Was that what Gwen had been doing on the ride here? Inventing Gawain’s backstory, while Isobelle was mentally composing and discarding whole speeches that sought to explain what had happened between them, and apologize for it?
Archer continued to interview Gwen, and Isobelle found her attention drawn to the taxidermied head of a black-and-white-striped horse above a little hand-scrawled label that read “Hippotigris.” Isobelle had been taught Latin from an early age, and her mind supplied the translation: horse-tiger.
She’d just begun to lose herself in a glorious fantasy of making a grand entrance mounted on such a creature—she’d be in black and white, too, with a red lip and feathers in her hair—when, abruptly, reality came crashing back in as her ears caught up to her.
“That should be enough for me to get to work,” Archer was saying. “The papers should be ready in three or four hours.”
Isobelle stopped in her tracks, and finally,finally, Gwen glanced across at her, eyes wide.
“Hours?” Gwen echoed. “We’d never make it back to the castle before dark.”
“You’ll stay here,” Archer replied. “E—er—Olivia can cover for you, I have no doubt.”
“But...” Gwen’s eyes were still on Isobelle, unwilling to mentionthat Isobelle was meant to be confined to the castle, and every moment they spent away increased the odds that her absence would be discovered.
Archer sighed and dismissed their doubts with a wave of his hand. “It’ll take the time it takes, kids. Go outside and play, and let me do my thing.”
Gwen gave a little shrug, finally dropping her gaze from Isobelle’s, and they emerged once more from Archer’s house into the afternoon sunlight.
Dupont was just coming out of the stable, and though her lips tightened at the news that the papers would take hours, she nodded. “We must not waste the time—this is the perfect place to practice the joust, away from the prying eyes of the castle. Come!”
Isobelle opened her mouth to protest—it had been a long day, they were tired, Gwen needed rest—but Gwen was already striding after Dupont. And none of those excuses were the real reason Isobelle wanted just a moment’s pause.
She sighed and turned to trail along in their wake, trying not to think about how desperately she needed to talk to Gwen and make things right between them.
Lucky Gwen, able to drown out her feelings by hitting things.
Chapter Seventeen
Damn those girls and their “tea”
Gwen was feeling rather lucky that she was able to drown out her feelings by hitting things.
All day, every time she looked around, she’d found Isobelle staring at her, eyes full of questions, lips half parted, ready to throw herself into some kind of speech at the first opportunity.
Last night, Gwen had been utterly certain she was saying the right thing—setting the boundary she needed Isobelle to respect, protecting her own heart as she had learned to do.
This morning, she couldn’t shake the sinking realization that she had said too much. That maybe Isobelle had realized what took Gwen a night’s tossing and turning to figure out herself: that what had bothered Gwen the most was just how badly she’d wanted to throw those boundaries of hers to the winds.
Damn those girls and their “tea.”
Gwen had tried to spend the day being as aloof as she could, hoping that if Isobellehadrealized how pointed Gwen’s remarks had been the night before, today’s distance would shake her understanding.
And through it all, Isobelle’s gaze had stuck to her like some cornflower-blue curse from a hedge witch, and Gwen was desperate to figure out the terms of her release.
“Where is your head at, girl?” shouted Madame Dupont, chasing away the mental image of being haunted by wide blue eyes and replacing it with the tree bearing the tiny dangling target—a dragonseye, she had called it. “Ride, damn you! We do not have much time to practice!”
Drowning one’s feelings by hitting things only worked if one, you know, actually hit things.
Stop thinking about Isobelle, she commanded herself, and let Achilles burst into a gallop as she lowered the makeshift lance—a pole from Archer’s barn—into place. She tried to force the world to narrow down to that dragonseye, but her heart kept jerking bits of her attention this way and that. Achilles’s hoofbeats thudded against the ground, traveling all the way up her spine, her arm beginning to shake with the fatigue of having held the lance so many times in a row. She tried to focus on those sensations, if not that fury.
What it must be like to be Isobelle right now, watching her fail over and over to hit this mark,knowingher fate depended on Gwen being able to do this impossible thing? That thought opened a floodgate in Gwen’s mind, which surged with a thousand different questions, each of them triggering a pinprick of emotion, until she felt like she was bleeding from countless tiny wounds.
The dangling target whizzed by, untouched.
Dupont made a noise somewhere between a cluck and a hiss and stalked a few steps away before turning back around. “Again,” she snapped.
Stuffing her misgivings down was becoming harder and harder with every passing moment—but the alternative was whirling round and unleashing them on Isobelle, telling her there was noway Gwen could pull this off, and consigning her to her fate of being married off to someone who didn’t love her. Hiding her fears was hard—but hurting Isobelle was impossible.
