“I’m over it now.” Her voice was not gentle but resigned. “I don’t hate you, Sedric. I don’t even blame you.”

He found his voice. “I wish I could say the same.”

“I’ve grown so accustomed to your witty remarks over the years.” Dead. That was how her voice sounded. Dead. “Somehow they are not as amusing as they once were.”

“I mean it, Alise. I’m ashamed of myself.”

“Only now.”

“You sound as if you are still angry.”

“Yes. I’m still angry. I don’t hate you; I’ve decided that. But I’m angry in a way I’ve never been angry before. I think that if I hated you, I’d just hate you. But once I realized that only someone I loved could hurt me this badly, I realized I didn’t hate you. And that is why I’m so angry.”

“I’m sorry, Alise.”

“I know. It doesn’t really help, but I know you’re sorry. Now.”

“I’ve been sorry about it for a long time, actually. Almost from the beginning.”

She flapped a hand at him, as if to shoo his excuses away. She sipped her coffee and seemed to debate something with herself. He waited. Finally, she spoke, in an almost normal voice. “I have to know this. Before I can go on with anything, before I can make any decisions, I have to know. Did you and Hest, did you make fun of me? Laugh at how gullible I was, how sheltered that I never even suspected? Did Hest’s other friends know? Were there people I knew, people I thought were my friends, who knew how stupid I was? How deceived I was?”

He was silent. He thought of small dinner parties, held late in the evening, in the private upper rooms of inns in Bingtown. Brandy after dinner in Hest’s den with some of their circle, and merriment that went on long after Alise had tapped on the door to wish them good night and retired to her bed.

“I have to know, Sedric.” Her words called him back to the cramped and grubby galley. She was watching him, her face pale in the dimness. Waiting for the truth.

In her position, he would have felt the same way. The need to know how foolish he had appeared, how many people had known. “Yes,” he said. The word cut his mouth. “But I didn’t laugh, Alise. Sometimes I spoke out for you.”