a simple man. What is there to understand?”
Marguerite snorted. It was not polite, but it was called for. “You are not a simple man and you well know that you are not. You shift between the man I have come to – to love –,” she said the word and did not regret it, “and the man who can ignore his mother for four years without ever giving her a chance to explain—“
Tristan cut her off. “I know what I saw and what I was told. Is it not enough that I am willing to move past it?”
“Are you really prepared? Pretending it never happened will not put it behind you. Felicity will be our child’s grandmother. I want to know that she is truly welcome in our home, not just tolerated. Can you do that? Can you manage to forgive her?”
“I can try.” He sat up straight again, examining her, trying to judge if his answer had been enough.
Was it enough? It was not as much as she wanted, but it was as much as she could reasonably expect. The question was, did he really mean it?
“Do you lie?” Marguerite let the question hang. She had not known she was going to ask it until it left her lips.
His skin grew pale beneath the skin, his lips pressed together. He looked deep into her eyes as if he searched her very soul. “Yes, I lie. I lie frequently and without remorse. I am a very good liar.”
It was her turn to grow pale. For the first time with the pregnancy, her stomach began to rise in revolt.
Tristan rose, suddenly, and came to kneel before her. “I do not lie to you, however. I have never – that I recall –lied to you.”
Could she believe him? Her mind ricocheted like a bee trapped in a jar. She tried to remember everything he had ever said. Had he ever knowingly misled her? Well, he did not claim to have never misled her, he claimed he had never spoken a complete falsehood.
She took his hands in her own. “What about when I first came here, all those wonderful stories that you spun trying to convince me to marry you. Do you claim that none of those were dishonest?”
“Ahh, that occasion I remember well and, yes, I do claim that I spoke no lies on that occasion. I spoke with great care. I was overcome with your beauty, despite my lapse of memory. I was being pressured by my family to marry, and Peter had no desire for the title. My best friends had both recently married and I looked upon their bliss with some jealousy. And as for my keeping my word as a gentleman to help you – I may lie, but I never betray my word.” Tristan brought her hands to his lips. He pressed soft kisses against them. “Do not doubt me.”
Marguerite fought against the power of those sweet kisses. She needed to remember everything he had said that first night. “You said you were a spy. Surely that was a lie. I have seen no evidence of cloaks or daggers, and I cannot believe you needed me to gain entrance anywhere. You are a marquess.”
Tristan let her hands rest upon her knees, although he covered them with his own. “I was afraid that you would hit upon that one. I hoped by supplying all the others you would not notice the omission.”
Her heart stopped. “Then you did lie.”
He looked up, staring straight into her eyes. “No, I did not lie. I have never thought of myself as a spy. I have on occasion denied the word. But, in truth it is as good a description of my activities as any other.” He turned away. “Can you think of any other excuse for my spending so much time with Moreland?”
“You are a spy.” This time it was not a question. With a horrible certainty Marguerite accepted it as the truth. “You are a spy. You really married me for your own purposes. You only pretended to care about helping me.”
“We are back at the beginning again, but I have just told you a truth about me that only a few know in order to prove my veracity to you. Do not doubt me now.”
His hands still rested upon hers. Marguerite moved to pull them back, but he held tight. “I do not understand how it can all be true.”
“But it is. I saw how we could help each other