Page 86 of The Captive Knight
Chapter Twenty-Five
How young he looked, dressed in his scarlet and white like a knight fresh to the sword. A light wind ruffled his hair and brought back a thousand memories of him standing upon the ramparts of Castelnau. Aliénor knew she shouldn’t be able to see his blue eyes so clearly from where she stood in the bright of the sun, but she could indeed see his gaze. By the look on his face, he was as buffeted as she was by the same powerful emotions.
He crossed the graveled path, moving with patience, as if he were afraid he’d frighten her away. Watching his legs flex and his shoulders slope and his dark, dear head sway as he ventured ever closer riffled her senses in ways she’d forbidden herself to imagine during the long, lonely months of their separation. Now she embraced the flood of those feelings, letting herself experience everything once too painful to relive.
He stopped a few steps away from her and glanced over her shoulder toward the far gate. “Did he make you another offer?”
“Sir Guy?”
“He chased you when you left the hall.”
She shook her head. “He just paused long enough to say good-bye.”
“Good.” One of the lines on his brow smoothed. “Because if he had swept you onto his horse and whisked you away—”
“I would have been just as surprised as you.”
A smile slipped across his lips. “He’s a fool for letting you go so easily, Aliénor.”
She gripped a tippet in her hands for balance, for if Jehan kept looking at her like this, she would never be able to maintain composure.
“You know,” she said, riffling her fingers through the pelt of fur, “you might have given me fair warning about all this.”
“I wanted to.” He shifted his weight, daring to come a step closer. “Thibaud forbade me to say anything. He insisted we hear the regent’s decision first.”
Stubborn Thibaud. Yet she couldn’t be angry at her great-uncle, knowing he was trying to protect her, as always.
“When I went to London,” he said, “I tried to convince the prince to let me marry you,couret.But he refused to consider it, even to listen.”
“Indeed, he would have no reason to allow it.”
“That’s true, if a man’s only aim in life is ambition.” A muscle in his cheek flexed and his hands did, too, and a look akin to guilt flittered across his face. “After this last campaign, I saw my prince with a clearer eye. He’s a man who stands second in line to the throne, who has the whole Christian world laid out before him, who has never really known hunger or cold or despair. And yet in a time of peace, he does nothing more than prepare for the next war so he may gain more castles, more lands, more power—and dangle them before us, beforeme,without considering what I, or any of his knights, or the whole of England, truly desires in our heart of hearts.”
She looked up past the wool of the scarlet tunic stretched across his shoulders, to the tightness of his jaw, aching to ease his guilt.
“So,” she murmured, “no English widow after all?”
He rolled one of those massive shoulders. “I’m doing both the widow and myself a great favor.”
“Was she not rich enough?”
“She had three castles,” he said, “as well as the title of marchioness.”
“Was she not young enough?”
He made a grunting noise. “Time yet for childbearing.”
She raised a brow. “Not pretty enough, then?”
“The real problem, Aliénor, was that she wasn’tyou.”
Then he lowered his mighty body, those broad and endless shoulders, that rock-hard stretch of chest. That all passed before her eyes as he sank to one knee, just as he’d done in the great hall before the regent.
He whispered, “Do you despise me,couret?”
She shook her head, confused.
“For shifting loyalties,” he said, his expression serious. “For abandoning my oath of fealty to the English in favor of the French.”
