Page 17 of The Captive Knight
Her smile didn’t quite reach her cheeks. It had not been easy to play the docile, ignorant young girl to a beady-eyed viscount who kept staring at the gape in her kirtle every time she served him wine.
He said, “You’ve guessed, no doubt, that I’ve found a husband for you.”
She startled, then blurted, “Who?”
“The viscount’s firstborn son, Guy, as I’d hoped. Someday you will become the lady of Baste as well as the lady of Tournan.”
Her heart lifted and fell all at once, for though the betrothal meant she’d never step foot in a convent, her father’s last words also confirmed he’d dispossessed Laurent for good.
“Have I not done well for you, daughter?”
She forcibly brightened her countenance. “I’m surprised, father. I didn’t think…since Guy de Baste did not join his father in visiting—”
“His eldest son was kept away by his duties in the court of King Jean.”
“Of course,” she stuttered, for the viscount had said so himself, “but our guests left so early this morning, I was sure there was no time to set terms.”
“De Baste was eager to return to the safety of his castle, considering the rumors coming out of Bordeaux. But we’ve agreed to terms, quite satisfactory ones.”
“Including Castétis?”
The question was a risk, but she couldn’t bring herself to retract it even as a silence grew between them.
“Your dowry is my entire estate,” he said, with irritation. “I made that exceedingly clear to you and your wretched brother.”
“Forgive me. For so long, Castétis was all I hoped for.”
“Then it’s fortunate you no longer have to hang your hopes upon it, daughter. It may take years to get it back.”
“Years?”
“The English knight says he prefers imprisonment.”
Her heart stuttered a beat. “You’ve spoken to Sir—to the prisoner?”
“Three weeks ago he was all but dead.” Her father tilted his head to glower at her. “Now I’m told he rises, sleek and well-tended. Resurrected like the son of God.”
“But isn’t it fortunate,” she said, her tongue with a will of its own, “that he still lives to trade his freedom as ransom for Castétis?”
“And yet a weakened knight would be easier to bargain with than one full of defiance and obstruction.”
“You are wise as always, but I wonder at what shame would fall upon our house if he died in our cell—”
“He brought this on his own head.”
“Of course,” she persisted, “but mother always taught me that men of noble blood, even prisoners, aren’t usually…confined in a cell. They’re welcome at table, given the run of the castle on their honor—”
“This man has no honor.”
She knew that tone, so she let her lashes fall over her eyes. Her gaze settled on her father’s soft leather boots, planted wide upon the flagstones. His disapproval seemed to heat the veil upon her hair, but she knew well enough a lowered gaze and a dipped chin could work wonders.
So did plain good sense, when presented as if he’d figured it out himself.
“Perhaps,” she ventured, taking a breath in anticipation of an angry lecture, “the prisoner is like the sparrow hawk you gifted me, father.”
She took some solace in her father’s silence, even if it made the air feel as dense as stone.
“In the beginning,” she continued, “when I tethered her in the mews, she bit at her jesses and screeched at me and clawed herself bloody.”
