Page 60 of The Captive Knight
“Except he doesn’t want the castle, the lands, the title—”
“He’s not doing it for that.” Jehan fixed his blue, blue eyes upon her. “He’s doing this foryou,Aliénor.”
The only sound in the room was the ringing of chain-mail links as he ducked his head into the neck-hole and the garment unfurled to the top of his thighs. She took a step back, and then another, until the edge of the new bed, large enough and comfortable enough for the two of them, struck the back of her knees.
Denial was a lie she could not push through the tightening of her throat. She sat on the bed and pressed her palms against the hay-stuffed mattress. She and Jehan had spent the cold morning here, making their own warmth under its linens. But for Laurent’s disappearance, she had been happier in the past months than she had ever been. This was the liberty she’d always craved, a home and hearth of her own, and a good man to share it with.
Love was something she’d never dared hoped for, a blessing beyond all her wishes.
Now she gathered the links of her belt in her hand and squeezed until they bit into her palm. “If my brother has come to save me from dishonor,” she said, “then his cause is more misguided than I imagined.”
“Not so misguided.” He twisted to tie his chain mail-hose as his squire buckled his chausses on his feet. “If I were your brother, I would have done the same.”
She heard the frustration in his words, as well as something else—gruff, unreadable, unnerving.
“I told him,” she said, “this was my choice.”
“I heard every word,couret.”
His cheek flexed in the way it did when a matter vexed him to distraction. She’d lain in bed many a night watching that face, knowing when something bothered him, whether it was due to an issue as small as a theft of a lamb or as complicated as brokering a peace between two villagers arguing over the positioning of a border stone. If the matter threatened to steel sleep from him, she would press her lips against his brow, take his head in her hands, and lead him to pleasure and bliss.
She pushed up from the bed. “Enough, Esquival,” she said, as the squire slipped the surcoat over Jehan’s head. “I shall finish the task.”
Jehan nodded at his squire as he wrestled his arms through the sleeves. Esquival bowed and slipped out the door.
Her fingers trembled as she approached. She searched for the loose laces on the side of his surcoat, conscious of the intensity of his gaze. She pulled upon the laces as if she were pulling her wits together. She would need every wit she had to prevent this madness.
“Perhaps I have been blind.” Her voice came out in a whisper though no one else was in the room. “Laury is my youngest sibling, and I have spent a lifetime protecting him. I have only ever seen him as a boy.”
She felt his perusal like a warmth upon her head.
“Clearly,” she added, fumbling to tie the last lace, “you understand my brother better than me. Perhaps, then, you can find a way to convince him to give up.”
“Couret,he’s as stubborn as you.”
“But not as clever asyou. After all, you managed, with the prince’s help, to seize a castle that’s never before been taken.”
“If your father hadn’t abandoned it, the outcome may have been different.”
“Still,” she said, wandering to his other side, to the other laces, “your influence with the prince assured that this castle, and the village, weren’t burnt to the ground.”
He gave her a curious frown, as if he hadn’t expected her to guess he was the cause. Yet everyone in the castle had heard the reports that the prince had burned a swath from Seissan to Narbonne, skipping right over them.
“And since then,” she continued, “you’ve managed to stay in this castle three full months longer than the Prince of Wales wanted.”
She did not have to look up to know his gaze had intensified.
“I’m your chatelaine,” she explained. “Do you think a single message arrives at this castle without me knowing of it?”
“I took it from the messenger’s own hand, and then sent him on his way.”
“A large, mud-splattered horse at the gate? Bearing a dagged-edged blanket beneath its saddle, and a fine leather pouch at its side? I see everything, Jehan, and what I miss, the kitchen servants report.”
“Is a man not master of his own castle?”
“It’s my task to make you believe so.”
A grin flittered across his face. She let her fingers linger on the trailing leather tie, hoping he would put his arms around her, kiss her, reassure her, but his smile faded as quickly as it had come.
