Page 48 of The Captive Knight
Jehan added, “Your sister tells me you want to join the church.”
“I’m bound to my family before all.”
“She says there’s an opening in the monastery in Toulouse.”
“You want to get rid of me.”
“Laurent!”
“I’m offering you future,” Jehan said, “one I was told you wanted. Have I been as misinformed about this as about”—he glanced over his shoulder and gave her a look with a lift of his brows—“as about certain other things?”
Laurent asked, “But what of my sister?”
Jehan tore his gaze away from her, bathed in blue light, her breasts swelling from the neckline with each breath, worry coming off her in waves. “What do you wish to know?”
“Is she to go to a convent or to the court of our King Jean?”
“Not to Paris,” Jehan said. “The roads are too dangerous for a journey to the French king’s court, and will be for the foreseeable future.”
“A convent then,” her brother said.
Jehan snorted. “I’d have to truss her good to bundle her off to a convent.” Was it his imagination, or did he see the boy’s lips twitch? “Your sister has agreed to be my chatelaine.”
“Like I have always been,” she piped up wearily from behind him. “Sir Jehan needs someone to run the castle. No one knows how to manage these lands better than me.”
“The prince shall summon me come the New Year,” Jehan added. “I’m to join his army when they return to Bordeaux for the winter. This castle and these lands need keeping. She has offered to do so in my name.”
“All the more reason for me to stay,” Laurent said. “I won’t be like my father, leaving her here with no one to protect her when an army comes pouring over the walls—”
“I will leave enough men to guard the ramparts. Thibaud will be her personal champion.”
Her brother found sudden interest in a scratch on the altar rail, staring at it with a furrowed brow. He scraped his bad leg against the floorboards and Jehan could all but see him frowning his way through the options as he struggled between duty and good sense.
“Join me at your proper place in the mead hall.” Jehan slipped off the rail and headed toward the door. “When you’re properly dressed and back where you belong, Laurent, you, your sister and I will talk more.”
