Page 22 of The Captive Knight
Chapter Six
With the knight limping beside her, Aliénor crossed to the mews in a numb sort of daze, still thrumming with the intensity of their conversation. He’d parried all her objections, argued his point, and brushed off her barbs like dog hair from his hose. She struggled to reconcile her former opinion of him with the idea that he was simply a dispossessed knight struggling to control his own fate. More than their pace had harmonized, it seemed, as side-by-side they crossed the courtyard.
She left him outside the mews and slipped in through the narrow door to dive deep into the cross-hatched shadows. She sucked in the first full breath she’d managed since she’d glimpsed him looming in the courtyard. Her heart beat fast under the palm of her hand as she pressed her chest in a vain effort to slow it. She had to gather her wits quick or she’d make a fool of herself for sure.
She seized a boiled leather glove, unhooked the sparrow hawk’s leash from the perch, and wound it about her own leather-bound wrist. She took her time coaxing the bird onto the glove before she dared to step back into the courtyard. Under Jehan’s bold blue stare, her heart did yet another skitter-step.
Later, she told herself. When she was out of the power of his physical presence, she’d be able to think this all through more clearly.
“A fine-looking bird,” he said, as he came around so he’d walk on the opposite side of her hawk. “Have you had her long?”
“She was a gift from my father.” She spoke a low, firm word to her spaniel to stop jumping on her. “But perhaps we shouldn’t talk about him.”
“Or Castétis,” he added wryly. “At least I know where the battle lines are drawn.” He grinned a crooked sort of smile, the kind that made the back of her knees soften. “What of your mother? Is she off-limits for conversation?”
“No,” she said. “My mother was from Normandy.” With a pang, she thought about how much she could use a mother’s advice now. “The French king arranged the marriage to my father to secure his loyalty.”
“The northern heritage must explain the glory of your hair. There are few Gascons so fair.”
She felt her cheeks heat at the compliment. “My mother’s eyes were more worthy of envy—they were the shade of heather.”
“Heather is common on the hills.” His gaze strayed to the bird. “Your eyes are the shade of a hawk’s plumage—brown with streaks of gold.”
“Did I not warn you about playing the troubadour, Sir Jehan?”
“I speak only the truth.”
“Troubadours don’t speak truth. They sing romantic songs about unobtainable love to silly maidens who should know better.”
His quick laugh was colored with surprise. “Some Abbess told you that.”
“No, I figured it out myself.” She suppressed a shudder at the memory of her cold cell. “Troubadours used to visit Castelnau, now and again, in the years when war waned, before the plague made travel dangerous.”
“And you don’t swoon when a troubadour sings?”
“There’s only so much foolishness I can abide.”
“In the court at Bordeaux, the ladies sigh over every song. What a singular woman you are, Aliénor.”
She caught his eye and a heavy charge crackled between them, like the air when the black clouds of a summer storm came, dancing like sparks across her skin.
She turned her gaze away. “You would have saved me much misery if you’d become a troubadour. A lute is far less dangerous than a sword.”
“It depends on what one wishes to capture. A woman’s heart, for example, is rarely captured at sword point.”
“But a lute,” she said pointedly, “cannot capture a castle or lands.”
“It can, if the troubadour uses a lute to woo and win a woman who is in possession of such riches.”
“But then you risk breaking the lady’s heart for wanting her possessions more than her heart.”
“Alas.” He spread his palms upward. “Even a troubadour can’t lure an heiress with empty hands.”
Her glance fell to one of those hands, and the dirty bandage upon it, so she took the opportunity to veer to a less dangerous subject. “The swelling of your hand seems to have subsided.”
“Then let me take off the bindings.”
“And release you to wield your terrible weapons?”
