Free A Temporary Ghost (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Series 2) by Michaela Thompson Page B

whining sound through the night. A motorcycle again. It got louder, passed by, faded out. I turned on my side so I could stare at the wall instead of the ceiling. Eventually I fell into not a dreamless sleep but a troubled doze.
    I woke the next morning feeling heavy-headed and woozy. Eager to know if Blanche was all right, I pulled on my robe and got up to see. When I opened my bedroom door, I was met by the strains of Bernart de Ventadorn, an indication of normalcy. I went down the hall to her room.
    The volume swelled as I got closer. I tapped, then knocked, then pounded on her door without getting a response, so I pushed it open and looked in. She was sitting up in bed, in a white nightgown, writing madly in The Book of Betrayal. “Blanche!” I cried.
    She must have heard me, because she glanced up. She looked pale in the light-flooded room. Her mouth formed the word “Hi.”
    I pointed to the cassette player on her bedside table, then to my ear, and she obediently turned the volume down to a faint drone. “Hope it didn’t wake you up,” she said.
    “No. I stopped by to see how you are.”
    She shrugged, her eyes cast down. “I’m fine.”
    “I was worried.”
    She repeated, “I’m fine.”
    She was pulling back from me, whether from embarrassment or a belief I’d let her down by talking with Vivien. To keep the conversation alive, I said, “What are you writing?”
    I thought she wasn’t going to answer. She drew her knees up in a self-protective gesture. But she said, with an embarrassed smile, “This dumb thing. It’s terrible.”
    I was gratified. She’d given me an opening. “What is it?”
    “Sort of a play. A dialogue in blank verse. It’s really stupid.”
    “A dialogue between who?”
    “Eleanor of Aquitaine and Bernart de Ventadorn.”
    I remembered Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor in the movie The Lion in Winter. I said, “Eleanor of Aquitaine? She was married to—”
    “Henry the Second of England. She was the mother of Richard the Lion-Hearted.”
    “And she knew Bernart?”
    Blanche came alive. “Oh, yes! They were lovers!”
    Enthusiasm gave Blanche’s harried face a delicate appeal, a wrenching suggestion of how she might have looked if she’d been happier. “Really?” I said.
    “Nobody knows for absolute sure. But he wrote wonderful love poems to her.”
    “What’s the dialogue about?”
    She leaned toward me confidentially, her customary diffidence forgotten. “It’s a debate at one of the Courts of Love, where all aspects of love were discussed. It’s called, The Book of Betrayal.”
    “I thought it was about love.”
    “It’s about whether betrayal is a necessary part of love.”
    I had never thought betrayal was a part of love at all. “What’s your conclusion?”
    “I haven’t reached one. I’m still classifying the varieties of betrayal.”
    “The varieties?”
    She ticked them off on her fingers. “Betrayal by withdrawal, and betrayal by intrusion; betrayal by breaking a vow, and betrayal by refusing to make one; betrayal by revelation; betrayal by appropriation; betrayal by laughter; betrayal by—”
    “Good grief, Blanche!”
    “I want ten kinds, so I can have ten divisions to the dialogue.”
    “Have you got them?”
    “Not quite. There are two more. Betrayal by silence, and betrayal by ignoring the consequences.”
    I was dumbfounded. So Blanche spent her days in medieval hairsplitting about the nature of betrayal. Not only that, but it was the only thing I’d ever seen her chipper and happy about. “I’d like to read the dialogue sometime,” I said.
    She looked horrified. “Oh, no! It’s awful.”
    “I’ll bet it isn’t. It sounds— very original.”
    “I couldn’t.”
    “Well, let me know if you change your mind.” Although she was hugging the notebook to her chest as if afraid I’d snatch it from her, she seemed pleased. I hated to change the subject, but I had to. “About yesterday,” I said.
    Her face closed. She looked