Chapter Two
“Unhand me.”
Aliénor spoke firmly even as her hand went numb. His eyes, fogged with pain, bored into hers from beneath his matted hair. Terror made her insides soft, but for eight years she’d run a castle full of fighting men under the capricious rule of her mercurial father. She knew better than to show fear.
Suddenly the room rang with the sound of a sword being scraped out of a scabbard.
“Don’t.” She threw up her free hand to stop Rudel from approaching. “The prisoner will come to his senses.”
That cloudy blue gaze flickered to the men looming behind her. Rudel shuffled uneasily under her restraint. Hugo made low grunting noises. Then those eyes shifted back to look her over from scalp to knees.
“What’s this mischief?” he rasped. “Does the viscount send a woman to kill me?”
“I am unarmed.” She twisted her torso so he could see she wore no dagger. Then she tipped her head to where Hugo had placed the tray. “I have brought food and wine and the means to tend to your wounds.”
“Not by his orders,” he retorted. “That murderer would sooner send his maiden daughter to share my bed.”
A flush blistered her cheeks. The gall of the man to speak so, even if he didn’t know who she was. “It’s the viscount’s food,” she insisted, “the viscount’s wine—”
“—sent by another knight. One of the viscount’s better men. Sir Rostand, perhaps,” he said, “or another?”
“Does it matter, if it fills your belly?” The tips of her fingers began to tingle.
“I trust no gift from Tournan.” His gaze dipped to the gape of her surcoat with a speculative gleam. “Unless he’s seeking forgiveness by offering you up—”
“Accept my hospitality—or don’t,” she interrupted. “But release me now, or my guard will relieve you of your hand.”
His jaw hardened and he breathed hard, like the huff of a buck. With a grunt, he loosed his grip. She tumbled onto one hip. Righting herself, she gestured for Hugo to bring the wine.
Rubbing the blood back into her wrist, she watched as Sir Jehan pushed himself up to a sitting position, wincing all the way. He took the jug Hugo offered to him and lifted it by the handle. His hand shook, making droplets run over his chin and spill upon his chest.
Mad with pain, she thought, her heart still pounding. Mad with thirst. And she was the maddest of all, to have expected calm, reason, or gratitude.
She slid out of his reach to remove his metal shoes, gathering her wits while she mentally listed his wounds. Blood soaked through his chain-mail hose where broken links revealed a cut on his thigh. His left hand lay bruised and swollen by his side. She wondered if the bones were broken or crushed, but she was more concerned with the wound still seeping on his head and, more alarming, the source of all the blood soaking his surcoat. How could he have been wounded so seriously on the torso? Swords were nearly useless against mail, and if this knight wore a coat-of-plates, as most knights did, the daggers that might break chain mail at close contact could not possibly have penetrated the plate defenses.
She would find out soon enough, she thought, as she removed his round knee-plates. He breathed hard as he sagged against the wall, alert in the way of a man trying to battle unconsciousness. She ordered Hugo to bring the platter of food closer to give the thief something else to do than stare.
“No poison here?” he said, tearing into a duck’s leg.
“Poison’s a coward’s weapon.”
“A woman’s one, too.”
She flung his knee-plates away so they clattered on the stone floor.
“No poisoned wine, no poisoned food, and no dagger in my heart,” he said. “It’s a daring woman who’ll defy the Viscount of Tournan.”
She frowned, annoyed he knew her father’s nature so well. “Lean forward so I can remove your surcoat.”
He canted away from the wall. Pain spasmed across his face. He raised his arms, favoring his swollen hand, so she could lift the bloody rag over his head. He wore no coat-of-plates beneath the tunic, which was odd, and the links in his chain mail were broken in a few places. That meant the wounds on his abdomen must be from daggers.
For his sake, she hoped they were not deep.
“The viscount caught us when we were riding down a roebuck,” he said. “Neither I nor my men were fully armored.”
She ignored the fact that he’d read her mind and reached for the buckles on his shirt of mail.
He placed his rough, swollen hand over hers. “It will not be a pleasant sight for such pretty eyes.”
“I’ve surely seen worse wounds on my father.”
A half-smile cracked the dried blood upon his cheek. “I knew you for a knight’s daughter.”
She pulled her hand from under his. “Your behavior suggested otherwise.”
“Perhaps I’m not at my best.”
She wondered when a thief would be at his best. When stealing unguarded castles? Destroying a woman’s future?
