“Perfect! I’d love to watch!”
“You would?” he brooded.
“Yes. You don’t really expect me to sit in a castle all day without anyone to even speak to, do you? I’ll go nuts. I can’t text and now I can’t talk!”
He looked at her as if another eye had just appeared on her face. Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “There are many people to speak to inside the castle. You would not be alone.”
“Like who? Cook doesn’t like anyone in his kitchen. I didn’t tell you, but he clapped my knuckles with his wooden ladletwiceyesterday. I warned him that if he did it again, I would knee him in his nuts. He understood me then and let me make my cupcakes.
“Who else should I speak to?” she asked, ignoring his smile. “The maids and servants who all think you’re wonderful? I’ll make my own judgment on that, if you don’t mind. And hearing it all the time gets boring, you know?” She didn’t wait for him to nod. “I’ve spent more time with Elia in the last couple of days than I have with my closest friend in the last six months!”
“You are upsetting yourself, Miss Locksley.”
“You shouldn’t blame me,” she said, sounding terribly sad to her own ears.
He stopped and set his worried gaze on her. “I do not.”
Chapter Nine
Nicholas dodged ablow to his head and leaped to the right, narrowly avoiding his lieutenant’s heavy sword. Charlie had come close. Nicholas couldn’t let that happen again. It was because she was here, standing off to the side, watching him.
Ridiculous because why would he get his head swiped off for a woman? Also, this was one of his soldiers making him look bad. Nicholas should be driving him back into the ground. There was no mercy on the battlefield, and little on the practice field. Of course, it was practice and no one died. But it could get bloody.
He should never have sat with her last eve in the great hall. She’d utterly charmed him with her cupcakes and her breathless anticipation to see his library. He wished he’d enjoyed it with her, but news of Richard’s return had taken precedence.
The king was a month early. It must be all this news about Henry Tudor’s escape to France from his exile in Brittany. Things were moving. A battle was coming.
It was the perfect time to step away from the king, let him fight this battle without Nicholas. But that meant the end of the York line. Nicholas couldn’t do it. He’d even advised Richard against fighting a losing battle. Hopefully, Richard would have a son. But until then, Richard was all there was.
Nicholas had to leave in a little over a fortnight. Would Miss Locksley settle in by then? Would she forget her past? Or rather, her future innewYork and be safe here?
He swung his mighty blade. He didn’t want to think of Richard or all the support the Yorkists were losing to Henry Tudor.
He wanted to show Kestrel Locksley that he could protect her.
Charlie came at him swinging his sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. Nicholas parried both strikes, grinding the steel of his blade down his opponent’s, bringing sparks to life. Before Charlie had time to readjust, Nicholas brought his sword over Charlie’ head and whacked the flat of his blade across his lieutenant’s back.
Kestrel covered her mouth with her hand as Charlie landed close to her feet.
She offered his lieutenant a kind smile. “I don’t think anyone would have seen that coming,” she consoled. “He was hard on you. You did well against him.”
Charlie grinned at her. Nicholas looked heavenward.
“Miss Locksley!” he called out. “My lieutenant is not a child. He is a soldier. He does not need coddling.”
Her lips tightened. She was about to open her mouth. He stopped her.
“Perhaps I was wrong to have you watch us. If ’tis too difficult—”
“Commander,” she said through her teeth, “you are the only thing difficult here. You sound like a petulant child—”
She stopped speaking and took a step back when he shoved his sword into its sheath and came toward her.
He didn’t stop to say a word but bent forward and hoisted her over his shoulder.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she shouted. “Put me down! You can’t do this!”
“But I can,” he corrected her. “You will not speak to me so in front of my men again.”