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“I am not consorting!” Bria felt tears burning in her eyes.
“Then tell me where you go in the middle of the night. Tell me who you meet.”
“I have never lied to you, Terran.”
“Omission is just as much a lie,” he snapped. “You plot against me with this criminal.”
“No,” she whispered, stepping toward his outline in the gloom. “I try to help you. Your people are living in fear –”
“So you’ve said.”
“But you don’t listen! How can you run a castle if your people starve in the winter? Who will plow your fields then? Who will –”
“Enough!” The word resonated through the room. “Don’t do this, Bria, please. Just leave.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“The choice isn’t yours to make,” Terran answered.
The tears burning her eyes ran over her cheeks. “Why save me to destroy me?”
“You aren’t professing love, are you?”
“And if I am?”
He turned away before he answered. “I would pity you. Kathryn satisfies my physical needs. And my heart... belongs to Odella.”
Bria’s heart shattered into a thousand pieces. How could she have mistaken this cold, uncaring person for a man who loved her?
“Then why did you make love to me?” she cried.
There was silence before he finally said, “I thought to prove you were a whore. Imagine my surprise to find you a virgin.”
Bria’s entire body shook, trembling like a leaf being blown about in a violent wind, and she couldn’t hold back a sob.
“Bria.” The whispered tenderness in his voice confused her. “Why do you make me hurt you like this? Just go.”
Bria didn’t understand. She didn’t want to understand the deceitful treachery behind Terran’s actions. How could she have been so wrong about him?
She took a teetering step backward, her world blurring before her eyes, before whirling and running out of the room.
Chapter thirty-five
Terran had never cared about the ledgers, but now he immersed himself in the harvest tallies. He frowned. The accursed tallies weren’t making sense to him. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the entries again, but his thoughts weren’t focused on the tally lines scribbled on the parchment before him. Where could he start?
How can I discover who poisoned Bria? His heart told him to start with Kenric. Bria wouldn’t lie. But his mind argued there was no reason for Kenric to poison Bria or Odella.
No matter how hard he tried to focus his mind on something else, he couldn’t get the image of Bria’s tearful face from his mind. He’d wondered if perhaps she might be glad to leave him. But he’d been wrong. Very wrong. He knew that now.
Nonetheless, he did what had to be done. He had to get her out of the way in order to figure out what was going on. He couldn’t risk her life. He couldn’t risk someone’s harming her again.
But now his mind was refusing to focus on the job at hand.
He shook his head firmly, gazing at the small lines and tallies on the page beside the names of the peasants and merchants and farmers who lived under his rule. They meant nothing to him, not compared to Bria.
Terran slammed the book closed and rose from the table, turning to head out the door. He hurried down the hall toward the main balcony. I hope I’m not too late. I hope I can get there in time, just see her once more so I can concentrate on what I have to do. With each step the urgency grew. He had to see her. He had to assure himself that she’d be all right. He was almost running as he reached the balcony which overlooked the courtyard. He placed his palms on the edge of the railing, only to see the Delaney procession riding away in the distance.
He couldn’t see Bria. With this thought came an anguish he’d never known. His wife was riding away from him, and he’d driven her away. His chest constricted painfully, and he bowed his head. She was gone.
