the louts.”
Yes, he remembered that, as anger swept through him, albeit accompanied by humiliation. He should have been more careful of Damon Delasaine and able to triumph over both them. Two on one shouldn’t have made a difference.
“Can you see?” Gervais asked.
Reece nodded and forced his thoughts away from his own anger and shame. “What happened to Lady Anne after they attacked me?”
Gervais didn’t answer right away. He came around the bed, leaned forward and lightly covered Reece’s left eye with the palm of his hand. “And now?”
“Yes. Lady Anne—?”
“Thank God!” Gervais said with a sigh as he moved back and sat on the cot. “We were afraid he’d blinded you in your right eye. How’s your head?”
“It hurts.” Reece reached out and grabbed Gervais’s arm. The lunge made him cry out at the sudden jab of pain from his side, but he asked his question with stern authority. “What of Lady Anne?”
“Taken to her bed, or so her brothers claim,” Trev said from the foot of the cot, reminding Reece he was there.
He didn’t like the sound of that. Either she was avoiding people because she was embarrassed or ashamed, or she had another reason, such as a bruised body, to stay hidden away.
If her siblings had harmed her in any way, they would rue the day as soon as the wound in his side had healed enough for him to challenge them to combat, either singly or together. He would be more than prepared for their treachery now.
“Damn, Reece, let go! You’re going to break my arm.”
“Sorry,” he muttered as he released Gervais and lay back down, panting as the pain ebbed. “How long?”
“How long since they attacked you?” Gervais asked.
He nodded.
“It’s midmorning after.”
“Those damn Delasaines stabbed you in the back,” Trev said, his voice very loud in the quiet of the room.
Not exactly the back, Reece knew, although Damon’s blow had been cowardly just the same.
“By the time the king’s guards got there, you were out cold,” Trev continued.
Gervais regarded Reece with woeful sympathy, as if he were a sick baby. “Thank God the dagger ran along a rib, so no serious harm done. All you need is rest and time to heal. Don’t give the tournament another thought. There’ll be others.”
Reece stifled another groan, this time of disappointment and dismay. He had planned to distinguish himself at the king’s tournament. No chance of that now, thanks to the Delasaines.
“What about you?” he asked Gervais, who was also to be a competitor.
His brother shrugged. “As I said, there will be plenty of tournaments to come. I wanted to stay with you.”
So both of their chances for honor and glory had been taken away.
“And it was a good thing he did, to stave off the rumors those Delasaines started to spread this morning,” Trev declared. “You won’t believe what they’re saying, those no-good, disgusting—”
“Leave it, Trev, until he’s more himself,” Gervais ordered.
Reece wasn’t in so much pain that he didn’t see the concern flit across Gervais’s face.
“What?” he demanded, once more trying to sit up. “What are they saying?”
“Don’t worry yourself about anything except healing,” Gervais commanded, again pushing him down, although not so gently this time. “We’ll deal with those blackguards.”
The Delasaines were his problem, not Gervais’s and certainly not young Trevelyan’s. “Leave them alone.”
“But Reece—”
“Until I am better.”
A look of understanding appeared in Gervais’s worried eyes. “Ah. You’ll have your own vengeance, is that it?”
Reece nodded, although vengeance was not precisely the term he would use for what he intended. A lesson was more like. The Delasaines’ anger might have been justifiable, but not the attack, or its savagery. He would instruct them on the concept of a punishment appropriate to the crime, one at a time. And if they had harmed one hair on Lady Anne’s head, they would learn another lesson.
Trev gasped. “By the saints, I should fetch the infirmerer!”
He didn’t wait for his older brothers to concur; he dashed from the room like a startled rabbit.
Regardless of Gervais’s attempts to hold him down, and despite the throbbing in his head, Reece finally managed to sit up. “Now, what exactly are the Delasaines saying?”
Gervais frowned, reminding Reece of their father when he was displeased. “I would rather we didn’t talk about this until you’re more yourself.”
“Tell me.”
“They’re saying you were…threatening…their sister.”
“Threatening?” That was bad enough. Unfortunately, he was certain, by Gervais’s tone, that there was more—or worse.
Gervais shrugged, as if the exact wording wasn’t important. “Attacking.”
“Attacking?”
Reece’s heart began to pound. That was a very serious charge indeed, yet one that would justify their “punishment,” and so the safest one for them. No one could assault a knight and not have to give a good reason. A simple breech of propriety was not nearly good enough.
Gervais’s expression held resignation, and a confirmation Reece did not really want to see. “Aye, that’s what they’re saying, to excuse what they did. Nobody believes—”
“The king?” Reece interjected, naming the one man whose opinion in this business truly mattered, the one man who had the power to reward or punish or accuse as he saw fit. “Surely Henry doesn’t believe it.”
“We haven’t heard what Henry thinks.” Gervais cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, the Delasaines are related to Eleanor. Distantly, but related.”
That was not good news. She might back them simply for the sake of a family tie.
Reece leaned against the wall behind the cot and closed his eyes again. This was bad. Terrible. With one impulsive act he may have put his whole future in jeopardy.
All his life Reece had had one dream: to be in the king’s retinue, his inner circle, one of his trusted advisors. He could represent the minor lords whose ancestors did not come from the noble families of Normandy but whose forebears had more humble origins, winning their titles by skill and intelligence rather than solely
