Yet he’d looked so haggard.
I have to get him out of that dungeon.
She slipped on a dressing coat and stuck her head out the door. “I’m still recovering from my captivity. I have much sleep to catch up on.”
The guard said in a clipped tone, “Captain Carr wishes to speak with you before he leaves for a military exercise.”
Bryn’s stomach revolted at the idea of playing nice with Carr, but she smiled tightly. “I’ll need a few moments to get dressed. You may tell the captain I’ll be down shortly.”
The guard nodded curtly as she closed the door.
Once she’d begrudgingly dressed and dabbed rust on her cheeks, she came downstairs expecting to find Captain Carr waiting for her at the dining table, as was the rhythm they’d fallen into.
But the instant she walked into the dining hall, she froze.
A silver tray of orange-glazed biscuits rested at her place at the table.
Orange biscuits.
She immediately recalled last year’s Low Sun Gathering, when she’d ridden in a carriage with Elysander and Baron Marmose with a tray of orange biscuits balanced in her lap. Elysander had been the one to explain to Bryn that orange biscuits were a symbol that a man intended to court a woman.
“Lady Bryn. You look lovely as a dawnsong angel.” Captain Carr’s rasping voice behind her broke the silence.
She still felt numb, staring at the biscuits. But she snapped to her senses and turned slowly. Her stomach plummeted to find the captain holding an extravagantly large bouquet of red roses. He clutched them as artlessly as though they were like a pile of kindling.
“I thought we might take a ride through Saint’s Forest to Saint Rennard’s shrine. The gardeners tell me the snowdrops are still blooming.”
The sour feeling in her stomach intensified.
So the courtship has begun.
She took a pair of steadying breaths. This had been the plan—to get him to propose as a means of saving her from the gallows. She’d heard the whispers among servants and knew the proposal was coming. But now that she was faced with the prospect of the captain actually courting her, she wished to be anywhere but here.
He was her father’s age, with gray hair in his beard. The scar across his neck was still red and angry after all these decades. His body might have retained a powerful build from his days spent soldiering, but she found nothing attractive about him in the slightest.
“Oh.” It was a chore not to gag. “What a . . . thoughtful gesture. You must have read my mind to know how much I’ve missed Saint’s Forest. Saint Rennard’s shrine was always among my favorites.”
A flat smile cut across his face. He was as bad at courting as Bryn was at being courted. “Yes. I remembered, Lady Bryn.”
He practically shoved the roses at her. She accepted them with a smile she suspected looked more like a grimace. She flinched as a thorn scratched her forearm.
He stared at her, expectantly.
“Oh, you mean touring the shrine right now?” she asked in dismay.
He nodded curtly. “If it suits you. I must travel to Tureen this evening on state business.”
Bryn fought the urge to roll her eyes. Howgenerousof him to squeeze courting her in between his duties. The captain’s ego was truly inflated if he thought a man his age could charm a future queen so easily.
“Of course,” she said through a clenched jaw. “I’d like nothing better.”
Captain Carr gestured to one of the guards. “You. Bring the biscuits. The carriage is waiting in the courtyard.”
He started to stride out of the dining hall but then stopped and turned back to Bryn, extending his hand as an afterthought. “You first, my lady.”
Clearly, chivalry was as foreign to Captain Carr as loyalty.
The open-topped carriage that waited for them in the courtyard, pulled by two prancing white mares, was the same one she’d taken for Baron Marmose’s courting during the Low Sun Gathering. As Captain Carr helped her settle onto the rear bench, she wished more than anything that Elysander was here with her. Elysander had known exactly what to say in these situations. Frankly, Bryn would have been happy withanyoneas a buffer between her and Carr.
