Page 72 of The Captive Knight
Chapter Twenty
Sunlight flashed on Jehan’s arm brace as he lifted his hand to signal a halt.
Because Aliénor spent every day of their weary voyage with her gaze fixed on the long, rutted road that led to Paris—with Jehan always at its head—she was the first to pull her horse to a stop.
She watched as her former lover bent closer to a man-at-arms, exposing a stretch of his bare neck. Since leaving Castelnau over three weeks ago, Jehan had worn limited armor so as not to wear out the horses. Although she understood the need for speed through the war-pitted country, she couldn’t help but notice how vulnerable the curve of his neck looked without a chain mail coif to protect it.
With a pang, she pushed the thought away and spoke to Thibaud and her brother, riding on either side. “Brigands, do you think?”
“I doubt it,” her brother said. “This is open countryside.”
“But for that copse up ahead,” Thibaud grunted. “Perfect for an ambush on a merchant’s road this close to Paris. I’ll go see what’s what.”
Her stomach did a sloping drop, less for the risk of an ambush and more for the sound of the wordsclose to Paris.As soon as Thibaud nudged his horse ahead, she asked Laurent, “How far?”
“To the copse? Not more than a few—”
“Don’t play the fool, Laury. How far to Paris?”
He paused a moment too long. “I don’t know.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
She knew he lied because whenever they camped in the open under the stars in some secluded place, she would curl by a fire and watch Jehan from beneath her lashes as he talked to Laurent and the others about the routes they would take and the distances they would make, in voices too low for her to hear.
“It wasn’t so long ago,” Laurent said, “when you forbid me to even speak the name of the city we are going to.”
“Paris was very far away then.”
“It has been a hard journey. Surely you want it to end?”
“I don’t mind the travel.”
“It isn’t the travel of which I speak.”
She worried the leather of the reins between her fingers. With Thibaud always snoring on one side of the fire and her brother muttering in his sleep on the other, she was, essentially, without chaperones. But whenever she rose up in the darkness on the excuse of privacy, Jehan did not slip away from the other fire to follow her. Whenever she kicked her mount hoping to talk with him on the road, he ordered her back to where she’d be surrounded by her uncle, brother, and the four men-at-arms. Jehan was sparing with his gaze, except when he came upon her washing by a river, or when he brushed past her in the crowded hall of an inn. She lived to see that flare of wanting in his eyes again, a glimpse of the lover he hid all too quickly.
Soon, she would never see it again.
“I’ll miss you,sor.”
Her brother’s words drew her from her thoughts. Jehan would not be the only one she would leave behind when she stepped through Parisian gates, though at times she felt like Laurent’s long winter in the hills had already stolen away the boy she’d once known.
“I will see you again,” she said. “You will visit Paris when you’re a monk. You will have to see the bishop, go on pilgrimages, and make the rounds of the churches. You can visit me then.”
Laurent grunted and found something of interest on the far horizon.
This was not the first time her brother had slipped into silence at the mention of his future. “Laury,” she said. “You made a promise to Jehan.”
“Sir Jehan’s offer was generous beyond reason.”
“Then why do you get broody whenever I bring it up?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation with you.”
“You never do.”
“I ask you to be respectful of my wishes.”
