Relief flooded her, relief and warmth. There was no guarantee Gabe wouldn’t tell Anton about this eventually, but for now, he was choosing her. She’d take it.
They went to the tiny staircase at the back of the turret, rather than the wide steps toward the front. The coils of the stairs were tight enough to make seeing more than a foot or so in front of you impossible, and Lore kept craning her head to look at Gabe, hands on the railings to keep from falling over. “Will the guard let us by?”
“It changes at midnight, so if we hurry, we can get there while the entrance is unmanned.”
“Good. So we’ll head to—”
Lore was interrupted when her shoulder smacked into something that felt disconcertingly like another human.
“Hmph,” said the other human.
Slowly, she turned around.
Alienor’s father frowned at her.
Standing on lower stairs put him right at eye level with Lore, but Lord Bellegarde still managed to look like he was looming, peering down a straight nose with eyes a near-acidic shade of green, his dark hair caught in an orderly queue at the back of his neck. He smiled, but it was as thin as the rest of him, and did nothing to warm his eyes.
Lore caught hold of herself, dipped into as passable a curtsy as she could muster in a dressing gown. Behind her, Gabe was stiff as a board. “Pardon me, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“I take no offense.” Bellegarde inclined his head to her, then his eyes darted to Gabe. If the sight of them both in states of dishevelment and running down the back stairs threw him off, he did a remarkable job of hiding it. “Gabriel Remaut. I never thought I’d see you in court again.”
His voice was cold enough to raise goose bumps. Lore’s brow knit, and she fought the anxious urge to chew a fingernail.
The quick spasm of a grimace across Gabe’s face showed he noticed the chill, but he didn’t react in kind. He nodded smoothly, as if he were in a ballroom rather than half dressed in a servant’s stairway at midnight. “Lord Bellegarde. I must admit, I never thought I’d be back, either.”
“Fourteen years, this past spring.” Alienor’s father clasped his hands behind his back. Despite the late hour and the odd location, he was still dressed in Citadel finery—white shirt with billowing sleeves beneath a doublet of cream silk and cloth-of-gold, breeches to match. Where Gabe and Bastian both wore boots, though, Bellegarde wore small heeled shoes in the same white as his shirt. They were not flattering, but even ridiculous footwear didn’t lessen the gravitas of his presence.
“Fourteen years,” the lord continued, “and only now have we undone all the damage your family caused. The Bellegarde reputation was besmirched along with yours, though you and Alienor had said no wedding vows.”
Lore looked from Bellegarde to Gabriel, fingers tightly wound in the long tie of her dressing gown. Good thing, too, because she felt a strong urge to smack Bellegarde in the mouth.
But Gabriel weathered the low blow with nothing but a flicker of his eye to the floor. “I know,” he said simply, low and earnest. “Please believe me, Severin, I would never have knowingly ensnared Alie in my family’s troubles. I knew nothing of what my father planned with Kirythea.”
Using Bellegarde and his daughter’s given names was a gamble, and one that didn’t pay off—Bellegarde’s eyes went flinty. “And yet you were present in Balgia when the betrayal occurred, when there was no reason for you to have left the court. You can see how such a thing invites ideas of collusion.”
Gabe’s jaw was a straight line of hard-won restraint. “There were extenuating circumstances,” he said stiffly. “I was sent back to Balgia, I didn’t choose to go.”
That didn’t seem to deter Bellegarde. “And when Anton brought you back, you still did nothing to call off the betrothal, leaving it to our house to correct the paperwork—”
“He was ten.” Lore straightened, trapped between the two of them on the stairs, glaring at Bellegarde with every bit of her considerable contempt. “He was a child.”
She stood close enough to smell his aftershave, but Bellegarde looked at her like he’d forgotten she was there. “And now this,” he said with a humorless chuckle, mirroring all that contempt right back. “Leaving the defense of your honor to a country cousin I wasn’t even aware existed. Truly, Gabriel, bravo.”
Lore’s fingers tightened to a fist. Gabe’s hand clapped around it like a shackle. “Is there something you wanted, Severin?” He should’ve sounded angry, but Gabe just sounded tired. “It’s late, and I assume if you were coming up the southeast turret, you had a particular item you wanted to discuss with me. Your seasonal accommodations are no doubt somewhere more fashionable, and I doubt you’d lower yourself to speaking to anyone else relegated to the far corners of the Citadel.”