“We’renottalking about this.” Gwen dragged her gaze away from the cocktail, fixing it on Isobelle. “We’re nottalking about it, we’re not considering it, we’re not even— It’s madness.”
“Is it?” Isobelle asked lightly.
“Of course it is!”
“If you say so.”
“I do! I mean... isn’t it? Even if I competed—even if I could avoid being discovered—how would I win? I don’t know what I’m doing. I got extremely, ridiculously lucky today. I need training, but anyone we went to for help would turn me in in a heartbeat.”
“A man might, true.” Isobelle grinned at her, pushing the cocktail forward to offer it to Gwen.
Gwen was staring at Isobelle like she was waiting for her to grow an extra head, or explode into a puff of pink glitter. “You know a woman who can joust? I mean, thereisa woman who can joust? Andyouknow her?”
“Yes and yes.”
“Simple as that?”
“What else is there? You already have a very nice horse. Where did you get him?”
“He’s mine,” Gwen replied, so fast it was almost a snap, curling her hands around the cocktail glass as if she could use it as a shield.
Huh. Interesting.
“No doubt,” Isobelle agreed, though to be honest, the stallion Gwen had been riding earlier that day looked far too well-bred to have a history pulling a plough.
“Achilles was a foal from my mother’s mare,” Gwen said, stiffer than she’d been before, holding herself upright. “And she—she brought her horse with her when she left home to marry my father.”
“Well, he’s very handsome,” Isobelle replied, letting the other girl off the hook and focusing her attention on the aesthetic. “Bays are really in fashion this season.”
Gwen’s shoulders dropped a little. “I’d need to hire someone to help my father in the smithy on the days I’m away,” she murmured.
It took everything Isobelle had not to tip her head back and let out an unladylike hoot of victory. Until this moment, even Isobelle wasn’t sure this plan would work.
“I can help with that.”
Gwen bit her lip, clearly in the throes of mental calculation, tracing the edge of her glass with one finger. “Stop looking at me like that,” she muttered, eyes flicking up, glittering with a combination of bemusement and terror. Isobelle was used to inspiring both. “I haven’t decided.”
“I like looking at you,” Isobelle replied. Sometimes, honesty really was the best policy. Gwen had a charming, unique style of loveliness that was all her own. “Did you want to try that cocktail, Sir Knight?”
Absently, Gwen lifted the glass for a sip. Then she blinked, a tiny flush of pleasure rising behind her freckles, and she took another, longer sip. “It’s all right,” she muttered, as if her delight at the frivolous drink weren’t adorably plain to read on her face.
She was quiet after that, her eyes distant. Longing and fear warred in her expression, the battle as easy to see as her pleasure had been.
“I think,” said Isobelle with great care, “that it must have been an enormous amount of work for you. Making the armor. Learning how to make the armor in the first place! Teaching yourself to joust—making the lances, finding the time.”
A grudging nod from Gwen conceded that all this was true.
“And I think,” Isobelle continued, treading even more cautiously now, “there’s only one reason someone would do all that.”
“And what do you suppose that reason is, my lady?” Gwen asked as she took another heartfelt sip from the cocktail.
“I think she must truly want to be a knight,” Isobelle said simply. “I think, unlike most of the oafs wandering around the castle right now, she must have found something noble in the idea.”
Gwen was silent, but her expression was eloquent—the yearning was there in her eyes, and the hubbub of the tavern seemed to fade away into nothingness around them, everything falling quiet, the dancers and drinkers blurring at the edge of Isobelle’s vision.
“I think,” Isobelle said, her eyes intent on the girl across from her, “it would be a great loss indeed if she were to give it up.”
For a time they were quiet, and Isobelle waited. Her heart was fluttering so strangely, beating against the inside of her ribs like a bird against the bars of a cage. She didn’t want Gwen to agree just because Isobelle couldn’t think of any other way to escape her fate. She wanted the world to be bigger than that.