“Since it appears your motives are honest,” he said, in a low voice, “let’s begin again. Tell me your name, mademoiselle.”
“It hardly matters.”
“It matters to me. I would know who I should thank.”
“Very well.” She couldn’t help herself. “My name is Aliénor. Aliénor de Tournan.”
He stilled, his half-smile fading. It felt good to throw her name at him, as foolish as it was. Cursing the man to his face felt better than cursing his name, even if it did thin the air in the room and make his gaze turn to blue flames.
He rasped, “Leave.”
“You reject my hospitality?”
“Tournan and hospitality are two words that don’t belong together.”
“I am chatelaine of this castle,” she said, falling back on her heels, “and I will do as my mother taught me: Care for all who come to our gates. Even thieves.”
He loomed forward, close enough for her to see the bristles of his dark beard beneath the blood and dirt streaking his face, close enough to see his dilated pupils, and the stark pain in his eyes.
“Easy, Hugo,” she said, as the boy’s grunting noises heightened in pitch. “Sir Jehan can do me no harm.”
The thief’s gaze flickered brighter. “You have more courage than your father.”
“You are as weak as a newborn colt.”
“Even a newborn colt can crush a flower.”
“Are you going to parry words with me, thief, or are you going to allow me to bind your wounds?”
“Only a fool would trust a Tournan.”
“I have good reason to see you live.” Her voice hardened. “Castétis is my dowry. Only if you live can we ransom you for my stolen castle.”
She refused to lower her gaze though her heart pounded in her ears. The knight had long, dark lashes and strong, straight brows. His eyes had a lazy tilt at the corners that spoke of a nature far more sensual than the one he radiated right now. On the side where his head wound hadn’t bled all over his face, she saw shallow, pale creases fanning from the corner of his eye, a hint of mirth and good humor her mind balked at imagining.
“I will test your skill first,” he said, sinking against the wall. “Start with my head wound.”
She rose to her feet to fetch what she needed, hating how her knees wobbled. She’d seen knights in this pain-crazed condition before. It was a wonder he could muster any strength at all. But the threat of his unpredictable strength, combined with her anger at him, her shock at his condition, and a growing dread that she might not be able to save his life conspired to unsettle her both in mind and body.
She took her time collecting a pitcher of water and a stack of linens before returning to kneel beside him. She searched through his matted locks for the slash that had bled so profusely. She found it at the edge of his forehead, spreading from just above his brow to the tip of his right ear. As she removed the mask of dirt and blood, it became clear he was a young knight, not many years older than she. She had always imagined this wretched thief as older, gnarled, and war-scarred, with a body as weak as his honor.
“Hugo,” she murmured, “go to the kitchens and fetch more wine.” When she heard no motion behind her, she twisted and raised a brow at the boy, who was shaking his head. “Rudel will watch over me while you are away.”
Hugo shook his head harder, his dark hair swinging around his face.
“Do as she bids, good man,” the thief said. “On my honor, I will not harm your mistress.”
Acid bit the back of her throat at the talk of honor from a thief, but his steady words had a different effect on Hugo. The boy paused for a moment, then took the earthen pitcher at her side and silently left the room.
She shook her head.
Men.
She threaded her silver needle in preparation for stitching his head wound. He twitched at the first piercing. Fresh blood dripped and she knew from the tautness of his body she was causing him pain. She shouldn’t care. For the trouble he’d caused her, she should enjoy every bit of agony she inflicted on him. Yet she found herself working swiftly, finishing just as Hugo returned with more wine.
“It’s done,” she said, as she secured a clean linen strip around his head. “Now let me see your hand.”
Grudgingly, he presented it to her. She probed the swelling around his wrist. She felt no broken bones but suspected his wrist was sprained. There wasn’t much she could do but wrap it up.
When she was done, she gave his chain-mail shirt a tug. “Do you still fear I’ll plunge a dagger into your heart?”
He waved his good hand. She couldn’t help but notice it was shaking. Alarmed, she made short work with the buckles and then, with Hugo’s help, she pulled the chain mail off his shoulders. A padded doublet followed. While she dragged the heavy chain mail and the doublet to the pile with his other armor, Hugo helped wrestle the knight out of his bloody shift. When she turned around, Sir Jehan was naked from the waist up.
Her throat went dry. The knight didn’t need padding and plates for protection. Surely any sword would deflect off the iron-hard sweep of his shoulders and the sculptured planes and ripples of his torso. Her gaze fell to his abdomen, tacky with dried blood, and the odd thoughts fled.
