Chapter Eleven #3
her a moment of gloating before taking her white knight with his
black.
“Oh.” She sat back with a
huff. “You, you—”
“Truce, lady.” Talon
chuckled and held up his hands. “No name calling, in any language,
no bedroll kicking, no bloodletting for the next three days until I
leave. Deal?”
She made a show of thinking on it and
then gave him a solemn nod. “Deal.”
She went back to studying
the game board for her next move, and Talon studied her, memorized
her. She truly was the most intriguing woman he’d ever met. As
intelligent as she was beautiful, as kind and gentle with any
creature that needed her ministrations, including him, as she was
fierce and fearless when fighting for that same friend or creature.
She’d shown true grace handling being made lidi to him, along with enough spit
and fire to make it interesting.
“Lara?”
“Hmm?”
“Speaking of name
calling.”
She looked up from the game board and
fixed impossibly big, hazel green cat eyes on him.
“Captain?”
“Talon,” he said. “My name
is Talon. I would ask you to call me by it, at least here in the
privacy of our chamber whilst we play. And maybe you can play at
not hating me so much?”
She studied him much as she’d studied
the board. “I don’t hate you, Talon,” she said at last, her words,
his name on her lips, his absolution. “I hate what you
are.”
“The king’s
soldier?”
“My jailer.”
Talon sat back in his chair. He
couldn’t blame her for hating her jailer. He would hate anyone who
was his, or hers.
“Well then.” He raised his
cup to her. “You are soon to have a month free of the me you
hate.”
She raised her cup to his jaundiced
toast. “To freedom.” She took a sip, then set her cup down to take
his knight with her queen before grinning from ear to
ear.
“Boldly done.” Talon
chuckled, then moved his black queen, positioning her to take the
white queen in another move before he sat back and sipped his wine,
mesmerized by the play of changing expressions on her face as she
tried to figure out what he was doing.
A knock at the door broke their
concentration.
“Enter,” Talon said,
irritated by the interruption.
Ravenna stepped in, dressed in a thin,
gauzy nightshift that showed more than it hid as she sauntered
across the chamber and stood before the back light of the hearth
fire, her dark eyes raking Lara from head to toe.
“Ravenna.” Talon barely
looked her way. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“You can send your
lidi elsewhere for the
night. Perhaps to your second’s bed,” Ravenna said, her voice low
and suggestive. She ran her hands down the waist of her sheer shift
and swayed her hips. “You’ll have no need of her tonight,
Talon.”
He heard the sharp intake of Lara’s
breath and saw the glint in her narrowed eyes. If looks could kill,
Ravenna would have bled out then and there.
“Do you play Shah?” he
asked Ravenna.
“Do I play
what?”
“Shah.” He indicated the
game board. “Do you play?”
She pursed her red, stained lips.
“No.”
“My lidi does. And all I’ve need of
tonight is a game of Shah.”
“But, Talon.” She thrust a
puny hip out. “I’m offering you an entirely different
game.”
“You may call me Captain.”
He stood and escorted her to the door. “And you have nothing to
offer me that I care to play with or for.” He opened the door and
gently eased her out into the hallway. “Give your father my
compliments on what a fine, virtuous daughter he has raised should
he awaken on your return to your guestchamber.”
He shut the door behind her, threw the
inside bolt, and resumed his seat across from Lara, whose mouth
twitched up at the corners.
“She bought three vials of
love potion, all for you,” she told him.
“There’s not enough love
potion in the world,” Talon vowed, and Lara gave up the fight and
broke into a grin.
“Patience said you’d
rather drink the Black’s piss than drink a potion from
Ravenna.
Talon laughed, short and quick.
“Patience is right.” Then he asked, “When did she say
this?”
“Today, when I asked her
if Ravenna was your wildcat.”
Talon held Lara’s gaze a moment. “You
thought it Ravenna? You thought me smitten with her?” The insult
came with how she would ever think him infatuated with a spoilt
brat like the count’s daughter.
“Only because she was so
smitten with you and determined to get you,” she said, soothing his
ruffled pride a little. “And Ravenna is very used to getting what
she wants.”
“Not from me.”
A slow smile spread across Lara’s
face.
“Did, ah, did Patience say
who she thought my wildcat was?” he asked her.
“No.”
“You didn’t
ask?”
Lara shook her head. “I didn’t think
it my business after all.”
“Good,” he said more
gruffly than he’d intended. It wasn’t like Talon hadn’t considered
telling her that she was his wildcat about a hundred times a day,
but what purpose would that serve now? He was leaving in three days
to march across Basque territory into Moorish Spain. He could be
killed or maimed. The last thing he wanted to do was make Lara
grieve him, or worse, tend to a cripple the rest of his
life.
“It’s not.”
He took her queen and then her king,
and then he bade her good night and sought his bed, if not
sleep.