“My point,” she said, feeling the absence of his touch like an ache, “is you are older, better trained, and more experienced than my brother. Certainly you can trick a fifteen-year-old boy into surrendering without a battle?”
He pulled a fraction away. “You’d rather I trick your brother than have him fight like a knight?”
“He belongs in a monastery.” She brushed a fleck of hay off his surcoat, feeling the weave of the wool and the ripple of chain mail beneath. “Don’t make him pay dearly for a misguided cause.”
He ran a bare finger down her cheek. When it reached her chin he tilted her face up to meet his.
“I wonder, Aliénor, who you care for more: Me or your brother.”
“How can you ask such a thing?” Her heart turned over. “I love you both.”
“He would make me his executioner.”
“You won’t kill him—”
“He would rip me out of your heart.”
“That’s not possible,” she said huskily, “if you refuse to fight him.”
She tried to read the changing expressions on his shuttered face, desperate to see some sign of agreement. He couldn’t be thinking of fighting Laurent, her skinny brother who’d rather spend days with his nose in scripture. She pressed out of her mind a memory of Laurent laughing in the great hall with a wooden sword in his hand and blood on his teeth.
Jehan dropped his hand from her face and stepped away in silence. The fabric of his surcoat fell out of her hands. She watched it go, the green and blue embroidery shimmering in the dim light.
Her brother and her lover would be wearing the same colors.
“You won’t fight him,” she blurted, clinging to hope.
She heard a clatter as Jehan took his sword belt in hand.