But Dagobert shook his head.“Ah, but I have.I tried, which was the pledge demanded by my father, but I have failed.’Tis sufficient.I will not persist.”
Raimon propped himself up on his elbows.“I can only doubt your word,” he said.“We all know how steadfastly the line of Pereille cling to their pledges.”His brows rose.“Regardless of the cost.”
“Aye, you speak aright, for it has been thus in the past,” Dagobert admitted before he leaned closer.“But ’tis my wife who bids me choose,” he added in an undertone.“And I would cede to her.”
Raimon laughed.“The woman is with child and you would have the babe sworn to the task in your stead,” he accused, his tone triumphant.
Silence hung between them for a moment until Dagobert resolutely shook his head, deciding that there was no reason to verify Alienor’s pregnancy.
“Nay, ’tis not the way of it,” he confessed, lifting his gaze to meet Raimon’s as he continued.“She is Cathar and ’tis for her own company that she would have me abandon the fight.I find myself convinced.”
“What assurance have I that you speak the truth?”Raimon demanded.
Dagobert fixed him with a steady gaze.“You have my word that I have abandoned this quest,” he said.“There was a time that was sufficient between honorable men.”
Raimon held his gaze for a moment, then looked down and shook his head.“My father did support your family’s claim until his dying day,” he mused.Dagobert nodded, knowing that he spoke the truth.“And I, in his stead, willingly took up the cause.”
“Until they took Jeanne,” Dagobert guessed, earning a sharp glance from the older man.
“Aye,” Raimon agreed.“I did not abandon generations of loyalty so readily as that.”
“She is your only child.”
“She is that,” Raimon confirmed, a frown pulling his brows together as he recalled something painful.“It is one matter for a father to see his beloved child bound against her will to a loveless match.’Tis another to know that a lack of affection is not the sole detail that could be criticized.”He sighed again.“I still bear the scars from the interview that persuaded me, though the event is more than a decade past.”
Raimon swung his legs out of bed, striding nude across the room then pausing at the window to survey the sleeping town.Dagobert’s gut clenched when the ridges of healed flesh crisscrossing the older man’s back became visible.He shook his head that such a price had been demanded from this man.
Raimon folded his arms across his chest as he looked over his demesne.“I am the seventh Count of Toulouse,” he said softly.“And the last there will be with a drop of my family’s blood.”Raimon flicked a glance over his shoulder to Dagobert.“The Toulousain falls to the crown should Jeanne die childless,” he confided.“Such was the treaty I was forced to sign, and well do all know that she will die a virgin.”He spit out the window with disgust, his brows drawing together as he turned to confront Dagobert again.“No father could give the pride of his days to such a godless match without his heart tearing in two.”
Dagobert nodded in agreement, feeling some measure of Raimon’s pain.“Why did you betray me?”
“You can imagine the threats I receive when the king wants something of me.’Tis his brother Jeanne has wed, and she lives too close to his hand for my taste.”
“And the summoning of Eustache?”
“But more of the same,” the older man admitted, crossing the chamber to open a trinket box.Something flashed through the air and Dagobert caught his signet ring.
“You have more than this of mine,” he noted.
Raimon folded his arms across his chest, eyeing Dagobert speculatively.“If Montsalvat were saved, what would you do?”he demanded.
Indeed, the same question had haunted Dagobert these past months.“’Tis unlikely the fortress will hold out against so many,” he argued.
Raimon shook his head.“Assume that it does.”
“I know not, for so much depends on the king and his choices.For my part, I would see to my vassals.”
Raimon’s eyes narrowed again.“No more claims to the throne?”
“Nay, I no longer follow that path,” Dagobert folded his own arms across his own chest as he faced the other man, uncertain what to expect.
Finally Raimon nodded, then reached for his chausses.“Your friend is stubborn.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed,” Raimon confirmed, shaking his head as he tugged on a chemise.“Under no circumstances would he renounce the legitimacy of your bloodline.”
“Eustache is very loyal.”
