Gisele looked from Nigel to David and inwardly cursed. Both men were tense, their expressions ones of cold anger, and their hands resting on their swords. One wrong word or step, and she would have to watch her protector and her cousin try to cut each other down. Men, she decided, were very odd creatures, and even these two had to know that no one would gain from such a confrontation, least of all her, the one they both claimed they wanted to protect.
“Nigel,” she placed a hand on his arm, “this is my cousin, Sir David Lucette. David, this is Sir Nigel Murray, the man who has gallantly offered to protect me from my enemies.”
“Aye, doing what her kinsmen dared not,” Nigel said, then grunted softly when Gisele nudged him hard in the side.
“Her family can care for her now,” David said in halting English, easing his taut stance only slightly when he saw how Gisele was glaring at him.
“Ye have ignored her peril for nearly a year,” Nigel responded in a cold voice. “Ye left her alone to fight her enemies and try to prove her innocence. And now ye want me to cast aside my pledge and just leave her in your inept care? Nay, I think not.”
“This is a woman of good birth and honorable name. She cannot ride over the land alone, with a man not related to her by blood.”
Before Nigel could respond to that, Gisele cursed and placed herself directly between David and Nigel. “Must you behave like ill-weaned children fighting over a toy?”
“Ah, lass,” Nigel said, placing his hand over his heart, “ye wound me. Ye should have more care for a mon’s pride.”
Gisele ignored his foolishness. It had not taken her long to see that Nigel could be almost nonsensical at the oddest of times. The look on her cousin’s face, however, told her that he was completely confused. Gisele idly wondered if that was why Nigel did it. A confused foe was probably easier to defeat.
“Cousin,” she said in what she hoped was a calm but firm voice, “Sir Murray has sworn upon his honor to be my protector.”
“Gisele, I understand that we have failed you,” David said in French as he took Gisele’s hands between his. “We have insulted you with our suspicions and disbelief. It is all different now. Let us care for you.”
Nigel tensed. He found it hard to closely follow the youth’s rapid French, but understood enough to know that David was trying a gentle persuasion to take Gisele away. There was not much he could do if she decided to return to her family, to accept their belated offer of help. He could not even be sure if his protests would be born of an honest belief that she was safer with him, or out of a fear of losing her.
It was hard but Gisele stared into her cousin’s beautiful, beseeching eyes and knew she would say no. She just wished she knew all the reasons why she was about to turn her back on the chance to reunite with her family. They had hurt her with their betrayal, but here was a chance to heal those wounds and she was going to refuse it. Gisele had the unsettling feeling that, muddled up with all of the very good reasons to stay with Nigel, was simply a strong reluctance to leave him. She prayed she was not about to make a serious misstep just for the sake of a handsome face and sweet kisses.
“Non, David. I will stay with Sir Murray,” she replied, speaking in English so as not to exclude Nigel from the discussion, knowing that was what her cousin had been trying to do. “I chose this path and I will stay on it.”
“I swear you will not be treated in the same shameful manner you have been,” David replied in English, his reluctance to use the language clear in his deep voice.
“I believe you. That does not matter.”
“Are you certain you are not allowing hurt feelings to guide your steps?”
She smiled briefly and shrugged. “I will not deny that those feelings are there, but they do not lead me. This is for the best, believe me.” Gisele could tell by the dark look on David’s face that he thought she and Nigel were already lovers, but was probably not sure who to blame for that. After all, she was no longer some naive virgin. “We have a good plan. You need not worry about me.”
“Not worry? How many times must I say it? You are traveling all over the land dressed as a boy with a man none of us know. Do you have no thought to how you are blackening your name?”
Gisele laughed—a short, bitter sound. “Blackening my name? For a year now even some of my own family has decried me as a murderer, a woman who not only killed her husband but mutilated him. I doubt what I do now could stain my precious name any deeper than that.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Sir Nigel is taking me to a safe place. That is what is needed now.”
“We could find you a safe place, cousin,” David said, but his deep voice carried a hint of uncertainty.
“Non, you cannot, and we both know it. The DeVeaux watch every member of our family very closely. What happened to poor Guy is hard proof of that. There is nowhere amongst you that I can truly hide. Whomever I abide with I will put in danger. Do you truly wish to pull our whole family into a war with the DeVeaux? A war that could easily set you against the king himself? I did not think so,” she murmured when he frowned.
“But, now that we have come to our senses we can do nothing else except help you, or we risk our honor.”
“Then do help me. Find out who truly killed my husband. Now is the perfect time to do that. All DeVeau eyes are turned upon me, and all of their strength and interest is aimed at me. That should give someone a very good chance of discovering exactly what happened to my husband.”
“It will not be an easy task,” David muttered as he rubbed his chin.
“Non, it will not be. If it were easy I would have found out the truth myself by now. I have had little chance to ferret out the real murderer myself, and now that the DeVeaux offer a hefty purse for my miserable head I will have no time at all. I have no time for anything except running and hiding.”
“That is no life for a woman.”
“Non, it is not, so find out who really cut up my loathsome worm of a husband and free me from it.”
She waited with some apprehension as David considered her words. He could cause her a great deal of trouble if he refused to accept her decision, and she felt she had more than enough to deal with already. Although a part of her was still not completely sure she could trust Nigel, she knew she could not leave him. Every instinct told her to hold firmly to the path she was on, but she did not want to push away the family that had finally come to her aid.
“I do not like this,” David muttered, sending Nigel a brief, hard glare before tightly hugging Gisele. “I will honor your wishes. Stay with the man, and your family shall set its mind and heart to getting you exonerated.”
