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grasp. She could easily see he was upset and was baffled as to why. “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “Claudia said—”
    “Claudia!” Anjele echoed with a sigh. “I might have known.” She sat down on the sofa and patted the place next to her, inviting him to join her. She reached for the coffee service. Still tired from last night’s ordeal, she could barely keep from yawning.
    “At the party,” he began, sitting down and waving away the offer of coffee for himself, “Claudia said you were being punished for assaulting her and wouldn’t give any of the details. When I asked your mother, she said she didn’t want to talk about it. The next thing I knew, Claudia was asking me to dance with her, and that’s when she said she felt she just had to tell me that the fight was about me.”
    “About you?” Anjele stopped pouring cream to stare at him incredulously.
    He nodded, misery etched on his face. “She said you were saying unkind things about me, that you find me boring, unattractive, and you wouldn’t even be marrying me if it weren’t for the covenant between our parents. And she said when she tried to take up for me, you got mad and ruined the dress she was planning to wear.”
    For an instant Anjele merely closed her eyes and sat there, wondering how to respond. The reality was she did find him boring but had never said so out loud to anyone other than Simona and Emalee. But no girl in her right mind could think him unattractive. With curly hair the color of honey and eyes as blue as periwinkles, he was quite good-looking. But how could she explain the emptiness in her heart when she tried to love him, for the last thing she ever wanted to do was hurt him.
    Taking her silence for admission, Raymond cried softly, “I know it was all arranged, even before we were born, Anjele, but I’ll make you love me. I swear I will.”
    “You musn’t listen to Claudia,” she hastened to say. She realized he believed the worst. “It wasn’t like she said at all. The argument wasn’t about you. It was the dress, and…” She shook her head and fell silent. What was the point in going into all the details?
    “I’m afraid,” she continued delicately, “Claudia sometimes gets things mixed up, but please believe me when I say I’ve never discussed you with her.”
    Relief came with a grin. “I should’ve known better, but I was so upset you weren’t there. I wanted to see you, hold you…” His arm snaked out to wrap about her shoulders and draw her closer.
    Anjele could smell the whiskey on his breath and knew he had been nipping again from the flask he always carried in his coat pocket. He did that when he was upset about something, a habit she found most disturbing. She moved from his embrace to gingerly remind him, “You know my parents would be very upset to find you here at such an early hour, especially when we aren’t chaperoned.”
    He laughed, reaching for her again. “We’re going to be married in a few months, so what difference does it make?”
    She set her cup down and quickly stood. “It matters to me,” she hedged. “I don’t want the servants gossiping.”
    Raymond thought about how much he wanted, needed, another drink and decided maybe it was best to take his leave. All he had wanted, anyway, was assurance that Claudia was wrong. “Tomorrow,” he said, also getting up, “Mother would like for you to come for lunch so the two of you can discuss how you want our rooms decorated.”
    “How nice,” Anjele murmured, unable to display any enthusiasm. The invitation was a formality, because no one ever discussed anything with Ida Duval. They merely listened to what she’d already decided.
    “You see,” he went on, when she made no comment on the obvious fact that they would not be moving into his room together after they were married, “Mother says it’s proper for us to have separate bedrooms, so she’s having a parlor put between the two rooms at the end