“Probably so.”
She had walked back to the tent’s entry. She now lifted the flap and glanced out. “He will be back soon. Please go.”
He did not want to leave. He wanted to take her down to the river and sit and talk about those innocent days years ago. The concern in her eyes made him give up that intention, for now.
He went to the flap. He looked down at her, and felt her warmth in the air between them. “I will see you again soon, Elinor.”
He did not make it a request. That would give her the chance to deny him, and he didn’t want to hear that. As he walked away, he calculated how he could change her caution to smiles, however, and also how to avoid telling her that Sir Hugo’s woes were all of his own making.
CHAPTER TWO
“I’ll be needing my crimson surcoat mended.”
Elinor’s father announced that in early afternoon, while she sat sewing garments brought to her by other knights. Word had spread that Sir Hugo’s daughter plied an expert needle and took in work, and several squires had arrived with a variety of clothing in need of a few stitches.
“If you had told me in good time that we were coming here, instead of the day before we left, I could have already done it.” She did not look up while she spoke, but kept her attention on her stitches. She worked outside to take advantage of the good light in the sun at the side of their tent.
“You’d have refused, so I’m telling you now that it needs mending.”
“Put it on the pile in the basket. I will do it tomorrow.”
“I need it for tonight.”
“I have promised this mending by early morning. Would you have me sewing long into the night?”
“I wouldn’t have you doing that for others at all. It isn’t seemly. You aren’t a servant.”
It was an old argument between them.
He sidled over and looked down at her stitches. “I’m of two minds about it here, though. It still isn’t fitting, but it doesn’t hurt for knights to know you are a practical woman, with such skill. That is attractive in a wife.”
“Is that one of your goals here? To find me a husband? I doubt it will be an appealing match since I am so old and I have no dowry. I won’t accept such as would want me, so forget that notion right now.”
“You are turning shrewish, Elinor. We won’t tell them that. It would discourage even the least among them.”
“Oh, Father. Please go away and talk treason with your friends. Allow me to do what I am doing without giving me more worries.”
“It is not treason to want what is best for the realm. We are only talking about the conditions present now.”
“I have overheard some of it since a few are too loud in their boldness. You are talking about replacing one king with another. That is dangerous.”
“There is no plotting being done. No insurrections being planned.”
“That is good to know. Now, please, leave me to my labor.”
He wandered away, no doubt to continue all that harmless talk. Elinor truly wished they had not come now. Those men in the tents nearby gathered to discuss their preference for Prince John over the absent Richard. They complained loudly about the money being demanded by Queen Eleanor to ransom her son. They sneered about how Richard did not speak English.
It was a short path for a group of men like that to talk themselves into the steps that a king would consider treason for certain.
She prayed her father would have the good sense to walk away when that turn in the conversation came. Whatever his bitterness regarding Richard, whatever he blamed the king for doing or not doing, he would not survive such a war.
“Sir Hugo is here,” Zander said.
“I know him. We had some doings when younger,” Lord Yves said. “He has a pretty wife. Katherine, I think is her name.”
“His tent is in that circle.”
Lord Yves absorbed that. They were in the Great Hall, watching while his steward tried to tame the chaos created by his guests’ retinues. Zander had dallied to speak to his host while on his way to his camp to prepare for another joust.
“Sir Alexander, you make a good spy. ‘Tis a pity you are not available to serve as one for me. Although, under the circumstances, it appears you are doing just that.”
“He blames the king’s men for his wounds and his capture. He is not friendly to Richard.”
Lord Yves appeared not to be listening, for he stayed so quiet. Zander just waited. His host revealed little of his thinking, so he did not expect to be privy to it now. As a lord Yves was the king’s man, but lords had risen against their lieges before. Richard himself had rebelled against his father.
Zander was making no wagers on Lord Yves’s loyalties. He merely counted on the man not wanting intrigues against the crown to start here at his tournament, and later get blamed on him.
“I will invite him to dine here some nights,” Lord Yves said. “It will be easier to keep an eye on him that way. There is no room left to invite him to stay here. Dining, however—there is always another spot at my board.”
“Two spots. He has brought his daughter with him.”
“A comely girl?”
“No longer a girl, but very pretty.”
“A widow?”
Zander realized he had no idea. Had Elinor indeed married while her father was gone on Crusade? Was she now back with her father as a widow? Or, something else he had not considered, did she have a husband somewhere, alive and well?
“I don’t know.”
“I prefer widows myself, but we will invite her too. If she is pretty like you say, I’ll seat her at the high table. I will send a page to Sir Hugo with my greetings.”
Zander returned to his path out of the castle
