length of a ripe curse, then looked back. “A man must avenge his honour at any cost,” he hissed. “It is the code by which a knight lives. Take it away and he is nothing. Ask another to interfere, and he is less than nothing.”
“I am not asking you to interfere, my lord. I am asking … nay, begging you to save his life.”
“How?”
“By taking to the field yourself tomorrow. You could kill Etienne Wardieu with impunity—another challenge, another trophy to add to your armoury. I have seen the pain in Lucien’s eyes when he speaks of his brother’s treachery. Regardless of the justification, where there was once love, there would be immeasurable guilt should he be the one to take his brother’s life.”
The Scourge of Mirebeau was silent so long Servanne felt a trickle of sweat form between her breasts.
“You speak as if you care what happens to the rogue,” he said with quiet intensity.
“I … suppose I do,” she admitted in a whisper. “In a way.”
La Seyne took a sudden step away from the wall and Servanne, not expecting the movement, flinched back with a small cry of alarm. He was as tall as a pillar and massive with the brawn and muscle of a fighting man. As he walked closer, he flexed his gauntleted hands, and the fingers that crushed the morsel of straw looked as if they could crush her bones with as little effort.
“In what way, madam? Do you care because you now believe his claim and would not want to lose what you so nearly have within your grasp here at Bloodmoor?”
“Lands and titles mean nothing to me!” she insisted.
“No? Is that why you rushed so eagerly to answer the Dragon’s summons, barely a month after your husband’s death?”
“I … had no choice! I was commanded by royal decree!”
“You had a choice in the forest. You could have refused to go with Wardieu.”
“I was given no such choice!” she cried adamantly. “Had I been given one, think you I would be here now?”
“I do not know,” La Seyne said bluntly. “Would you?”
Servanne opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again, stunned by the echo of her own words. She heard them again, breaking down the barrier of her pride, and the echo grew louder and louder, the words and their meaning pounding within her breast like a smithy’s hammer.
“No,” she said softly, her eyes filling with tears. “No, I would not be here, monseigneur. I believe … I would quite happily have stayed in the forest with him, had he offered me the chance, with no complaint, no second thoughts as to what I would be forsaking. Nay, I would go there with him now, if you could but convince him of his folly. I would willingly follow him to Normandy or France, or any of a dozen foreign countries.”
“And what if he does not want your company?” La Seyne growled, drawing close enough to startle Servanne’s heart higher in her throat.
“I—I would follow him anyway,” she maintained. “I would content myself just to be near him.”
Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer stared at her for a long, throbbing moment before breaking the tension with a low, unsteady laugh. “No. No, my lady, by the look of this new revelation dawning in your eyes, I do not think you would be content with anything less than iron chains binding you together hip and thigh.”
Servanne returned his stare. His voice had lapsed from its forced gruffness, and the laugh … the laugh was familiar enough to raise a spray of gooseflesh along her arms.
Without thinking, she lifted her hand toward the mask, but the gloved fingers were just as swift to close around her wrist and halt the motion.
“I would see your face, monseigneur,” she whispered.
“You would not like what you saw.”
“I like it less being laughed at and ridiculed by a man too cowardly to reveal his own faults to the world.”
The fingers clamped tighter around her wrist, causing a shiver of pain to set the stubbornness on her mouth. But he released her before the pain became too real, and with no further warning or protest, bowed his head and removed the black silk mask.
The light from the taper was on his profile, etching a square jaw with several days’ worth of dark stubble blunting it. His hair curled in thick chestnut whorls against his cheeks and throat; his eyes were long-lashed and gray as a turbulent winter sky. There were no