Page 51 of The Captive Knight
“No.”
“Laury—”
“I promised you I wouldn’t leave until I’ve drunk a glass of wine at your wedding.”
“But so much is uncertain. We don’t know if father lives, or if the prince will give Jehan this castle.”
“I’m staying.” He turned, swept up the figs and the platter. “I don’t care how long it takes. The monastery can wait.”
“Laurent, this is just stubborn foolishness. I insist—”
“Insist all you want, but I intend to be the one who gives you away at the church steps, Ally.” He grinned, showing a slight chip in his front tooth. “Even if I have to battle Thibaud for the honor.”
***
Jehan watched her.
He watched, on Twelfth Night, as she swathed herself in a cloak and mounted a mare to invite the villagers to the castle. He watched as she returned with a crowd in her wake, making a racket with reed pipes, cornets, and skin-drums, weaving up the steep path to the castle carrying tallow-drenched torches while Aliénor, wearing a coronet of woven ivy, dismounted and danced like some woodland fairy. Aliénor threw open the door. The mead hall was festooned with garlands of greenery she’d ordered his men-at-arms to gather. She invited in the crowd, offering a feast generous with both food and wine.
The meal was merry, and just as it was finished she summoned a few villagers to blow music through their reed-pipes. Soon there was clapping and dancing and, for the children, games of hoodman blind. She wove through the crowded room, made warm from torches, the hearth fire, and the close proximity of so many bodies, keeping an eye on possible trouble as she dodged the reach of drunken men-at-arms while checking pitchers for fullness.
She was a sorceress, conjuring the season to life, filling the castle with the greatest of cheer. He scraped back his chair where he sat in supposed majesty, stood up unsteadily, and plunged into the crowd so he wouldn’t be the only man in the room who hadn’t danced with her. When he finally came upon her, he wound an arm around her waist and pulled her back against his body.
She smelled of pine and new wine and woman, and she giggled as if she’d had one cup too many.
“Jehan,” she whispered, grasping his forearm, “you shouldn’t—”
“It’s Twelfth Night. I could strip you bare on the stairs, take you as I will, and no one would raise a brow.”
“You,” she said, “are exaggerating.”
“Every other man in this room has embraced you, touched you, or danced at your side. Am I to be the only one denied?”
“I have turned them all away.”
“But I am your liege lord, and thus you cannot say no.”
He splayed his hand over her abdomen and wished he could dissolve the wool and linen beneath it so his fingers could feel her naked skin.
She whispered, “My brother—”
“—has gone to chapel to pray for all our souls.”
He’d seen the boy leave, uneasy with the revelry, looking aghast at all the wild eyes and drunken laughter.
“Besides,” he added, burying his face in her soft hair, “there’s not a sober eye in all the room. No one will notice if we leave.”
It had been two days and several hours since their last coupling, a furtive thing, a stolen moment in his tower room under the pretense of arranging the meal for the feast, with Esquival outside the door on watch.
His cock stiffened with the need to feel her body against his. To feel, if only for a moment, that this was not an interval with a beginning and an end, but one moment in a long lifetime.
“I’ll leave first,” she whispered, her breath against his mouth. “Meet me in my room.”
She flashed a bright gaze over her shoulder before she disappeared amid the crowd. He found his way to the hearth and stared into the flames, counting the moments, trying his best not to imagine the sound of her gasp in his ear, the undulation of her slim, strong body beneath his. Then he was stepping over kissing couples as he climbed the stairs to the upper floor.
The torches had sputtered out, leaving the second floor gallery in darkness. He clung to the shadows as he passed her brother’s room—empty, he saw it for himself—and set as his goal the faint, orange glow spilling out from her door, neatly ajar.
Ensuring no eyes were upon him, he slipped in and closed it behind him. A quick glance around the room showed her maidservant was not here, likely enjoying the revelries below and told to continue to do so. The drapes of the bed had been drawn. He approached and pushed them aside.
