Gwen was so lost in her thoughts—or rather, in trying to push them away—that she didn’t notice someone had beaten her to her destination.
“I see you deal with your nerves through action, too,” called Sir Orson as he strode toward her, sheathing his sword and offering Gwen a wave. “You know, Isobelle just eats hers. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t the smarter thing.”
Gwen blinked down at him in confusion. “Nerves?”
Sir Orson raised one blond eyebrow. “It’s just us, you can admit you’re worried about the final, too. C’mon, join me. It’ll be a better workout with both of us.”
Gwen dismounted. “Why are you so worried? It’s not like you want to marry Isobelle.”
Orson watched Gwen as she unbuckled her sheath from Achilles’s saddle and belted it around her waist. “So weird to see you wearing that in a dress,” he muttered, brow furrowing. “Hmm? Oh—well, no. I’ll do my best to make her happy, but I admit it’s not just the chance to marry the dragon sacrifice. There’s all the gold, for one thing. That money would go a long way on an estate like mine. I’m not rich like Isobelle. It would solve... many problems.” His gaze was lowered, thoughtful. Then he looked up with a grin. “And reputation is important for a knight, you know.”
For a real knight, anyway.He didn’t say it—he was too congenial, offering Gwen a sheepish smile and shrugging. But Gwen could hear the words ringing in her ears.
Orson’s smile faded. “You okay?”
“Isobelle’s friend Sylvie is to marry Sir Ralph,” Gwen found herself saying before she could think to stop herself. “I can’t get it out of my head. Sylvie’s never been my biggest fan, but no woman deserves a man like that. And it could have been Isobelle. Itwillbe Isobelle, eventually.”
Orson was quiet, Gwen’s heartbeats stretching into the quiet—and, miraculously, slowing gradually. Just speaking about it made the weight of the news easier to bear.
“It wasn’t Isobelle this time,” Orson said finally, and then added with a shudder, “and if I win, I’ll be nothing like Ralph. I wouldn’t mind if you...” He hesitated, glancing at Gwen and then reaching up to pat Achilles experimentally on the neck. “You know. If you wanted to visit her now and then. So long as you were discreet.”
Gwen bit back her reply—that Isobelle no more wanted to wind up with Sir Awesome than she did Sir Ralph. Maybe it was the best solution in a sea of grim outcomes, even if it did consign Gwen to being nothing more than a well-kept secret, sneaking in and out of Isobelle’s life whenever no one was around to see. It wasn’t as if Gwen could offer her anything more, even if she won the tournament, even if she showed the world who she was, even if they accepted her skill....
Could she?
Orson, unaware of Gwen’s roiling thoughts, patted Achilles one more time and then broke the silence. “Come on, let’s have a round.” He strode away from Gwen’s horse, who had dipped his head to lip at the ground experimentally.
The morning sun swept low across the canopy bordering the field, casting each dip and rise in the branches in stark relief. Thelong, swaying grasses reached to Gwen’s thigh, their elongated shadows bobbing and dancing in the slight breeze, providing a whispering backdrop to the thudding and crunching of Orson’s footsteps.
Gwen drew her sword automatically when Orson turned and drew his—he gave his a few swings, and Gwen could see he held it well, his grip confident and movements well practiced.
Orson glanced at her and nodded encouragement. “You haven’t had to use that yet in the tournament, have you?” He grinned. “I can show you a thing or two if you want. Just so if our match comes down to swordplay in the end, you’ll... well, you’ll look like you know what you’re doing.”
Gwen felt a tiny smile curve her lips, the ridiculousness of the situation momentarily supplanting the press of worries crowded inside her mind. Here she was, about to have a friendly bout with the man she’d be facing in deadly combat tomorrow, as he nobly offered to givehertips on swordplay.
Gwen flashed him a sweet little smile, letting her eyelashes lower demurely, and absently wondered if the guy would recognize Isobelle’s very look reflected in Gwen’s features. “I’m ready. Bring it, Awesome.”
Orson shrugged, bounced on the balls of his feet, and then lifted his blade for a slow, experimental swing. Gwen easily knocked it aside. Orson tried another attack, still ginger, with so little of his weight behind the swing that when Gwen stepped neatly out of the way, he didn’t even stagger.
Orson laughed. “All right, all right. For real this time.”
Gwen shifted her grip on the hilt. “As you wish.”
He met her attack with an automatic parry, his eyes wideningin surprise—he stepped back, turned, swung. Gwen parried, sidestepped, pressed in harder. The clanging of blades punctuated the soft susurration of the grasses, along with Awesome’s increasingly loud grunts of effort and panting breaths.
He staggered back from one particularly well-placed blow, buying enough space for him to meet Gwen’s eyes, his own flashing with shock, and something else, moving so quickly Gwen wasn’t sure she’d seen it.
Anger?
Gwen felt a prickling along the back of her neck as she politely waited for him to recover his balance. It was a sense that had sharpened over these last weeks with Isobelle, dodging discovery and facing down well-armed knights every few days—a sense that warned her of the nearness of danger.
Instinct flung up a solution into her mind. She could pretend to lose. Now, before Orson realized what Gwen had known from Orson’s first swing of the sword: that she could beat him. When she was a child, she’d fenced once with one of the boys in the village. After she’d knocked him flat, he stopped speaking to her. They had been thick as thieves, and after that day, his eyes slid past her as if she were no more substantial than smoke. That had been nearly ten years ago, and still, the most acknowledgment he ever offered was a distant nod when his wife stopped to chat with Gwen in the square.
If she just pretended to lose to Orson here, now, then all would be well for a little bit longer.
I am so goddamned tired of pretending.
The thought blazed through Gwen’s mind as Orson came at her again. All her thoughts fled, and she abandoned caution, losingherself in the rhythm of attack and counterattack, the notes of Isobelle playing at the organ echoing in her head as her feet danced through the long grass.
