Page 158 of Bride of Ice
“I didn’t…” He scowled, glancing at the other knights to be sure they weren’t listening. “I didn’t run away,” he whispered. “I came here to prepare for the melee.”
“You did?” Her skepticism slowly evaporated. “So you’re not leaving yet?”
“Nay.”
She gasped. “I know what you’re doing.” She clasped her hands as if in hopeful prayer. “At the end of the melee, you’re going to stage a dramatic reveal. You’ll pull off your helm, announce who you are, and ask for my sister’s hand in marriage.”
“What?” Colban exploded.
“What?” Morgan echoed.
The French knights began talking furiously again.
“You know you love her,” Isabel insisted. “You always have. And she loves you.”
Colban wanted to deny it. He couldn’t. And hearing that Hallie loved him made his heart go soft and his tongue go silent.
“Is that true?” Morgan asked him.
Colban frowned. “That’s not why I…” He didn’t want Morgan to believe he’d killed Archie to win Hallie. But he also couldn’t discuss his real reason while Isabel was here. She wouldn’t understand. And she’d tell everyone.
“Besides,” Isabel said, turning very pink and biting her lip, “I know something about Hallie you don’t. Something almost nobody else knows.”
Colban waited for her to elaborate.
“’Tis a secret,” she said.
Colban waited.
“You musn’t tell anyone,” she said.
Colban waited.
“Because if anyone finds out—”
“Are ye goin’ to tell me or nay?” Colban growled.
“Aye. Aye.” She took a deep breath. “Hallie is…” Isabel lowered her voice to a tiny whisper. “She’s with child.”
“What?”
“She’s going to have a babe.”
Colban suddenly felt sick. Not because Hallie was secretly carrying a bairn. Such a thing might be expected, since she’d been wed for three months. Nay, what made him feel ill was the fact he’d just trounced the hell out of a pregnant woman in the tournament.
“Ye’re certain?” Morgan’s tone was skeptical.
“I swear,” Isabel said. “She doesn’t know I know. But I’m her sister. And after Gwendolyn, Hallie’s maidservant, told her sister Alyce, who told Bonnie the kitchen wench, who shared it with her cousin Margaret, ’twas only a matter of time before Margaret told me.”
Morgan looked dizzied by her explanation. Clearly, half the servants already knew Hallie’s secret.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I thought you should know, since it might be…”
“Might be what?” Colban asked, still feeling faint.
Isabel blushed and lowered her head. “It could be yours, aye?”
Colban froze.