“Tell me, daughter of Tournan,” he said. “Does this look like the result of a fair fight between knights?”
She held her tongue, for the pallor of his face and the quaver in his voice suggested she was running out of time. Dropping to her knees beside him again, she swiped a wet linen over the swollen ripples of his abdomen to expose the skin beneath, searching for open bleeding, preparing to stanch it. But beneath her hand, the sheen of dried blood gave way to nothing but an abdomen discolored with bruises. For all her efforts, she couldn’t find any wound deeper than a scratch.
She paused, baffled, the wet linen dripping in her hand. A blow of a spiked mace atop chain mail could cause bruising, or a blow of a mailed fist, but that didn’t explain the source of the blood in which he and his clothes were covered.
“No words from the loyal daughter?” He was breathing fast, staring at her like she was his only grip on consciousness.
“I’ll tend to your leg and be on my way.” She tossed the linen aside and reached for her needle. “I’ll leave the food. I don’t know when I can return.”
“Not a single question? No curiosity as to whose blood I’m bathed in?”
She wanted to ask. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Ask your father,” the thief persisted. “Ask him why he battled a knight who’d offered up his sword.”
“Enough.”
“Ask him,” he persisted, “why he butchered three of my men before my eyes, as well as an innocent, unarmed squire.”
***
The next morning, Aliénor caught up with her brother, sprawled on the bottom stair of the castle steps. After last night’s troubling confession from Sir Jehan—one that kept her awake most of the night—Aliénor was determined to turn her mind to the more solvable problem of the fifteen-year-old Laurent de Tournan.
She sank onto the stairs beside him. “Father is still off hunting then?”
“He left before dawn,” her brother said, shrugging. “He still hasn’t asked to see me.”
“Good.”
Her father’s inattention was a small reprieve, but it would not last for long. Sometime today she was sure he would summon his only remaining male heir into his presence, and then Laurent would face the usual reckoning.
She glanced at Laurent’s saddled horse standing nearby. “I see Thibaud has arranged for practice.”
“Always the optimist, our uncle.” With a wry smile, he turned over in his hand a small block of oak on which he was carving the face of a saint. “He thinks that playing at knights’ games will turn me from my intentions.”
She gave him a narrow look. “Thibaud thinks training you as a knight will keep our father in better humor.”
“A fool’s errand.”
“Don’t poke the beast, Laurent, not today.” She dipped down, forcing her brother to meet her eyes. “On the madness scale, our father is well past St. Stephen’s Day and nearly at Epiphany.”
“Skipping straight past Christmas?”
“Alas.”
“But he’s not as furious as Good Friday, you think?”
She pulled a face, thinking of the many gradations of her father’s madness, measured by her and Laurent’s own private scale. “If the condition of the knight in the tower is any measure, we should both be on our best behavior at all times.”
“In that case, I’ll put off reminding our father of his promise to send me to a monastery.”
His words did nothing to assuage her unease. Father had made the promise to Laurent as a child, long ago, when things were different. Before the plague had taken their two older brothers and made Laurent the heir.
“Oh, don’t brood, Aliénor,” he said, his voice light. “I will hold onto hope still, no matter what you think. After all, father hasn’t sent me off to any local lord as squire. I’m nearly fifteen and still living in his house. Certainly that means—”
“—nothing more than father—when not fighting for King Jean—spends too much time offering up his sword to foreign lords rather than seeing to his responsibilities here.” She tried to brush his hair out of his face but Laurent veered away from her touch with a scowl. “Now that he’s back,” she said, “it’s just as likely he’ll secure your future at someone’s court. Maybe even the Count of Armagnac.”
“The count may not be pleased to have such a squire.” He gathered up the length of his woolen tunic, the one that looked very much like a monk’s robe, to expose his twisted foot, which tugged the soft leather of his boot into strange angles. “Have you ever known a crippled knight?”
“Your leg is only a problem when you’re fighting on the ground,” she said. “You know very well, on a horse, there is no difference. Knights fight on horseback, not on foot.”
“Unless they’re unseated.”
“Which you will rarely be,” she added, nodding toward the waiting horse, “if you practice in the saddle.”
“But I’m not Bertrand.” He placed the block of wood aside. “And I’m not Gaston. Do you remember how they rode, Aliénor? How easy upon the saddle, how swift across the fields?”
