Page 21 of The Captive Knight
So, determined to steer the conversation in a different direction, he crouched as well as he could, stretching out his hurt leg, and held out a hand to the most rambunctious of the hounds. The pup darted toward him, jumping onto his bent knee to aim a wet tongue at his face.
He let the pup get a few licks in before holding him away to riffle his ears. “This one bears a strong resemblance to a hunter my grandfather used to own,” he said. “Same long snout, same rusty brown coat, same amber eyes. Maybe this pup is one of his line. Does it belong to your kinsman Thibaud?”
“No,” she said flatly. “All the hounds belong to my father.”
“They knew each other, you know.” He squinted up at her against the bright sun. “Thibaud and my grandfather, the Baron of St. Simon.”
“Oh?” She was watching him handle the pup with an odd look on her face. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. If half his tales are true, Thibaud has known every nobleman from here to the English sea.”
He enjoyed the view of her hair haloed in the rosy light of the morning. “Back when your great-uncle and my grandfather knew one another,” he said, “the barony of St. Simon was equal in power to the Tournans—”
“Until the Count of Armagnac gobbled up your lands.”
He raised a brow in surprise.
“As well as telling outrageous stories, Thibaud gives history lessons,” she explained, clicking her tongue as a dog wandered off, drawn to a pigeon landing upon the stable-eaves.
“Did Sir Thibaud tell you he battled against my grandfather’s forces twenty years ago—”
“Wait,” she interrupted. “So they were enemies?”
“Yes.”
A confused little laugh slipped out of her. “Sir Jehan, if you’re trying to encourage kinder relations between us, you might have chosen a better example.”
“They’re the perfect example.” Her laugh raised his hopes as well as a lovely flush on her cheeks. “Thibaud and my grandfather were the kind of enemies who embraced each other at tournaments and shared war stories over pitchers of new wine.”
“I’ve witnessed such behavior many a time,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve never understood it.”
“Loyalties may diverge, but knights respect one another anyway.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “But I am not a knight, Sir Jehan.”
“Thankfully so,” he said, resisting the urge to run his gaze from the tip of her slippers to the pink-tinged curve of her ears. “Yet I’m certain you’ll understand why a knight with nothing but a good name and a fine sword makes desperate choices.”
She lifted a brow. “Like becoming the vassal of the Prince of Wales and stealing castles from unsuspecting maidens?”
“Being the prince’s vassal,” he said pointedly, “was a better living than selling my sword to the highest bidder, which I did for three long years before I met the prince.”
The smile disappeared from her face and that’s how he knew he’d made a mistake. God knows what he was doing, spilling his shame to this dagger-tongued sylph of a girl.
“Sir Jehan, you baffle me. Sell-swords have harried the villagers for years. They wound my father’s men, steal the harvest—”
“They are forced to do so when war wanes, because noblemen release them to avoid feeding them. The only other option is starvation.”
The look she gave him was half confusion and half exasperation. So he eased the pup off his knee and rose to his full height. “My point,” he said, wishing he could slip his fingertips across her delicate collarbone, “is that we are both subject to the wills and wars of our liege lords. That’s the reason we’ve both been dispossessed, in different measures. Why should we hate each other just because our liege lords say we are enemies?”
She held up her chin like a dare. “And how kindly do you feel toward those men who seized your grandfather’s title and land?”
“Not kindly at all. But I had no choice, no more than those men who did their lord’s bidding.”
“I know what it is like,” she blurted, her throat flexing, “to have no choice at all. Indeed, I’ve felt like that my whole life.”
Her little nostrils flared. For a moment, he thought she was going to say something more, but she tightened her lips and started to tug at her own hands, as if twisting invisible rings around her fingers.
“Then you understand,” he said softly, “why I took Castétis.”
She said nothing, but her head moved in such a way that he imagined she meant it for acknowledgment.
“I did not know it was yours,” he said. “All I saw was a castle neglected, and a bright future within my grasp. So I seized it with both hands.”
She hazarded a glance up at him. In that space, a current of mutual understanding rushed between them, a sense of communion thrumming like the ringing of a church bell. He curled his fingers into his palms so he wouldn’t grip her by those lovely shoulders and bring her sweet face closer to his. In the pause he realized that the whole of the courtyard had hushed along with them. He’d been so keen on putting forth his argument that he hadn’t noticed the attention they’d garnered from kitchen maids, stable boys, and men-at-arms alike, all while he and Aliénor stood across from each other with the dogs circling their feet, talking as if no one else existed.
That attention prevented him from tracing the little line deepening between her brows, or slipping a finger under the curve of her chin and tilting her face up so she would look at him, reallylookat him with those soft brown eyes. Instead, he stood as still as a watch guard while his blood warmed, willing this singular woman to bestow her favor upon him.
“I’m off to fetch my hawk, Sir Jehan.” She twisted on a heel before casting a shy glance over her shoulder. “Would you be so kind as to accompany me while I exercise her in the courtyard?”
