Chapter Six
With the knight limping beside her, Aliénor crossed to the mews in a numb sort of daze, still thrumming with the intensity of their conversation. He’d parried all her objections, argued his point, and brushed off her barbs like dog hair from his hose. She struggled to reconcile her former opinion of him with the idea that he was simply a dispossessed knight struggling to control his own fate. More than their pace had harmonized, it seemed, as side-by-side they crossed the courtyard.
She left him outside the mews and slipped in through the narrow door to dive deep into the cross-hatched shadows. She sucked in the first full breath she’d managed since she’d glimpsed him looming in the courtyard. Her heart beat fast under the palm of her hand as she pressed her chest in a vain effort to slow it. She had to gather her wits quick or she’d make a fool of herself for sure.
She seized a boiled leather glove, unhooked the sparrow hawk’s leash from the perch, and wound it about her own leather-bound wrist. She took her time coaxing the bird onto the glove before she dared to step back into the courtyard. Under Jehan’s bold blue stare, her heart did yet another skitter-step.
Later, she told herself. When she was out of the power of his physical presence, she’d be able to think this all through more clearly.
“A fine-looking bird,” he said, as he came around so he’d walk on the opposite side of her hawk. “Have you had her long?”
“She was a gift from my father.” She spoke a low, firm word to her spaniel to stop jumping on her. “But perhaps we shouldn’t talk about him.”
“Or Castétis,” he added wryly. “At least I know where the battle lines are drawn.” He grinned a crooked sort of smile, the kind that made the back of her knees soften. “What of your mother? Is she off-limits for conversation?”
“No,” she said. “My mother was from Normandy.” With a pang, she thought about how much she could use a mother’s advice now. “The French king arranged the marriage to my father to secure his loyalty.”
“The northern heritage must explain the glory of your hair. There are few Gascons so fair.”
She felt her cheeks heat at the compliment. “My mother’s eyes were more worthy of envy—they were the shade of heather.”
“Heather is common on the hills.” His gaze strayed to the bird. “Your eyes are the shade of a hawk’s plumage—brown with streaks of gold.”
“Did I not warn you about playing the troubadour, Sir Jehan?”
“I speak only the truth.”
“Troubadours don’t speak truth. They sing romantic songs about unobtainable love to silly maidens who should know better.”
His quick laugh was colored with surprise. “Some Abbess told you that.”
“No, I figured it out myself.” She suppressed a shudder at the memory of her cold cell. “Troubadours used to visit Castelnau, now and again, in the years when war waned, before the plague made travel dangerous.”
“And you don’t swoon when a troubadour sings?”
“There’s only so much foolishness I can abide.”
“In the court at Bordeaux, the ladies sigh over every song. What a singular woman you are, Aliénor.”
She caught his eye and a heavy charge crackled between them, like the air when the black clouds of a summer storm came, dancing like sparks across her skin.
She turned her gaze away. “You would have saved me much misery if you’d become a troubadour. A lute is far less dangerous than a sword.”
“It depends on what one wishes to capture. A woman’s heart, for example, is rarely captured at sword point.”
“But a lute,” she said pointedly, “cannot capture a castle or lands.”
“It can, if the troubadour uses a lute to woo and win a woman who is in possession of such riches.”
“But then you risk breaking the lady’s heart for wanting her possessions more than her heart.”
“Alas.” He spread his palms upward. “Even a troubadour can’t lure an heiress with empty hands.”
Her glance fell to one of those hands, and the dirty bandage upon it, so she took the opportunity to veer to a less dangerous subject. “The swelling of your hand seems to have subsided.”
“Then let me take off the bindings.”
“And release you to wield your terrible weapons?”
“There’s not a lute or sword within my reach, mademoiselle, and I don’t think the guards will hand me either.”
“I suppose it can do no harm,” she said, though her heart said otherwise when he smiled again.
“Good! I am tired of spilling wine.” Jehan yanked the end of the linen free, and then rapidly unwound the cloth. Once unbound, he flexed his fingers and turned his wrist, confirming to her the damage had been no worse than a sprain.
She said, “Any pain?”
“A bit stiff.”
“You shouldn’t raise a shield for a while, but it looks healthy enough.”
“Thanks to your skill. You’ll make a fine wife someday.”
“Someday,” she said, “will be the feast of the Epiphany.”
She’d blurted it like it was nothing and regretted it a moment later. She turned her gaze to the ramparts to better keep a hold on her wits, because every time she let her thoughts stray to the prospect of her wedding, her insides tightened up and her mind spiraled with anxious thoughts and she felt as if a great shadowed hand were coming down upon her.
He said, “Your father didn’t waste any time.”
“I’m nearly twenty-three years of age.”
“You’re in the flower of womanhood.”
“Every girl I knew at the convent is married, one with five children at last count.”
“Envious?”
“Of a manner.” She made the mistake of glancing at him and seeing a flattering curiosity in his expression. “They’ve had the freedom of their own homes. They’ve become mistresses of their own castles and lives.”
“Who is your lucky groom?”
She gave him a swift shake of her head. “I’m not sure I want to tell you.”
“Then it must be Sir Guy.”
She frowned at his all-too-accurate guess.
“If you wish,” he offered, “I could describe him to you.”
“Don’t.”
He raised a black brow.
“Knowing more will only disappoint me,” she explained, as they passed the open portal and continued their circuit. “If you tell me Sir Guy is ungainly, uncouth, or oddly disfigured, I shall await my marriage with dread. And if you paint him as a fine young knight, I will dream up unreasonable expectations.”
“You’re not curious?”
“Of course I am. But marriage is a labor no matter what, isn’t it?” For her mother, it was a heavy burden after Crécy, when her father became a hard man to live with. “But marriage is better than the alternative. I’d rather throw myself off the rafters than join a nunnery.”
“Indeed.” His voice dropped. “You deserve a happy marriage, Aliénor, with the best match your father can manage.”
She cast him a sharp glance, for there was no light poetry in his words this time. He avoided her eye to focus on the pattern of the paving stones as they walked. Even her sparrow hawk sensed the change in mood, flapping her wings with enough force to lift her half off the glove. Aliénor cooed soft words, doing her best to settle the bird while Jehan brooded.
Finally, curiosity and suspicion overcame her. She scuffed to a stop near the northwest tower. “Sir Jehan, if there is something you must tell me about my betrothed,” she said, as the hawk’s talons pierced the boiled leather glove, “then please do. And do it quickly, before my courage fails me.”
He pivoted so he stood in front of her. His shadow fell upon her face, and the bright blue sky behind his head was echoed in the color of his eyes. He was no closer to him than before, not so physically close as to cause alarm, or draw undue attention from the men-at-arms in the courtyard, but she caught her breath anyway. She noticed the pattern of stubble on his cheek, the way the breeze ruffled his hair, the way he seized all her attention with the fervid intensity of his stare. The courtyard seemed to dissolve away while her focus narrowed to the powerful emotions in those eyes.
“Guy de Baste doesn’t deserve you,” he said. “Any man with red blood in his veins would kill to make you his own.”
And suddenly there wasn’t enough air in all of Gascony for her to breathe.