“Anyone’s better than Sir Ralph,” Jane agreed, wrinkling her nose.
“Sir Orson is a good man, is he not?” Hilde chipped in, with the air of one reviving an old argument. “Isobelle has known him since she was small, and there is something to be said for familiarity.”
Isobelle shrugged noncommittally. “I wouldn’t mind being married off to Sir Gawain,” she said airily, before letting her gaze slide toward Gwen’s, merriment making it sparkle. “He’s a dreamboat.”
Gwen ducked her head to study the contents of her cup, doing her best to look merely demure instead of utterly rattled. She was used to the twinge of disappointment she felt whenever a pretty girl started talking about the boys she fancied, but the compounded confusion in this situation made her body tense.
Is it still jealousy if the girls are swooning over my alter ego?she wondered, raising her cup for a sip to cover her uncertainty. In her haste, she accidentally took a somewhat larger swallow than she intended to and braced herself for a burned tongue—only to choke, gasping, “Oh, fuck!”
The liquid in the cup wasnottea.
At least, not only tea.
The drink burned all the way down her throat to settle, tingling, in her belly. She covered her mouth with her hand, but the epithet she’d blurted hung there in the air, like a big signpost proclaiming her lowborn nature.
Until Hilde burst into giggles, breaking the silence andtriggering a cascade of laughter from the other girls. “Mein Gott,” she gasped when she could, “did you actually think we drank tea at our tea parties? How dull you must think we are!”
Gwen was still fighting valiantly not to cough at the strength of the stuff—while simultaneously feeling an increasing urge to taste it again. “What is it?”
“My parents got it from an Irish merchant—they call it uiscebeatha.It packs a powerful punch, no?”
Gwen sniffed at the contents of her cup, not quite game to take another taste yet. One sip—albeit more of a gulp than a sip—and she could feel it buzzing in her legs, like she’d just pounded an entire flask of wine. “It’s, uh. That’s something, all right.”
She snuck a glance at Isobelle and found the other girl watching her with obvious delight. Annoyance flickered at Gwen, nearly as unsettling as the uisce. Didn’t Isobelle understand how important it was that these girls accepted Gwen as a noblewoman, as one ofthem? If Gwen could fade into the background as one of Isobelle’s flock of ladies, no one would pay her much attention. She could throw herself into her role as Sir Gawain, focus on the actual battles she had to fight, instead of wasting her energy trying to pretend to be something shereallywasn’t.
She felt eyes—other eyes—on her, and turned to find Sylvie watching her. The lazy, disaffected air she gave off didn’t quite conceal the keen edge to her stare, and Gwen found herself jerking her gaze away.
“So... do all of you live here in the castle?” Gwen asked, hoping to shift the focus off herself.
Hilde laughed. “Heavens, no! We are here for the tournament, staying in the castle guest quarters.”
“But we visit Isobelle a lot even when there isn’t a tournament,” Jane said with a languid gesture around the suite with its lush decor. “She’s so much more fun than sitting by a window embroidering cushions. Plus, a girl tends to run out of options fairly quickly in a small county like mine.”
“By options, she means boys,” explained Hilde helpfully. Jane fluttered her long eyelashes at Hilde in an over-the-top impression of coy flirtation.
“I think,” said Sylvie slowly, tracing a finger around the edge of her teacup, “that we should play a game.” She hadn’t taken her eyes off Gwen’s face.
“Oh yes!” cried Hilde, all delight and cheer. “How about—”
“I think we should play Hast Thou Ever,” Sylvie said over her without skipping a beat, and still watching Gwen. “Can you think of a better way to get to know each other, Céline?”
Gwen’s instincts told her to brace, to find firmer footing than plush carpeting and a sagging divan that threatened to swallow her, and get her hands on some sort of weapon. “Hast Thou Ever?” she echoed, uncertain.
Sylvie’s eyes widened. “Oh, have you never played before? We take turns asking questions, like—I’ll go first—hast thou ever been alone in a room with a man who wasn’t related to you? And if you have, then you take a drink, like so.” She lifted her cup for a demure sip, then glanced over at Jane expectantly.
“It’s only one sip,” said Jane with a wink, lifting her cup. Her rounded cheeks were already pink. “Even if you could justify the whole bottle.”
Gwen could feel icy fingers of dread starting to creep up her spine. It was one thing to have memorized the rules of who she wassupposed to be in this situation. It was another thing entirely to figure out which rules she was meant to havebrokenin order to fit in with these ladies.
Sylvie could not have picked a worse game for Gwen.
Gwen snuck a glance at Isobelle, hoping to take some kind of cue there. Gwen had been alone with men—they came every day to the forge to make orders and pick up mended equipment. But that wasn’t the sort of “alone” Sylvie was talking about.
Hilde had set her cup down on her saucer, making Jane snort into her uisce and pat her hand sympathetically. Isobelle made a show of setting her cup down, only to wink at the girls and lift her cup at the last minute.
Gwen found herself staring at the cup, distracted from the puzzle she was meant to be solving for herself in favor of a far more compelling one.She’s been alone with men?
Isobelle’s face betrayed nothing but cheerful enthusiasm for the game, as if she hadn’t realized yet how dangerous this sort of conversation was for Gwen, living as she was a double life.
