“I was speaking of you, Guinevere.”

“Oh.”

And somehow, there they were, smiling at each other. “’Tis a good omen.”

His slate-grey eyes flicked around the room. “We shall see.”

Chapter Nine

The betrothal was brief, almost anticlimactic.

Seeing her mother’s dress, thinking of her muddled deathbed promises to her father, and above all knowing what was to come with Griffyn Sauvage after what had so completely already been, Gwyn was so weighted with sodden, confusing emotions, she could barely wring out the required words.

“I will take you as my husband,” she murmured, head down, taking verba de futuro, vows of the future, binding them in a legal and spiritual betrothal.

It was different for Griffyn.

The priest’s Latin-infused drone barely penetrated his consciousness. Raven-haired, green-eyed, crimson-lipped, Guinevere fairly pulsed with fire as she drifted down the corridor to meet him inside the chapel. The walls seemed to expand when she entered the small stone edifice, her head held high, a small filigree of silver around the high-piled ebony curls atop her head. Distinctly impious thoughts filled his mind. Quick-witted, hot-spirited, intelligent and funny, she was more than he’d ever expected in a wife, and about as far different from his mother as he could have imagined.

No, he decided as they unbent their knees, she was different from any woman—any person—he’d known.

If only she hadn’t betrayed him.

The great hall fairly bounced with frivolity, Griffyn noted, all of which his pretty betrothed observed with a down-turned mouth. The tables on the floor were disassembled soon after the three-hour betrothal cum victory feast ended, and the vast space of the great hall became a stage for the evening revelries.

He had arranged for jongleurs and wrestlers to perform, which they did to the claps and cheers of an inebriated and inordinately relieved crowd—better to have such violence staged. Laughter and stories bounced from rafter to rafter, rising to the slats in the thirty-foot-high ceiling. Griffyn sat back, satisfied.

In fact, he decided, turning his glance to Gwyn, the night was so filled with good humour he was surprised she didn’t strangle every de l’Ami soul whose throat had loosed a chuckle in the last three hours. But she hadn’t. Yet.

On a platform extended above the great hall sat a band of musicians, pouring out music that, as the night progressed, more and more bodies swayed to.

The Countess Everoot’s decidedly did not. She sat as stiff as a rail, her arms cleaved to her sides. The most movement Griffyn could wring from her rigid body was to lift a wine goblet in toast to their betrothal, and that was only by virtue of breathing on her neck as he did so.

He turned to the room at large, focusing in on a table where prominent de l’Ami knights sat, quiet amid the festive riot. A slender but athletically built young man sat in the middle. Jeravius, if he recalled correctly. He’d noticed him in the bailey, when the de l’Ami soldiers were being rounded up. He’d caught Griffyn’s attention, the careful way he’d passed his hand over the battered curtain wall, as if it were an old, beloved pet.

Tonight, Jeravius had been intent on Guinevere, keeping his gaze on her through the smoke and festivities, leaning his shoulders forwards or back when either soldier or wrestler blocked his view.

That Guinevere sat with the kind of rigid stance a plank of wood would have admired did little to ease the knight’s watchful scrutiny, and therefore little to mitigate any threat to Griffyn’s command.

He rose, hoping to be inconspicuous. He may as well have herded a flock of sheep through the hall. Every head jerked to him, the music faltered, and two of his knights, engaged in mock combat, flicked their eyes to him, their contest forgotten.

His gaze drifted over the room, then he ducked his head in a nod, freeing the party to resume its furious swirl. Dancers danced, musicians piped, fires roared, and Griffyn walked down the dais steps to where Jeravius sat.

“’Tis a goodly scene,” he observed, standing beside the table of de l’Ami knights as his eyes scanned the surroundings.

“Aye,” Jeravius responded carefully, getting to his feet. “My lord.”

“Lady Guinevere has lost much this day,” he said, glancing idly around the room before looking back.

Jeravius’s eyes were waiting for him. “She is a good woman, my lord, and deserves only happiness.”

“Which I have in my power, and inclination, to give her.” He looked over the crowd. “Think you I will be met with much resistance?”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Jeravius’s blond head move in a slow shake. “Not from me, my lord.”

“Bien. I’ll do my part, you do yours.”

“Rest assured, my lord.”

Tags: Kris Kennedy Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net