Where Passion Leads (Berkeley-Faulkner #1)(94)

Rand did not return for supper. The silence around the château became so thick and tense that Guillaume finally left for the village, taking the bay. He returned around eleven o’clock, smelling of ale and tobacco, wearing a pleased expression that betrayed an hour or two spent with sociable companions.

“It is a beautiful evening,” he announced, walking into the parlor with a relaxed, loose stride. “Warm and—”

“Guillaume!” Mireille exclaimed. “How can you go out to drink and flirt, knowing that mademoiselle is concerned about monsieur—”

“He is fine. I suggest that you both retire for the evening,” Guillaume said, smiling as Rosalie stopped pacing across the room.

“You found him?” she demanded, her blue eyes dark and troubled.

“I happened to see him briefly. He is in one of the upper club rooms in the village—”

“Gaming?”

“And drinking,” Guillaume said. Rosalie froze.

“Oh, nothing more than the average man would have on a warm summer night in a village tavern,” Guillaume hurried to assure her. “Why, I myself could not resist tippling here and there—they had this kind of brew that I’ve never had before . . .”

As he continued, Rosalie’s brow creased deeply in worry. Guillaume had not known Rand long enough to realize that his habit was to avoid drinking, that Rand disliked any loss of his control. The incident with the poacher had affected him badly, just as she had feared. But she could not help feeling that it should not have driven him to something so out of the ordinary. “You did not speak to him?” she asked evenly, and Guillaume shook his head. “Then there is no telling when he will return. I believe I will retire, Mireille.” “Oui,” the girl replied quietly, hovering near her heels as they went upstairs.

Rosalie undressed and slipped into a simple white nightgown.

As the candlelight burned steadily, she turned the pages of a book and focused on the words without reading them. The silence stretched and thinned, surrounding her insidiously until she gave up all pretense of reading.

“Rand,” she whispered, looking straight into the candle flame until the edges seemed to turn violet. “You’re so proud, so independent that I hardly know how to deal with you. You’ve shown me that you care for me a certain measure, and yet you left me today without asking for any kind of help. You’ve told me that you want me—to warm your bed, to make love with you . . . you’ve told me that you want me to depend on you. I can give you all of that—but I want to give you so much more! And unless you think of me as woman enough to offer you comfort, I won’t have you. I will be more than a plaything to you.” She clenched her fist as she made the vow, her fingertips whitening. It seemed to be hours tbat passed by as she waited, until finally she heard a faint scraping noise. She slid from the bed and padded on bare feet to her doorway. A light flickered from the edges of a door—not Rand’s door, but the far one at the end of the hall. The portrait gallery.

The door opened easily. Rand sat in a chair in front of the portrait of Helene, his long legs stretched in a lazy masculine sprawl, the neck of a brandy bottle held gently between his fingers. She could smell spirits from the doorway. His head turned, his hair gleaming dully in the lamplight with the movement. Silently he regarded her as if she were a stranger. So this was what Rand was like when he had had too much to drink—not engaging or boyish, but morose, quiet. His eyes were faintly glassy, his voice low and raspy. “Get out.”

He would never know how much the words had hurt. Rosalie felt the sting of them like the blow of a whip, and for several moments afterward she felt ridiculous and foolish, offering help that wasn’t asked for or needed. The Rosalie Belleau of a few months ago would have fled the room immediately, faster than any startled rabbit. The uncaring look in his darkened eyes frightened her, but somehow she managed to square her shoulders and remain where she was.

“Sitting here and brooding isn’t going to change a thing. And drinking certainly won’t.”

He made a gesture with the bottle and spoke with the patience of an adult addressing an obtuse child. “It’s making me feel a hell of a lot better. So get—” “Yes, I can see how wonderful it is for you,” Rosalie interrupted acidly.

“You don’t understand a thing, not nearly enough to stand there and pass judgment.”

“I understand a few things about you. Including the fact that you’ve tried to run away from guilt for a long time,” she said. “And that now you’ve done a turnabout and seem to prefer wallowing in it.” Her voice gentled as she stared at his averted profile. “Why not try letting it go?”

“The sins of the father . . .” Rand quoted, shrugging grimly and taking another swig from the bottle. He grimaced until the fire of it eased down to his gut. “It’s in the blood.”

“The only thing in your blood besides a misguided conscience is an overload of spirits.” Rosalie approached him carefully as she spoke. “None of it was your fault, Rand. You aren’t accountable for anything your mother or father did—”

“I know,” he said, his voice suddenly raw. “But I am accountable for what I’ve done.” He lowered his gaze to his hands, gripping the brandy bottle between them. “I see both of them in the things I’ve done,” he muttered, and cast a brief glance at his mother’s portrait. “Can you imagine what it’s like to know that half of her is me? She was faithless and she was incapable of telling the truth, just as you are incapable of lying. She was heartless, beyond anything you could imagine. God, someone like you would never begin to understand. And then there was my father—a drunken bastard with—”