Only the Valiant. Морган Райс

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СКАЧАТЬ he dared to move, emerging into the clearing and pushing the pigs away from him. He took a moment to look around, trying to get a sense of which direction his village lay in. The deception had bought him some time, but even so, he had to act fast.

      He needed to get home before the duke’s men killed everyone there.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Genevieve could only stand silently in the castle’s great hall as her husband raged. In the moments when he wasn’t angry, Altfor was actually quite good looking, with longish, wavy brown hair, aquiline features, and deep, dark eyes. Genevieve always found herself picturing him like this, though, red-faced and furious, as if this was the real him, not the other.

      She didn’t dare to move, didn’t dare to attract his ire, and she clearly wasn’t the only one. Around her, the erstwhile duke’s servants and hangers-on stood quietly, not wanting to be the first to attract his attention. Even Moira seemed to be hanging back, although she was still right there where Genevieve could see her, closer to Genevieve’s husband than she was, in every sense.

      “My father is dead!” Altfor yelled out, as if there was anyone there who wouldn’t know by now what had happened in the fighting pit. “First my brother, and now my father stand murdered by a traitor, and none of you seem to have answers for me.”

      This anger felt dangerous to Genevieve, too wild and undirected, lashing out in the absence of Royce, trying to find someone to blame. She found herself wishing that Royce were there and grateful that he was not, all at once.

      Worse, she felt her heart aching at his absence, wishing that she’d been able to do something other than stand alongside her husband and watch him from the side of the pit. A part of her longed to be with Royce right then, and Genevieve knew that she couldn’t let Altfor see that. Altfor was angry enough, and she had felt all too clearly just how easily that anger could be directed at her.

      “Will no one deal with this situation?” Altfor demanded.

      “That is just what I was going to ask, nephew,” a voice said, his voice hard.

      The man who walked into the room made Genevieve want to pull back at least as much as Altfor did. With Altfor, she wanted to shy away from the heat of his rage, but with this man, there was something cold about him, something that seemed to be made of ice. He was older than Altfor by about twenty years, with thinning hair and a slender frame. He walked with what seemed at first glance to be a stick, but then Genevieve saw the hilt sticking out from a scabbard and realized that it was a longsword, still in its sheath. Something about the way he leaned on it said to Genevieve that it was injury, not age, that made him do it.

      “Uncle Alistair,” Altfor said. “We were… we were not expecting you.”

      Altfor actually sounded worried by the presence of the newcomer, and that came as a surprise to Genevieve. He had always seemed so perfectly in control before, but this man’s presence seemed to fluster him completely.

      “Clearly not,” the slender man said. His hand strayed over the longsword he leaned on. “The part where you did not invite me to your wedding probably had you thinking that I would stay in my estates, avoid the town, and leave you to make a mess of things in the wake of my brother’s death.” He looked around to Genevieve, his gaze picking her out of the crowd as sharply as a hawk’s. “Congratulations on your marriage, girl. I see that my nephew has a taste for the vacuous.”

      “I… you will not speak to me like that,” Altfor said. It seemed to take him a moment to remember that he should stand up on Genevieve’s behalf. “Or to my wife. I am the duke!”

      Alistair stepped over to Genevieve, and now his sword cleared its sheath, looking light in his hands, broad and razor sharp. Genevieve froze in place, barely daring to breathe as Altfor’s uncle held the blade an inch from her throat.

      “I could cut this girl’s throat, and not one of your men would lift a finger to stop me,” Alistair said. “You certainly would not.”

      Genevieve didn’t have to look across to Altfor to know that it was the truth. He wasn’t the kind of husband who would care enough to try to defend her. None of the courtiers would help her, and Moira… Moira was staring at her as if she half hoped that Alistair would do it.

      Genevieve would have to save herself. “Why would you stab me, my lord?” she asked.

      “Why should I not?” he said. “I mean yes, you are pretty: blonde hair, green eyes, slender, what man would not want you? But peasant girls are hardly difficult to replace.”

      “I was under the impression that my marriage made me more than that,” Genevieve said, trying to keep her voice steady in spite of the presence of the blade. “Have I done something to offend you?”

      “I do not know, girl; have you?” he demanded, and his eyes seemed to be searching Genevieve’s for something. “There was a message sent, revealing the direction that the boy who murdered my brother went in, yet it did not reach me or anyone else until it was far too late. Do you know anything about that?”

      Genevieve knew everything about that, since it had been she herself who delayed the message. It had been all she had been able to do, and yet it still hadn’t felt like enough given all that she felt for Royce. Even so, she managed to school her face to stillness, pretending innocence because that was literally the only defense she had right then.

      “My lord, I don’t understand,” she said. “You said yourself that I am just a peasant girl; how could I do anything to stop a message like that?”

      On instinct, she dropped to her knees, moving slowly so that there was no chance of impaling herself upon the blade.

      “I have been honored by your family,” she said. “I have been chosen by your nephew, the duke. I have been made into his wife, and so raised in status. I live as I could never have hoped to before. Why would I jeopardize that? If you truly believe me to be a traitor, then strike, my lord. Strike.”

      Genevieve wore her innocence like a shield, and she just hoped that it would be enough of one to turn aside the sword blow that might otherwise come. She hoped it, and she didn’t hope it, because right then maybe a thrust to the heart would have matched everything she felt given how badly things had gone with Royce. She looked up into the eyes of Altfor’s uncle, and she refused to look away, refused to give any hint of what she had done. He pulled back the sword as if he might make that fatal thrust… then lowered his blade.

      “It seems, Altfor, that your wife has more steel in her than you.”

      Genevieve managed to breathe again, and rose back to her feet while her husband stalked forward.

      “Uncle, enough of these games. I am the duke here, and my father—”

      “My brother was fool enough to pass on an estate to you, but let’s not pretend that makes you a real duke,” Alistair said. “That requires leadership, discipline, and the respect of your men. You have none of those.”

      “I could order my men to drag you to a dungeon,” Altfor snapped.

      “And I could order them to do the same,” Alistair retorted. “Tell me, which of us do you think they would obey? My brother’s least favorite son, or the brother who has commanded armies? The one who lost his killer, or the one who held the killing wall at Haldermark? A boy, or a man?”

      Genevieve could guess the answer to that question, and she didn’t like the way it might СКАЧАТЬ