Chapter 19: Come Home

I did not answer him in the council chamber.

I walked out through the great doors with my back straight.

He walked beside me, as easily as an old friend.

He stopped me in the long passage to the east wing, where two guardsmen stood outside the duke's new rooms.

"Linnet. Two minutes."

"You have one."

"Come home," said Edmund.

He said it low and warm, in the voice he had used when I still thought it was love.

"I will see these letters called a mistake. I will see the courier's tongue come loose and say he was paid to lie."

"Your husband walks out of this palace by Friday."

"And I?"

"You come back to Rook Hall. Not as my wife, if you hate the word. As my guest."

"We will begin again, the two of us, with everything we know."

"The east wing," I said.

His smile did not move.

"We need never speak of the east wing. I was a boy then. I did not know what I was."

"You were my husband," I said. "You turned the key yourself."

For the first time since the ball his face changed.

It was a small change, a flicker round the eyes, and I saw it go in.

He had not expected me to say it aloud, in a passage, with two men in earshot.

"Lower your voice," he said.

"Why? You said you could make it go away."

"I said no such thing."

"You said it a moment ago."

I turned to the nearer guardsman, a thick-shouldered man in the king's blue. "Did he not, sir?"

The guardsman hesitated.

"I heard the gentleman say he could see the duke walk free by Friday, madam."

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