Free Sorceress by Lisa Jackson

“Of course not.”
    “No need to sneak off behind each other’s backs.”
    She realized then that he knew. Somehow he’d found out about her clandestine meeting behind the chapel. Should she lie her way out of it? Even try to turn the tables and belittle him for doubting her? ’Twas not her way. But then, neither had been the deception.
    The air between them seemed suddenly cold, as if they existed on opposite sides of a frigid river. “It would be best if there were never lies, even the smallest untruth between a man and woman,” she said carefully. “But sometimes, so as not to worry the other, a man, or a woman, might be inclined to . . . protect the other.”
    “Protect?” He sneered the word and she cringed. Oh, this was not going well.
    “I saw you the other night, Morwenna. With him .”
    She closed her eyes. “’Twas not what it seemed,” she admitted, flopping down on the bed to stare upward at the canopy. Her fingers clenched into fists and she mentally kicked herself to hell and back again.
    “It seemed as if you were meeting your lover.”
    “Nay! You, husband, are my true love.”
    “Then why lie, Morwenna? Why steal from the treasury? Why meet a man deep in the night and sneak back into our bed with hands and feet as cold as adultery.”
    “I would never betray you.”
    “You already have.”
    “I didn’t lie to you.”
    “Avoiding the truth is the same.”
    His voice was hard, without emotion. There would be no talking her way out of it. “’Twas not about me,” she admitted, “but Bryanna.”
    When the silence still stretched between them, she added, “I’m worried about her. She’s alone. I—I wanted someone to look after her, to find her, to see that she is all right.” Sighing, she took his hands and linked her fingers through his. “’Tis true, I paid him to look for her, but I’ve also sent a messenger to Kelan, at Penbrooke, to ask for my brother’s help. I thought he, or Tadd, or someone there might search for her.”
    “You couldn’t ask me?”
    “I did ask,” she reminded him gently. “And you said that it was Bryanna’s choice to go alone, to find her way, to follow her destiny.”
    “Because that is what she told us she wanted.”
    “ ’Twas not what I wanted.”
    “You are not your sister’s keeper,” he said, and she felt the anger radiating from him.
    “But you are mine?”
    “Nay, Morwenna, but I am your husband and I expect you to be truthful with me.”
    “And to obey you?” she asked, and just saying the word rankled.
    “To trust me,” he said.
    Grabbing the edge of the coverlet, she rolled over and turned her back to him. “That works two ways, husband. Trust must come from two like hearts.” She seethed and closed her eyes, wanting to be angry and fight with him, but they both knew that she had, in fact, betrayed him by turning to his brother, Carrick. Morwenna had turned to the one man who shared a dark past with both of them. Carrick had been Morwenna’s first lover, the first man she’d given herself to. He’d left her with nothing but anger and regret . . . and a babe she’d lost before its time. Aye, those were the sorrowful days of her youth.
    And yet Carrick was her husband’s brother. Could her husband not trust his own kin?
    Granted, Carrick was the bad seed of his family. Until recently, many had believed him responsible for starting the fire that had killed his own family as they lay asleep within the walls of Castle Wybren. During their recent troubles here at Calon, Carrick had been somewhat vindicated. At least he was not guilty of setting his own family afire. And yet the black-hearted Carrick had committed a long list of transgressions: stealing his brother’s own wife, leaving Morwenna pregnant, beating his own brother and abandoning him at death’s door. Aye, Carrick was guilty of many a crime, though in this instance Morwenna suspected his intentions were more noble. Had she not sensed a new light in his blue