“Godfroi.”
He did not startle to find he was no longer alone, but it disturbed he had not heard her enter. “You ought not be here,” he said, holding his gaze to the sky visible through that narrow opening. “Your blessing was given last eve. I need no more.”
Slippered feet moved from his left to his right, and now he glimpsed skirts.
“Mother, this is not in accord with what was decided was best. You must leave.”
“I was the one who decided what is best,” she said, then with a rustle of descending skirts, lowered to her knees beside him and sat back on her heels.
Her stern face blocking his view of the outside, he sighed, pushed onto his elbows, and raised his eyebrows. “Then already you have had a private audience with Hugh, else you shall when you are done with mine.”
“Non, I seek only you, my son.”
He frowned. This was out of character for Lady Maëlys who had determined to raise her boys without benefit of a father to replace he who died under questionable circumstances when Godfroi and Hugh were ten.
Unlike most widowed noblewomen with lands and children in need of protection, she had not wed again, relying on her youngest brother and a garrison of highly trained chevaliers and men-at-arms to impart skills needed to transform her sons into warriors worthy of swinging steel. There had been a terrible price for that, of which she had paid the greatest portion, but it cost her sons as well, forcing them toward manhood before boyhood was fully behind them.
“Why do you seek only me?” he asked.
She gave a helpless shrug that was no fit for the forceful, decisive woman he had longest known, then said so softly he questioned if he heard right, “Love.”
In that moment, she looked so fragile that when he pushed to sitting, it took restraint not to catch up her lax hands. “You make no sense.”
Sorrowful laughter parted her lips. “That is my burden, Godfroi—holding close this love so it not make soft the sons of a great man.”
He did not question her sorrow over abandoning that beautiful side of her known to him and his brother before attainment of their eleventh year. What he questioned was that she recalled where she had buried it and dug it up this momentous day.
“Here and now, I am a mother again as is necessary have I hope of not losing the joy of the day I delivered two boys worthy of the silver-haired warrior who took me to wife.”
Godfroi began to understand, but before he could seek confirmation, she gripped one of his hands.
“You are the stronger warrior,” she whispered as if fearful of being heard and with the urgency of having little time to impart what must be told. “Hugh is formidable, but best he excels at speed and a sense of an opponent’s vulnerabilities.”
Godfroi knew that, having trained alongside him all these years and daily tested his own skills against his brother’s. Then there were the battles fought side by side since attaining their youth to prevent circling vultures from devouring D’Argent lands. The bond of brotherhood first forged by their sire was their greatest strength, as had been imperative to one whose relations with his own brother had been weak and eventually severed when the eldest was passed over as heir due to a penchant for unjustified violence and excessive drink.
Turning his hand up in his mother’s, Godfroi squeezed hers and said, “It almost sounds you favor me, and yet a show of preference is to be avoided at all costs.”
“I do not show preference!” Lady Maëlys exclaimed. “My feelings for you and Hugh are different in some ways, but they are of the same strength. For that, this day you must gain the title.” She hesitated, then pulled her hand from his and set it on his jaw as not done in years. “You wish to be your sire’s heir, do you not, Godfroi?”
“It is what I have trained for, not only to keep our lands from those prowling them, but to prove worthier than Hugh.”
“And you will, oui?”
He felt every ridge of his frown. Were he not sighted, he would not believe this his mother—indeed, would pride himself on senses sharper than the blind Isaac of the Bible who was fooled into giving his blessing to his younger son, Jacob.
“Mother, this is not at all like—”
“You must win!” Her eyes moistened, another rarity. “That is the greatest chance both my sons survive this day.”
Inwardly, he groaned. He had been certain she shrugged off whispers of those who long anticipated this contest, many expecting the worst—that the twin who prevailed would slay the other to prevent future challenges, whether by the defeated or his children. Losing would be a blow, but just as Hugh could believe Godfroi would not intentionally slay his brother, Godfroi did not believe his greatest friend would seek to end his life.
Impulsively, he drew his mother’s hand from his jaw and kissed it as not done in years, then he lowered it to her lap. “I shall do my best to gain my sire’s title, as shall Hugh. At the end of the contest, there will be anger and sorrow, but you will have both sons and, in time, acceptance and adjustment—one of us Lord of Valeur, the other captain of his guard.” Then as that which their father had impressed on his sons was ever near in thought, he added, “First, in between, and in the end, we
