Page 71 of The Captive Knight
He tightened his jaw as he laid a steadying hand on the mantel. “I will escort you.”
“No, no,” she said, arranging her skirt straight across her hips. “It’s too deep into French territory.”
“I will not send you unguarded.”
“Thibaud would be a better escort, along with some of my father’s remaining men-at-arms.”
“With no offense to your uncle, he’s not the spryest knight in this castle.”
“But he has influence in the French court, if his stories are to be believed.”
“In the court of the king’s father, perhaps, but—”
“Jehan, certainly you understand it would better that I arrive in Paris with my uncle rather than my lover.”
A blush glazed her cheeks. He could see it from clear across the room. She was ashamed, he thought. Laurent and his grand, reckless, thoughtless gesture had made her ashamed of what they had shared between them.
That might be the worst wound of all.
“And my brother,” she ventured, clasping her hands before her. “What are you to do with him?”
Indeed, what was he to do with the brother who’d convinced brigands to fight for his cause? A boy who’d ridden to this castle in the colors of his father and fought for his sister’s honor? A crippled boy warrior who claimed to be heir?
“Go and tell your brother,” he said, “that I will send you away to your king—but only under the condition that he join the monastery and publicly cede his claim to the title for good.”
“You know he has never wanted the title.”
“Yet just by making the claim, he may have started something he can no longer control.”
She raised her shoulders in frustration. “He’s so changed, Jehan. I can’t promise he’ll concede.”
“He’ll concede because it’s what he truly wants.”
She looked overlong at her clasped hands, the silence broken only by the crackling of the hearth flames.
“I can’t help but wonder,” she ventured. “Wouldn’t it be…unwise…for us to travel so long and far together?”
His heart constricted. Already he longed to run kisses along the side of her face to where a pulse now beat against her temple.
“Not with your brother as chaperone,” he said. “I can escort him to the monastery on the return journey.”
She nodded in silence, her chest rising and falling, her throat flexing, her gaze slipping away from his.
“I can’t leave him here in my absence, in any case,” he added, “for sell-swords or the villagers to rally to his misguided cause. Now go.” It hurt to look at her so he turned to gaze sightlessly at the fire. “Make your brother the offer, and then make the arrangements for the journey. We leave tomorrow.”
A bird flew close to the arrow-slit window, coming up against the barrier of the stretched leather covering. The sound of battering wings filled the room. By the time the noise stopped, Aliénor had already slipped out the door.
He laid his head upon his hand where it gripped the mantle.
The fight was over.
Her brother had won.