For a moment she could almost see them, her two husky, dark-haired older brothers, racing one another through the gates of the castle, the shod hooves of their mounts ringing upon the flagstones.
“It’s no secret,” he said, into their shared memory, “that father wishes the plague had taken me instead of them.”
“Don’t say such things.” The words came out by rote for the many times she’d denied their terrible truth. “It will make you bitter, Laurent. Hard-hearted. It will twist you up inside until you’re no better than…”
Our father.
“You’re right, of course. I should say penance.” He squinted up at her from under a fringe of dark hair and flashed a grin like a splinter in her heart. “I’d rather go to the chapel and say penance than practice.”
His ploy was so plain that she couldn’t help but return his smile. “Practice first, penance later.”
“You’re a worse taskmaster than Thibaud.”
“Thibaud would have you on the horse already instead of sitting here wasting time wondering about our fate.”
“Ally, I may wonder about my fate, but you have no reason to do so anymore. Father will find you a husband as soon as he ransoms the prisoner for your castle.”
She resisted the urge to wince. She had no reason to feel guilty. She was not the one who’d murdered an unarmed squire, but blood-guilt couldn’t help but tarnish all her pretty expectations.
“If father plans to marry me off, he’d best do it quickly.” She gestured to the courtyard, cluttered around the perimeter with the village rentes: bags of grain, huge bundles of wood from the forests on the northern slopes, oak barrels of new wine, and sundry foodstuffs she was long overdue to sort and store. Amid the piles were barrels of pitch and sheaves of arrows. “By the looks of things, he’s expecting to hold off an attack.”
Laurent’s black eyes, so like his father’s, rounded. “Do you think the Prince of Wales will march his army here?”
“If he does, we’ll be well prepared.”
The words tripped off her tongue but her mind traveled a darker path. It had been over a century since this castle had seen battle, if Thibaud’s histories were to be trusted. Now she wondered about the line of trees close outside the northwest wall, thick enough for archers to hide behind. The mortar had been crumbling amid the crenellations of the southwest tower for years, but father had not been here to order restoration. And the drawbridge spanned hard-packed earth instead of the deep ditch that had once been there, if Thibaud’s stories were true.
Then booming laughter rang out in the courtyard, distracting her from growing worries. Their uncle strode into sight from around the shadow of the donjon. Thibaud always reminded Aliénor of a badly wound spool of white woolen thread. His head, with its great mane of stark white hair, was disproportionally larger than his body, which appeared as lean and hard as a young man’s. Despite his sixty years of age, her late mother’s uncle was anything but weak. His penetrating gray eyes saw as sharply as a man half his age, and despite occasional bouts of stiffness, he was as adroit on a stallion as any newly dubbed knight.
“There you are, uncle.” She tilted her head toward Laurent, now sighing and shaking his head. “Help me persuade my stubborn little brother that even monks need to know how to ride well.”
“True monks travel the world on foot,” Laurent said, squinting up at his kinsman, “and they never ride horses.”
“Listen to you, talking about traveling the world on foot.” The older man reached down and gave Laurent’s twisted limb a good pull. “Are you to walk from here to Toulouse on such a leg? A good monk would ride well, to better help the poor in all places.”
“You know I can ride circles around you, uncle—”
“But not with a lance.”
“A lance is a knight’s weapon.”
“Have you noticed there’s been a war on for the last thirty years? That the English king still won’t pay homage to our own good King Jean? That the damn English king has sent his spawn, the Prince of Wales, to punish those who pay homage to our own true king? That women, children, peasants, and even monks with crippled legs won’t be spared?”
Her brother sighed. “History lessons are after nones, uncle.”
“Any man who travels, either to make war or to pray for the souls of men, must protect himself.”
“My prayers shall protect me.”
“So shall a lance.”
“Come now, uncle, a lance is a tournament toy—”
“Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. Now climb on your horse or I’ll toss you on it myself.”
Laurent rolled his eyes but dutifully pushed himself up from the stairs, stowing his knife and carving in a pocket. Limping over to the horse, he climbed onto a half-cask and waved away a stable boy’s offer of aid. With practiced awkwardness, he swung his twisted leg over the horse and sat in the saddle.
“Warm him up with a few circuits,” Thibaud said. “Get him firm under your seat.”
Laurent kicked the horse and set him on his paces. Aliénor stood up from her seat on the stairs and took a place next to Thibaud.
