Page 67 of The Captive Knight
“Because I asked them too.”
She huffed a sigh. She did not want to have this conversation, so she switched her attention to the slash across his jaw, still bleeding raw.
He touched it gingerly. “It’ll leave another scar.”
“Yes.”
“There go my chances with the fair ladies.”
Spoken with a strange grin. In that moment, he was as much a stranger to her as Jehan had seemed, turning his thousand-mile gaze away from her in the courtyard.
She snatched a linen and dunked it in the bowl.
“You look well, Ally.”
She wiped the blood from his throat. “Did you expect to find me in ashes and rags?”
“It’s some comfort he treats you well.”
“He treats everyone well.” She dabbed at the edges of the slash. “He treated you well, too, while you were here.”
“A pretense. He wanted me gone so he could be alone with you.”
That lie had enough truth to bite. “He bought a Bible for you, bound in tooled calfskin, as a gift for Twelfth Night.”
“Ironic, to give a Bible to the brother of the woman he dishonored.”
“I never once felt dishonored,” she retorted, tossing the bloody linen in the bowl of water, “until this very day.”
She pulled out her needle and threaded it in thick silence. Laurent turned his head as she pressed his jaw away. She squeezed the swelling edges together and made the first bloody stitch.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said, wincing.
“You didn’t mean for it to happen,” she mimicked, frustration joining anger as she let the string dangle long enough for her to pat the oozing blood. “What did you expect, when you rode up to this castle to fight for my honor?”
“I told everyone it was to regain my rights as heir.”
“Which only complicates everything.” She turned her mind away from the difficulties his latest claim would make. “Everyone knew why you were here.”
“I know you love him, Ally.”
Her throat went as dry as parched fields in a rainless summer.
“But I wonder,” he said, his breath hitching at another stitch, “does he love you?”
“Yes.”
She spoke the word with confidence though the image flashing through her mind was the distant look on his face as Jehan had dismounted from his horse.
“If he loves you,” Laurent said, “then he should have married you.”
Her ribs tightened. “He’s betrothed to another and bound by a sacred vow.”
“His only vow right now is to the prince.”
“To whom he owes his loyalty, his livelihood, and his life.”
“Then he should have done the honorable thing and sent you away to the king’s court—”
