Page 38 of The Captive Knight
False hopes.
She swallowed hard.
“How am I supposed to protect you, Aliénor?” He worked her hair while the tension drained from her neck. “These past days I have fought a battle I cannot win. By all aspects, I am your enemy and yet I want to be worthy of you. I want to win your heart, but I have no right to try.”
His voice was a low, rumbling hum drawing her body out of the numb shock cocooning her, making every bone and sinew alive to his presence.
“Were the world different,” he said, “I would make you my wife.”
Her breath shuddered out of her.
“Were my fate within my hands, I would speak vows in a chapel before every vassal, every villager, every man-at-arms here, promising to take you as my own—”
“Jehan, please don’t play the troubadour.”
“It’s my heart that speaks.”
She swayed back, or perhaps he stepped forward, but suddenly she felt his face against her hair.
“Though my heart belongs to you,” he said, his voice muffled, “my right to marry doesn’t.”
His wordsmy heart belongs to youwere like starbursts in her mind, blocking out all else. She willed him not to speak any more, for if he continued, then this moment would end. She’d never yearned for love—she knew it existed for some, the lucky ones, those who could choose their spouses—the village girls and their ruddy-cheeked swains, doe-eyed in the chapel. But such a thing was rare for a woman of property. For someone like her, the best she could hope for was the kind of warm affection that blossomed over years between two people who’d been married to raise a family, if they were kind to one another, if they were lucky.
“The prince arranged it while he was in England,” he said gravely. “There’s a contract with an English widow. Soon to be my betrothed.”
She filled her lungs deeply. His betrothal, indeed, was the worst possible situation. It prevented every possibility. She waited for the crashing desolation, for the dawning sense of despair for what this meant for her future. But the betrothal was a faraway thing. The revelation bounced off her like the tap of a mace against nothing but hay.
Reality, right now, was the warmth of his hair tangled in her fingers, the pound of his heart against her back, and the cradle of his arms as they slipped around her.
The solution to every problem came in an instant.
She embraced it just as quickly.
“I think there is still a place for me here, Jehan,” she said, running a hand up the swell of his arm.
“I have promised,” he murmured. “You’ll be my chatelaine.”
“I’ll be your mistress as well.”
