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“Why not?”
Because he came to take you away.
The thought blasted through her with the chill of a winter storm, and she jumped away from it.
“Why are you so nervous?” Hugh demanded. “I told you before, I don’t beat women. Although you have tested that resolve sorely this night. Now come back down and—”
“I will not.” She moved to the fire and warmed her hands. “You go down and make my apologies to your friend. Tell him I will rise to see him off. Him, and you, and…are you taking my sons?”
Her sons? Hugh heard that like a crack across the knuckles. What did she mean, her sons? Only this morning, they had been their sons. “I wouldn’t take two untried lads into battle. They don’t even know how to carve a roast, much less spit a knight!”
“Thank you for that, at least.”
Her voice had grown quiet, down from that highpitched squeak of anger and dismay. It sounded better on the ears, but somehow he suspected it wasn’t better for him, or for her.
“This is about my going into battle for the king, isn’t it?”
“Your depth of comprehension astonishes me.”
No one dared mock him, but he recognized this nonetheless. “Did you think I wouldn’t go when the prince called?”
“Oh, nay. I always knew you would go.”
“Then why are you angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
She really didn’t seem to be, but something was wrong, and he knew what it was. “The king is my sworn lord and in need of help from all true English lords. I cannot abandon him!”
“Your duty calls. I’m not stopping you.”
But she was. She was holding back some powerful emotion, and when he recalled that moment of the morning, that moment when he thought she was going to gift him with herself, he felt sick. Had it all been a lie? “You told me you didn’t care anymore when he died. You said he’d killed your love.”
“Who?”
“Robin. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“Nay!”
“I captured your husband, your one true love, and sent him to be executed, and you thought you could sway me from my duty to the king by promising to…to…”
“Love. The word is love.”
He girded his loins. “By promising to love me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then what is true?”
“I loved Robin once. That love is dead. Was dead when he died. That has nothing to do with this.”
“Then why are you acting this way? A lesser man would feel guilty for leaving you in the performance of his duty.”
“And you’re not a lesser man.”
She was sneering, and he didn’t like that.
She tried to speak, and words seemed to elude her. At last she said, “You might be killed.”