Her uncle leaned closer. “I trust you know what you’re doing, woman?”
“Laurent can’t hide in the chapel forever. Father will summon him eventually. Best to choose the time and situation.”
“Later is usually better. Like when your father is out of his cups.”
“Such as in the morning,” she said pointedly, “after a hunt. He’s always happy after a hunt, whether he fells a deer or not. And this way, my father will see Laurent on horseback, rather than glimpsing him limping across the yard or at prayer in the chapel.”
Thibaud grunted.
“And where have you been hiding, uncle? I’ve been trying to talk to you since dawn.”
“I have more important things to do than teach your brother how to ride a horse in circles.” He gave her a sidelong look. “I wouldn’t have come here at all if I didn’t see the boy was getting the best of you.”
She raised her brows. “That’s a poor excuse for trying to avoid me.”
“So you couldn’t charm or cajole the men-at-arms into telling you anything, eh?”
“You’d think I was carrying the plague, by how quickly they turned away when I approached.”
“You’re his daughter. They know they’ll lose more than their tongues if they utter a word.”
Thibaud went silent, by all appearances focused on watching Laurent put the horse through his paces. The ends of Thibaud’s unfashionably long surcoat flapped in the breeze blowing over the toothed edge of the ramparts. In the bright sunlight, she could see every crease in his well-lined face. She waited, knowing if she remained patient for long enough, her voluble uncle wouldn’t be able to bear the silence.
“What I know I heard in pieces.” His bushy brows, as white as summer clouds, lowered over his eyes. “Your father trapped Sir Jehan and his men in a valley near the Garonne River. Sir Jehan and his men were lightly armed and not expecting an ambush. The knight had no choice but to surrender, and he did.” Thibaud’s cheek flexed under a prickly field of white stubble. “Then your father set his mercenaries upon them all.”
“Mercenaries?!”
“Picked up along the way, so Sir Rostand told me. A rough, bloody group of sell-swords. Your father wanted to present a larger force at the gates of Castétis, so he hired a dozen or so upon the road.”
Father had said something about men having died for her sake, but every knight of the household had returned. Her father must have meant some of those mercenaries, hungry creatures, men-at-arms set adrift from their liege lord between campaigns.
“At your father’s orders,” Thibaud continued, “they killed Sir Jehan’s men.”
A pinch brought her attention to her hands and she realized she was digging her nails into her palms. “Surely father must have been provoked—”
“A flea could provoke him,” Thibaud said. “Or too much spice in the wine. Or a thwarted conquest, a drunken insult, a sidelong glance—”
“Thibaud.”
She could not defend her father’s behavior, but it still felt like treason to enumerate his mistakes. She still remembered a time when her father wasn’t like this, before Crécy, when he was kind and patient and full of laughter.
“Sir Jehan fought,” her uncle continued, “as any man would. His squire ran in to defend his master with no more weapons than his fists. The mercenaries made short work of the boy.”
She winced. In her heart, she had known Sir Jehan’s words were true, but she’d hoped for some excuse, some twist, some less horrific version of the truth.
She said, “I don’t”— want to—“believe that.”
“Yes, you do.” He hefted a lance to get Laurent’s attention. “You’ve seen the knight, bathed in the blood of his own men. You’ve seen him, beaten senseless. As surely as I saw you wander to the northwest tower last night.”
Thibaud’s gray eyes bored into her, and though she tried to still her expression, she knew she’d given herself away.
“Old bones don’t sleep well, especially when the winter is nigh.” He held out the lance, hilt first, as Laurent swung by on a circuit and paused long enough to grasp it. Her brother tucked the lance under his arm, adjusted to the weight of it, and kicked the horse into a trot again before Thibaud continued. “You’ve been known to nurture a half-dead dog back to life, so I knew you wouldn’t allow a knight to die of battle wounds.”
“You think too well of me. If Sir Jehan had died, I’d be further away from my dowry and closer to a convent.”
“And it’s an earthly husband you want, is it?”
“Where’s the sin in that?” She wouldn’t blush, she wouldn’t. “I would have a castle of my own, and for that I need my equal as a husband. I would have a roof over my head, perhaps children, and the kind of happiness that once rang within these walls. Do you remember those days, Thibaud?”
