Anaïs was silent for a long moment, then she said, “Yes. Roland is incapable of true affection toward anyone, but he seems to value my father. He listens to him.”

“That’s new.”

Anaïs said nothing, which made me wonder whether she’d been keeping this particular development to herself.

“For that to happen, I’d have to be disinherited,” Tristan said. “Or dead. And my father is the only one who could manage that.”

I raised one eyebrow.

“Manage it without consequence, that is,” he amended. “Which means the Duke believes there is something Anaïs can discover that would push my father in that direction.” Tristan’s frown deepened. “He suspects I’m a sympathizer.” His eyes fixed on Anaïs. “What’s changed?”

It was a struggle not to hold my breath as I waited for her to respond. What had changed was that Anaïs was no longer destined to be Queen, forcing the Duke to pursue another angle to gain control, but would she admit as much given she’d kept their betrothal a secret for so long?

“He didn’t say why or for how long he’d suspected you, only that he believed you to be plotting against your father and that I was to find proof.”

She hadn’t answered his question, but if Tristan had noticed, he didn’t show it, likely too consumed with thought over how he’d aroused the Duke’s suspicions to consider that Anaïs might be deceiving him. Which put me in the position of choosing between keeping Pénélope’s confidence and telling him the truth.

“And he believes I’m more likely to reveal such proof under intimate circumstances?”

“Yes.”

Anaïs’s eyes flicked to me, then away again. Did she suspect I knew about the broken betrothal? Had Pénélope told her?

No one spoke, the only sound in the room the tick tock of the clock on the wall. Tristan rose to his feet, pacing back and forth before finally saying, “Tell him I rejected your advances. To do otherwise and have you claiming not to have learned anything of value would be suspicious, and that’s the last thing we want. We need him to trust you, otherwise we’ll lose all insight into his faction’s plans. As it is, you’re going to have to start giving him better information or he’ll begin to question your loyalties.”

I knew his rejection, despite it only being to her plan, had to have hurt. A fact to which he was likely oblivious. But no reaction showed on Anaïs’s face. Given she lived life as a spy, she’d made a practice out of ensuring it never did. Originally, her father had set her to sniff out details on the Montignys, but she’d come over to Tristan’s side long ago. Now she spied on his behalf, for the good of the sympathizer cause. One did not live such a double life without becoming a master of self-control.

“I think that’s a mistake,” she said. “We can use this opportunity to feed him information of our choosing without him becoming suspicious. Plus, it gives you a reason to sneak around that will seem innocent by comparison to the truth.”