskey the same way she had the first and pushed the glass toward me again. I poured. She turned her face to the window and said something in French that was too fast and too quiet for me to follow. The only word I caught was bâtard—bastard.

When she finally looked at me, the steel I’d watched her hold in place since she’d discovered the photos had slipped. “I don’t know what to do,” she confessed.

I wished we weren’t sitting at the table. Were we anywhere else, I’d have taken her into my arms like I had a few minutes earlier. It was the first time since I’d known her that she’d let her guard down enough to be vulnerable, and I didn’t want to do anything that might make her regret doing so.

“What would you do if you were me?”

That she asked stunned me. I thought about it for a moment before I answered, because she deserved better than something off the cuff. “I’d take a deeper look.”

She flinched and shuddered, but she nodded.

“Until we know what the relationship is, or was, between your father and Géraud, we’ll need to tread carefully,” I said.

“I agree.”

Two simple words said so much more. I’d come to realize that the less Givre said, the more authentic she was allowing herself to be.

When she stood, picked up her glass and the bottle, and carried them over to the sofa. I followed and sat beside her.

I took a deep breath and cleared my throat. “The most logical solution is⁠—”

“I need to go there.” She stared into the whiskey rather than at me. “I need to go home.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go alone.”

Her eyes flared, and she studied me for several seconds, as though she were anticipating a catch. When I didn’t list parameters, she nodded again. “Oui.”

“I have to ask you something, Maëlle.” I waited until she looked at me. “You mentioned you and your father aren’t close. How would you define your relationship with him?”

She shifted her body deeper into the sofa and rested her head on the cushion. “I left home at eighteen. I’ve had little contact with him since.”

“And your mother?”

“We speak regularly.” There was something in the way she said it that led me to believe there was more to the story.

“But?” I asked.

“My father…” She didn’t finish.

“What about him, Maëlle?” I kept my voice steady.

“He has little regard for my gender.” Her tone hardened. “My mother. Me. All women.”

“Can you explain what you mean?”

She looked me dead in the eye. “For me, it meant that even as his only child, it never once occurred to him that I might one day run the estate.”

“Would you want to?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”

“What else?”

“There have always been other women,” she said. “Many of them.”