Adonis reached out and grasped his arm. “Kevin,no,” he said, instantly grasping the man’s meaning. “You cannot… you know you cannot do this, for a variety of reasons. You must not let yourself become emotionally involved with her.”
Kevin shook his head. “It is too late,” he confirmed. “That wall I built up around myself, the wall that took me six years to construct and reinforce, has been breached by yet another woman I cannot have. Why do I get myself into these situations? I always want a woman I can never have and, damnation, I have done it again. But this one… this will kill me, Adonis. I swear with God as my witness, this love will kill me. It will end badly and I will not survive it.”
Thomas and Adonis were greatly concerned for their friend. “Then we must go,” Thomas said. “We must flee. Let us return north to Castle Questing or Northwood and serve there. Edward need never know where we have gone.”
Kevin looked at the man as if he were going quite mad. “You do not think he will know where we have gone?” he asked. “Would you truly bring the king’s wrath down upon our families? Of course they will know where we have gone. Moreover, if I go…ifI go, I will not leave Annavieve behind. I cannot. To leave her here would be to condemn her to a hellish, hopeless existence, and I will not do that to her.”
Frustrated, Thomas stood up, moving away from Kevin in an agitated gesture. “So we must stay here and watch you waste away in a situation with another woman you cannot have?” heasked. Then, he shook his head. “I cannot do it, Kevin. I cannot watch you ruin your life over another woman.”
“It is my choice.”
“It is foolish!”
Adonis stood up, putting up his hands to quiet the angry words. “Enough,” he said quietly, mostly to Thomas. “We will not discuss this anymore today, do you hear? We have more important things looming on the horizon, including a mass competition in about two hours. We must prepare for that. The rest of this… we will have to discuss it later. Kevin, you must understand that we speak out of love for you, my friend. We do not want to see you hurt again.”
Kevin knew that. He stood up from his stool, going over to Thomas and putting a hand on the man’s shoulder.
“I know,” he said softly. “You are my friends and I love you dearly. But this situation… I am not entirely sure how to get out of it.”
Thomas softened, putting his hand over Kevin’s. “We will think of something,” he said. Then, he smiled weakly. “Mayhap we should return to the Levant for another six years. You seem to get into less trouble there.”
Kevin laughed softly but soon sobered. “That brings something else to mind,” he said. “The subject of Salisbury’s dead son has come up.”
Kevin and Adonis grew very serious. “When?” Thomas asked. “What happened?”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “You are not going to believe any of this,” he said, throwing up his big arms. “I have no idea how I get myself into these situations, honestly, but it seems as if we have yet another insane situation on our hands. When I was introduced to Salisbury earlier today, the subject of Viscount Twyford’s death was brought up. As you can imagine, Salisbury is quite devastated by it and I was informed that Dorset hadoffered my services to the man to help him locate, and bring to justice, his son’s murderer. They are evidently placing all of their faith in me to locate whoever killed Twyford.”
Thomas’ eyes popped open wide whilst Adonis actually started laughing. It was a bitter laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.
“Surely you are joking,” Thomas hissed. “They wantyouto locate Twyford’s killer?”
Kevin nodded. “There is immeasurable irony in that,” he said. “How on earth we came to this place, in this time, with the incident in Dover coming to overshadow an already complex and distasteful situation, I will never know. I fear that somewhere overhead, God is somehow punishing me for my activities in the Levant. I cannot imagine why else this would all be happening. Somehow, someway, I am being punished.”
Adonis had stopped laughing, now listening to the utter foolishness of everything, and he was back to wagging his head as if utterly appalled by what he was hearing. But there was far more to it than mere astonishment.
“You are being punished more than you realize,” Adonis said, eyeing Thomas as he spoke. “It seems to be the consensus amongst Dorset’s men that he and the young viscount were having a love affair. If the duke finds out it is you who killed his lover….”
Kevin was looking at the man with some horror. “Then he will want me dead and buried, wiped from the face of the earth.” He rolled his eyes to the ridiculousness of the situation he found himself in. “In that case, we will be forced to flee but we will not flee home. I would not bring that wrath down upon my family. We will go somewhere else, somewhere they can never find us. God be merciful that it does not come down to that, but if it does, I will not face Dorset’s justice. I will disappear forever.”
“And take the duchess with you?” Adonis asked softly.
“I will not leave her behind.”
Neither Thomas nor Adonis knew what to say to that. It seemed, indeed, as if God above was playing chess with Kevin’s life and, at the moment, he’d put the man in check. The irony was indeed immeasurable and the situation was vastly complicated. But as Adonis opened his mouth to offer support, or even sympathy, a winded soldier suddenly appeared in the tent. The man looked straight at Kevin.
“My lord,” he said. “Dorset has sent me to find you. There is a problem with his wife.”
A bolt of stone-cold fear shot through Kevin. “What problem?”
The soldier was pointing off in the direction of the town. “She was apparently attacked, my lord,” he said. “Dorset says you must go to her immediately.”
Kevin was already moving out of the tent. “Where is Dorset?”
“With Salisbury, my lord.”
“Where arethey?”
“In Salisbury’s tent, my lord.”
