Page 20 of The Captive Knight
One fair, winged brow shot up at the endearment. “Shall I get you parchment and ink, sir, to write your pretty words?”
He shrugged. “A sword would do me better.”
“For escape, it certainly would. I heard you’ve made no pledge to my father.”
“But I’d make you one, if I had a sword. A pledge of protection.”
“It’s not your protection I need—or your friendship.” She bent slightly to run a hand over the head of a begging hound. “It’s Castétis, which my father tells me you still refuse to give up.”
He smiled a slow smile that made her defiant expression melt into confusion.
“What?” she said.
“Congratulations are in order, I hear.”
She raised her hands to her hips, frustrating the hounds begging for her favor. “And what gossip has reached your ears, you so deep in your cell?”
“You’ve been made your father’s heir. In which case, Castétis should mean nothing to you now.”
“So Margot has been delivering gossip as well as food.” Her gaze slid away. “I thought she was too fearful of you to chatter.”
Jehan didn’t deny it, though Margot wasn’t the source of his information. He figured there was no reason to get Sir Rostand in the bad graces of this woman, for the guilt-ridden knight had told him much during the short time they’d spent in his cell.
“It’s still my dowry, you know.” Her chin tilted a fraction. “Castétis.”
“But not as vital to your happiness or your future as before.”
“My father could change his mind with a shift in the wind, leaving me in the same situation as before.” Her jaw tightened as if she were ashamed to have spoken so. “In any case, you stole something, so you should return it. Nobody likes a thief.”
The word was a kick to the gut. He’d spent too many years trying to erase all those dark years of thievery to let her cast that dark shadow over him without challenge. “Then ask me,” he said, tossing the command like a gauntlet. “Ask me why I seized your castle.”
She shrugged. “I can only assume it was greed.”
“Have you ever been to Castétis?”
“As a girl, before the plague.” She turned her face away to glance up at the sky, scudding with clouds. “I used to run barefoot through the garden of my uncle’s house. I played in the stream and caught frogs and slept in a big bed piled in with all my cousins. Once you surrender it, I will journey there again with my brother and—”
“It’s no longer fit for a lady.”
“I know it’s no grand chateau.”
“When I seized it, it was half in ruins. The roof was a sieve. Pigs had the run of the courtyard. The northeast wall was crumbling. My men and I had to do no more than climb over the wall in the night.”
A ripple of uncertainty passed across her face. “If that’s true,” she ventured, “then it should be no matter to you to give it up.”
“Except Castétis is everything I possess.”
With a heady rush he remembered the day he’d climbed over the chemise wall with his sword raised and made Castétis his own. The castle was in shambles, yes, but he could see it, repaired and strong, in his mind’s eye, solid enough to last generations. Castétis was the firstrealboon he’d received from his position as the prince’s man, for though the Prince of Wales had made extravagant promises of great English wealth and lands, Jehan had yet to see a single fruit of those wild assurances.
Aliénor frowned at him with a little knot between her brows, ignoring the laundress wading through the dogs with her arms piled with linens, and the shouts of two boys chasing each other across the paving stones.
“Even if Castétis is everything you possess,” she said, “wouldn’t you willingly give it up in exchange for your freedom?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’ve had freedom without land before, and I nearly starved because of it.”
He watched her expression, hoping for a glimmer of understanding, seeing only confusion and suspicion and, by the tightness of her chin, a growing resistance to listen anymore. He supposed this daughter of a viscount, in her fine kirtle and belt of gold links, had never been poor, hungry, or desperate. In any case, it was becoming clear that discussing the castle he’d stolen from her wasn’t the wisest way to curry her good opinion.
For reasons he did not dare to examine too deeply, he very much intended to win this lady’s favor.
