Marmaduke arched a brow. “You’d concede defeat before the battle is fought?”
“Only those battles too pointless to pursue,” James grumbled. “Like walking straight or me challenging two swords-”
“Two swordsmen?” Marmaduke voiced what he’d already guessed. “Why did you change your story? Why claim there was but one?”
James fisted his hands and turned away.
Marmaduke frowned, not fooled by the younger man’s silence. He heard James’ roiling frustration, louder and more penetrating than the screeching seabirds wheeling overhead.
“See here, my friend.” Going to him, Marmaduke clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Together, we can catch the cravens,” he said. “But only if you will trust me.”
The younger man’s brow creased, but when he gazed heavenward and blew out a long breath, Marmaduke knew he’d won this round. “Well?” he tried again, taking his hand from James’ shoulder. “Why did you lie?”
“Because when I spoke the truth, the others laughed and said I’d stretched the tale by insisting there were two when in truth I couldn’t bear admitting I’d been defeated by a single swordsman.”
“So you let them believe what they wanted so they’d leave you be?”
James nodded.
“Perhaps that is as well. We shall allow them to think that is the truth a bit longer.” Marmaduke glanced at the screaming gulls riding air currents high above the forge. “We know the way of it. That is enough for now.”
“You believe me?”
“I do,” Marmaduke said, resting his hand almost casually on his sword-hilt. “But the saints know I wish I didn’t.”
James frowned. “How can you believe me, yet urge silence about the second intruder?”
“If indeed he was one. The man may have been invited, or assisted on his way out,” Marmaduke said, carefully picking his words. “Perhaps both.”
“No one here would betray us.” James shook his head. “I cannot believe it.”
Marmaduke shrugged his mail-clad shoulders. “Several thorough searches were made, yet no trace of this elusive interloper could be found. Flesh and blood men do not vanish into thin air, my friend.”
“You believe someone in my household aided his escape?”
“I would give you my oath on it,” Marmaduke returned. “Therefore it is best not to let anyone save, perhaps, Lady Caterine, know we are aware of possible in-house treachery.”
“God’s bones.” James stared at him, slack-jawed. “That’s heinous.”
“So it is.” Marmaduke turned away, strode a few paces before the younger man could further question him.
He knew much of in-house scheming and its dangers.
He carried the mark of such betrayal on his face and tasted the bile of its memory in the cold bitterness rising to choke him.
With a broad sweep of his arm, he cast aside a swaying curtain of cobwebs and stepped into the chill damp of the forge. “We can speak of this later,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at James. “For now, we need a few sound pieces of grating to seal the garderobe chute.”
James blinked. “The latrine?”
“So I said.”
“You speak as if such a task were simple.” James hovered on the threshold.
“Naught in life is simple,” Marmaduke said, halting beside a dirt-encrusted stone trough, once filled with cooling water, now demoted to a receptacle for all manner of refuse. “But each mastered challenge makes the living more worthwhile.”
James took several hesitant steps into the forge, once more favoring his leg. “Think you?”
“Nay, I know so.”
