Her smile faded. “Thank you, but I would prefer to go alone,” she said. “It is not that I do not want your company—it is simply that everyone likes to be alone once in a while. Tonight is that time for me.”
He nodded. “I understand,” he said. “But with so many armed men here for the tournament, it is probably not safe for you to walk alone. I can follow well behind you so you will notsee me, but I feel strongly that you should not walk without an escort.”
So much for her walking alone to clear her head. Still, she wasn’t going to give up without a fight. “I will not come to harm,” she insisted. “I would rather go alone.”
“I must insist, my lady.”
That brought her temper. “Insist all you wish,” she said. “Insist until the second coming of Christ. I do not care. I simply want to walk a little, alone, and I do not want an escort. I do not want you trailing behind me like a dog or walking alongside me as if we are companions. I am tired of men making decisions for me, so in this instance, I will make the decision myself. I am goingalone.”
He backed off a little. “I did not mean to upset you, my lady,” he said calmly. “I am simply concerned for your welfare.”
“I did not ask it of you,” she said hotly. “Therefore, just leave me alone. If I need you, I will scream.”
That didn’t please Lance in the least. “My lady, I suspect that not all of this anger is directed at me,” he said. “If I have annoyed you, my apologies, but I am simply doing my duty. You cannot become angry at me for doing my duty.”
She frowned. “I amnotyour duty,” she said. “I am nothing to you. You serve my father and that is all. Go see to him if you are looking for something to do, because you will find no work here. I am simply going for a walk.”
With the cloak pulled tightly around her, she headed off toward the warmth and light of Lioncross Abbey Castle. Lance watched her go, once again feeling disappointed by an interaction with her, but he wasn’t going to give up. Lady Catalina was simply a challenge. A very beautiful challenge.
Nay, he wasn’t going to give up in the least.
CHAPTER NINE
He wasn’t exactlysure why he was out in the bailey.
Essien wasn’t feeling drunk anymore, but he knew he still was. The ground moved a little whenever he lowered his head, or looked up at the sky, and that told him there was still drink in his veins.
Frankly, he found that he needed more.
He’d left Christopher and Peter and Addax in Christopher’s solar even though Addax wanted to come with him. Essien had waved his brother off. He needed some time alone after what he’d just been told.
A betrothal.
A wife.
A great title.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about it all.
He found himself becoming increasingly annoyed at his brother, who seemed to want to invoke the name of their father every chance he had. If Addax wanted to make a point, he simply said that their father would want it so, or their father would be happy for it. That seemed to support whatever Addax was trying to drive home at the time, and Essien was getting tired of it.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care about their father’s wants or wishes or desires for his sons, more that it simply didn’t mean a great deal to him. As he knew, and as he’d said before, he didn’t even really remember their father, and he barely remembered the land of his birth. The years between his departure from Kitara and their adult years were, quite frankly, a blur.
Of course, there were certain things he remembered. He remembered working shipboard for a cruel merchant who would starve them and beat them and force them to work. He remembered the kind woman that took care of him and his brother, a woman who was eventually sold or sent away. He didn’t even remember her name, but he remembered her face. He remembered her kind eyes and the fact that she was young and beautiful. Other than their mother and their nurse, that enslaved woman had been the only one to show any measure of true affection to Essien and Addax.
And then she was gone.
The mind had a way of blocking out the unpleasant and the horrific, which was probably why he did not remember a good deal of his very young years. What he did remember, however, was being found by English knights who had saved him. That was when his life really began. He’d spent years with the knights on the sands of the Levant, mostly as a servant, but soon enough, the knights began to train him and his brother. The boys received experience by attending the battles against the Muslim invaders and in helping tend the wounded knights. It had been a baptism by fire, but both Essien and Addax had taken to it quickly. They’d lived and they’d learned.
They’d become men.
When it came time for the English to return home from the hot sands of the Holy Land, Christopher was returning to face a new marriage, among other things, and his time for them would be limited. Not wanting to simply leave the boys behind, he’darranged for them to continue their education with knights from Thuringia, education meant to expand their horizons beyond what the English knights had taught them, so they went off with a group of Thuringian knights and spent those years with more training and more battles. They learned of other cultures and languages before ending up in Flanders with a great warlord. The Duke of d’Acoz was an ally of Ajax de Velt, a great English warlord and Cassian’s father, and after a visit to de Velt’s fortress in Northern England, and becoming acquainted with Ajax’s eldest son, Cole, Addax and Essien found themselves sucked into a secret spy ring administered by William Marshal himself.
England’s greatest knight was also England’s greatest spy.
They’d taken to that easily, too. The spy game came to them intrinsically, as if they were born to it, and that was how they ended up back in England permanently. Christopher was part of that spy game, too, and Essien was so glad to be back with the man who had essentially raised him as a child that he swore he would never leave. England had very quickly become his home, his favorite place, but it wasn’t the same for his brother.
For him, it was a little different.
