Juliandra made her move.
While everyone at the table was up, dispersing the fights that had broken out, Juliandra came up behind Kevin as he sat there, watching his knights as they knocked heads together. The soldiers were drunk and unruly, which was nothing abnormal at a feast. Kevin didn’t seem particularly concerned with it, but he was watching the activity. With the lute still in one hand and her coins in the other, she marched up to Kevin’s table.
“My name is Juliandra ferch Gethin,” she said. “You put my father in your vault for failing to pay a toll. You may have all of the coinage I earned tonight if you will release him to me.”
She was standing right next to him as she spoke and Kevin, perhaps a little too close, startled when she began to speak. Suddenly, he was out of the chair and on his feet, looking at her with an expression that suggested suspicion and disapproval until he realized who it was.
His features loosened.
“You are the singer,” he said.
Juliandra nodded, nervous now that she had gotten a good look at him. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was powerfully built, with big hands and big muscles. His upper arms were as big around as her waist and, suddenly, she wasn’t quite so confident in her demands of Kevin de Lara.
He was enormous and frightening.
“Aye, my lord,” she said. “And… and you are Lord de Lara.”
He simply nodded as his suspicious expression returned. “What did you just say? Something about a toll?”
Juliandra opened her mouth to reply, but a soldier suddenly landed on the table, bouncing across it. Had Kevin not reached out and grabbed Juliandra, the soldier would have crashed right into her. As she yelped fearfully, another soldier crashed onto the table, too close for comfort, and Kevin started to pull her away.
“This is no place for you,” he said. “Get out before someone takes your head off.”
But Juliandra dug her heels in. “I will not,” she said. “I mean no disrespect, my lord, but I have come here tonight for a reason.”
“Your reason was to entertain my men.”
Juliandra shook her head. “Not at first,” she said. “I came because I wanted to speak with you, but your men told me to come back on Tuesday when you hear supplicants.”
“That is true.”
“But I am not a supplicant. I simply want my father returned to me.”
He eyed her for a moment as he realized what she was saying and his disapproval returned. He didn’t like sneaky women.
“If they told you to go away, how did you get into the hall?”
“I told them I had come to sing for my meal and they let me in.”
He grunted unhappily as he realized the entirety of the situation. “So you smiled prettily, mayhap even flashed a soft, white shoulder at them, and they let you in,” he said. “Is that it?”
She shook her head. “Nay, my lord, I swear that I did not flash…anything,” she said. “That is something I would not do. I just want my father and took the opportunity to gain admittance to the castle to speak with you.”
Kevin started to say something but the rolling pair of fighters on the table crashed onto the ground and rolled right into Kevin’s feet. As he teetered off balance and kicked them away, Juliandra lifted her borrowed lute and smashed it over the head of one of the fighters.
He fell like a stone.
“Now,” she said breathlessly as she turned to Kevin. “Will you please release my father from your vault? He has done nothing except fail to pay your toll. I will pay you right now if you will only release him.”
He was looking at her in surprise, but the blue eyes were glittering. There was some humor there at a woman who had the wherewithal to bash a man in the skull like she had and then act as if it were all quite ordinary, as if she did it every day. She may have been tiny, but she was fierce.
He took a closer look at her.
“If I do not, are you going to smash a lute overmyhead?” he said. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Juliandra ferch Gethin.”
“You speak English perfectly.”
