“I am the middle child ofseven,” he told her.“With a brother and two sisters born beforeand after me, and a mother, God rest her sainted soul, who ruled usall, including my father, with a velvet fist.”He smiled, a littlesad and wistful.“Aye, lady, I know women better than mostmen.”
“And thecaptain?”
“Is the second of fivebrothers, who watched his mother die in childbirth when he was astripling lad of eight years.And who, at the age of twelve, wassent by his still-grieving father to the church to become apriest.”
Lara felt keenly for the boy thecaptain had been.She may never have known her mother, but she hadSophie.“Does he remember his mother well?”
“He keeps the memory ofher close.Yet when he speaks of her, he speaks of her smile.Likethe sun beaming down on him.He says no other woman has ever smiledat him like that, only a young girl in side braids with a sprinkleof freckles across her nose.”
“He doesn’t speak of heroften, then?”
“His mother?Or thegirl?”
Lara gave Phillipe a look from beneathleveled brows, which made him laugh.
“My sister, Evangeline,could give that very same look,” he said.“And no, the captaindoesn’t speak of the girl or his mother often, rarely, infact.”
“I never knew my mother,”Lara told him.“I think it would be much harder to have known herand then to lose her at such a tender age.”
“My mother passed threeyears ago.”Phillipe turned to a more somber tone.“When I was aman fully grown and out of my family home over twelve years, and itnear did me in.Talon was a good friend to me through those darkdays.”
“I’m sure he was.”If Larahad learned anything about the captain, it was how solid andsteadfast he was, stubbornly, maddeningly so at times.She’d alsolearned more about the captain’s past in the last quarter leaguethan she had in the last thirty days, so as long as Phillipeanswered her questions, she would keep asking them.“How long wasthe captain in the monastery?”
“Four years,” Phillipesaid, and Lara’s jaw dropped.“I know.”Phillipe laughed.“Can youthink of a least likely match between church and man?”
“Actually, I was thinkinghe likely spoke Latin better than I.”She recalled the things sheand Sophie had spoken of in Latin in front of him, of their planfor her escape from the bathing chamber.And then her thoughts wentto last night, how she’d pressed her naked body against his whenshe should have pulled away.As he did.
Phillipe gave her shoulder a brotherlysqueeze.“I don’t know what happened between you two last night,but I do know a smile of welcome from you when Talon returns, andhe’ll forgive you anything.”
Lara shook her head.“He was angrywhen he left.”
“He’ll have three days tocool off.”Phillipe wanted to make her feel better, she was sure,yet his choice of words caused her body to flush from head to toesat the tactile memory of the captain’s hard heat against her skin.She almost tripped over nothing, and Phillipe grinned at her in away that wasn’t helping her recover her step or her composure,though he did have the good graces to remain silent until she couldmeet his gaze again.“I was thinking,” he said when she did.“SinceI’m to be your guardian shadow these next few days, how would youlike to learn to play Shah?”
“I’d like it very much.”The game had interested her greatly the night he and the captainhad played in their chamber.
“Tonight then, aftersupper.But for today, where am I to shadow you from?”
“You really don’t have to,you know.I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“You wouldn’t, would you?”Phillipe wagged a finger at her.“But I would know.And if anythinghappened to you, the captain would have my boll… head.”
It was useless to argue.The captain,who obviously thought her too troublesome to behave herself, hadgiven his orders.“Since it’s well into the afternoon already, youmay shadow me at my home.At what was once my privatehome.”
“I doapologize.”
Lara laughed.She’d always likedPhillipe, as little as she knew him, and the more she knew him, themore she liked him.She eyed him with mock severity.“We’ll see ifSophie even lets you in the door.”
Sophie not only let Phillipe in, butafter an afternoon of showing him around their property, she senthim back to the keep with half a peach pie.
“Sustenance for Lara’sShah lesson tonight.”She grinned, and it earned a wink of his blueeyes and a kiss on her weathered cheek.
The lesson went long into the night asthe game was complicated, but Phillipe was a good teacher and, hesaid, Lara a quick learner.By the time the pie was eaten andPhillipe said his good nights, the moon was high in the midnightsky.Yawning, Lara gazed longingly at the captain’s bed, which wasso much larger and softer than her little cot.She circled it likean unsprung trap, edging closer each pass until she picked up hispillow and held it to her nose, breathing in the mingled scents ofsandalwood and rose, then tossed it onto the bed and plopped downon her cot.
She dreamed of black and white knightscarved of stone and bone, chasing a woman of wood across acheckered board.Then Lara was the woman, a woman of flesh andblood, standing naked in the middle of a river with a knife in eachhand as a huge, black warhorse with ivory-boned tusks charged her.A gloved hand grabbed her by the arm, jerking her off her feet andpressing her to the hard breadth of a man’s armored chest, themetal so cold it burned her skin.
She woke with a start, her heartbeating through her ribs.The first gray steaks of dawn lit the skythrough the open window, and Lara rose from her cot.She’d neverget back to sleep.
Phillipe waited for her outside thestables after breakfast, and they walked to her house with Phillipeleading his horse as they had yesterday.Sophie took advantage ofhis presence and set them to thatching holes in the barn’s roof.Itwas hard, hot, dusty work, but with Phillipe’s help and company,the time passed quickly.And it kept Lara from constantly worryingabout the captain and all that had happened between them the nightbefore he’d left on his hunting trip.