As opposed to…? Warily, Sibyl nodded. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“’Cause I’m just some illegitimate good ol’ boy who grew up in a trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks.” He said it like that was supposed to scare her off. “I don’t even have a job right now.”
And I’m an ex-con. And I’m so broken, I never even looked at a man until you. And the guy who owns this apartment doesn’t know I’m house-sitting, which kind of makes us trespassers. Did Trace really think he wasn’t good enough for her? Sibyl shrugged, even attempted a smile and a joke. “At least you aren’t Comitatus.”
His expression…stilled. A momentary pause in his breathing. A flicker of guilt in his eyes. Nothing more. “Yeah,” he said, but he sounded uncomfortable saying it—and then she knew. Because, whether she wanted to be or not, she was very, very smart.
Smart enough to rearrange seemingly unconnected tidbits of data into a new, unmistakable pattern.
When she’d met Trace, he was with three Comitatus descendents.
His father—ex-father?—was apparently wealthy.
If illegitimate, he might not bear his birth father’s name.
“You are Comitatus,” she accused in a whisper. This time she wanted him to laugh at her. She wanted him to deny it, maybe more than she’d ever wanted anything except for the nightmare of her father’s death, of her wrongful imprisonment, to never have happened. But he didn’t deny it. He opened, then closed his mouth. He swallowed, tried again, but only managed, “How…?”
By then, new and worse patterns had revealed themselves.
He’d brought her a sword from the LaSalle house. How had he happened to end up gutting the LaSalle house?
He had a cleft chin. By genomic imprinting, that could only be inherited from one’s father. She’d seen a chin like that before. And the pale eyes in his dark face, the same color as….
The court finds Isabel Daine guilty…
Sibyl stood. “Excuse me.”
“Wait.”
But she kept walking toward the bathroom, unwilling to show weakness, unable to show anything. She concentrated on taking one step after another, the ache in her throat tightening, tightening. “Are you okay?”
Sibyl made herself look over her shoulder toward where Trace now stood, looking concerned. She made herself smile to show teeth. “I’m fine,” she lied. As a child, she’d never lied. Jail—and the Comitatus—had turned her into this.
Then she locked the bathroom door behind her. She turned on the overhead fan. She turned on the water.
Then she fell to her knees and vomited, violently but almost silently, into the toilet.
She’d almost slept with the bastard son of Judge René LaSalle.
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