She remembered them. She held them close like a light in the darkness. During Easter and Christmas in those before-days, she used to be released from the convent, her brother Bertrand from his service as squire, and they’d all come home for the season. Bertrand would strut about in his fine silk doublet, joking with the men-at-arms. Gaston would swing Laurent up on his shoulders to give him pony rides around the courtyard. Her mother sat by the fire after every meal, her golden head bent over her embroidery. And her father would reveal gifts brought from far-away places, pieces of armor from Venetian metal workers, fur mantles from Normandy, a specially made etched leather saddle for Laurent’s first pony.
Then the battle at Crécy happened, and father returned months later with a dent in his skull and rages that could not be controlled.
“Castétis is not much,” she said, “but it could be a refuge. For me. For Laurent. And for you, uncle, if it suits you. We would all have a life away from my father’s… capricious nature.”
“And what makes you think your father will let you go?”
She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but Thibaud’s attention had turned to the portal. She heard the baying of hounds and the clatter of hooves over the drawbridge just before her father galloped into the courtyard with his hunting dogs at heel. Her father’s gaze swept the courtyard with masterly pride, and then stilled on Laurent.
Her heart crowded into her throat as her father kicked his mount between Laurent and a bale of hay, hemming him in.
“So my son has emerged from hiding.” He glanced around the courtyard, taking in the target raised on the opposite side. “And here you are, training to be a knight.”
She curled her hands within the folds of her kirtle, willing her brother to be wise. From this distance, she could see the pallor of Laurent’s face.
“By all means, continue.” Her father dismounted and tossed the reins to a stable boy, then tugged the riding glove from his hand, finger by finger. “Show me what you’ve learned while I was away fighting for your legacy.”
Her breath came shallow between her lips. It would have been better if her father had returned from the hunt while Laurent was in swordplay with Thibaud. Laurent looked lively and impressive while parrying from the saddle, but he was good enough with the lance. That’s what she told herself, over and over, as Laurent nudged his gelding to the head of the cleared area. His black eyes shone with what looked encouragingly like determination.
“Hold the lance tight,” Thibaud shouted. “Raise the tip as you aim for the center of the target.”
Laurent’s horse pranced while her brother tried to settle him.
Come, frai. Show him what you can do. You’re long due to be sent off to squire, someplace far from here, where he can’t hurt you anymore.
Laurent dug his heels into the horse’s sides. The gelding broke into a canter, kicking up puffs of dust. Laurent held up the lance as Thibaud instructed, though the tip quivered as if he struggled with the weight. She watched with bated breath as the point of the lance tore into the edge of the woven bag and grain spilled out onto the ground.
For the space of a heartbeat, she thought, he has hit the target well, but then the lance veered to the side and hit the post. It jerked back, knocking her brother clear off the saddle. He fell to the stones with a sickening, hollow thud.
She lunged forward but Thibaud held her back. She saw black rage bloom on her father’s face.
Get up, Laurent. Get up.
Sunlight glinted off the dagger strapped to her father’s belt as he strode to where her brother struggled up on his elbows. Through her mind flashed images of a beaten hound, a spitted squire, a wounded knight.
“Flesh of my flesh, unseated by a bag of grain,” he muttered. “This is the son who remains to me.”
Laurent managed to rise to his feet, reeling. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and rasped, “I am no knight, father.”
Her heart stopped.
“No, you are not.” Her father swung his hand across Laurent’s face, launching him to skid across the ground. “And you never will be.”
Aliénor shouted her brother’s name, jerking against Thibaud’s grip, but her father turned his thunderous face toward her so fast that she froze.
“This crippled excuse of a boy,” he said, turning to spit on the ground, “is no longer my heir.”
Thibaud refused to release her until her father had strode across the courtyard, barking for wine, and the door to the donjon closed behind him. Racing to her brother, she fell to her knees. His eyes were just starting to open. Blood dripped from his nose, over his chin, and onto his tunic. She lifted the trailing ends of her tippet sleeves to wipe it away.
Her heart fluttered. “God’s Blood, Laury, are you trying to get yourself killed?”
He winced as he pushed himself upright. “Knight’s training has taught me how to fall off a horse without breaking my neck.”
“Our father could have—”
“But he didn’t.” He jerked his head away from her fussing and instead swiped his sleeve across his mouth. “I’m alive, and everything is exactly as it should be.”
“Are you out of your senses?” She sat back on her heels. “You know our father doesn’t mean what he says when—”
“Yes, he does, and I’ll hold him to it.” His lips widened in a bloody grin. “You’re the new heir, Ally. And I can finally join the monastery.”