Aimeric, who showed everything on his face, was giving Laurent an open look of hero worship and mortification. It was clearly an agony to him that he was being brought to his Prince’s attention for an indiscretion. Lazar was harder to read.
‘Your Highness—I apologise. It was my fault. It won’t happen again,’ was the first thing Damen heard when he came within earshot. Aimeric. Of course.
‘What provoked you?’ Laurent asked in a conversational tone of voice.
It was only now that Aimeric appeared to realise that he was swimming in deep waters. ‘It isn’t important. Only that I was in the wrong.’
‘It isn’t important?’ said Laurent, who knew, who had to know, as his blue gaze came to rest mildly on Lazar.
Lazar was silent. Resentment and anger lay underneath. Then they folded in on themselves, wedded to sullen defeat as he dropped his gaze. Watching Laurent stare Lazar down, Damen was suddenly aware that Laurent was going to play this out, all of it, in public. Damen surreptitiously looked around himself. There were too many men watching already.
He had to trust that Laurent knew what he was doing.
‘Where is the Captain?’ said Laurent.
The Captain could not immediately be found. Orlant was sent to search for him. Orlant was so long in searching for Govart that Damen, recalling the stables, silently gave Orlant his sympathy, despite their differences.
Laurent, calmly, waited.
And waited. Things began to go awry. A silent communal snigger sprang up among the onlooking men and began to spread across the camp. The Prince wished to have public words with the Captain. The Captain was forcing the Prince to wait on his pleasure. Whoever was about to be taken down a notch, it was going to be amusing. It was amusing already.
Damen felt the cold touch of awful premonition. This was not what he had meant for Laurent to do when he had given him advice last night. The longer Laurent was forced to wait, the more his authority was publicly eroded.
When Govart finally arrived, he approached Laurent leisurely, still fixing his sword belt in place, as though he had no qualms whatsoever in letting people know the carnal nature of what he had been doing.
It was the moment for Laurent to assert his authority, and to discipline Govart, calmly and without prejudice. Instead:
‘Am I keeping you from fucking?’ said Laurent.
‘No. I finished. What do you want?’ Govart said, with an insulting lack of concern.
And it was suddenly clear that there was something more between Laurent and Govart than Damen knew, and that Govart was unfazed by the prospect of a public scene, secure in the Regent’s authority.
Before Laurent could reply, Orlant arrived. He had, by the arm, a woman with long brown curled hair and heavy skirts. This, then, was what Govart had been doing. There was a ripple of reaction from the watching men.
‘You made me wait,’ said Laurent, ‘while you bred your get on one of the keep women?’
‘Men fuck,’ said Govart.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. It was petty and personal, and a verbal dressing down wasn’t going to work on Govart. He simply didn’t care.
‘Men fuck,’ said Laurent.
‘I fucked her mouth, not her cunt. Your problem,’ said Govart, and it wasn’t until that moment that Damen saw how wrong it was going, how secure Govart was in his authority, and how deeply rooted was his antipathy for Laurent, ‘is that the only man you’ve ever been hot for was your broth—’
And any hope Damen had that Laurent could control this scene ended as Laurent’s face shuttered, as his eyes went cold, and with the sharp sound of steel, his sword came out of its sheath.
‘Draw,’ said Laurent.
No, no, no. Damen took an instinctive step forward, then brought up short. His fists clenched impotently.
He looked at Govart. He’d never seen Govart use a sword, but knew him from the ring as a veteran fighter. Laurent was a palace prince who had avoided border duty his whole life and who never faced an opponent honestly if he could attack sideways.
Worse. Govart had behind him the full backing of the Regent; and though it was doubtful any of the men watching knew it, he had probably been given carte blanche to dispatch the nephew, if there arose any opportunity to do so.
Govart drew.
The unthinkable was going to happen: the Captain of the Guard, challenged to a duel of honour, was in front of the troop going to cut down the heir to the throne.
Laurent was apparently arrogant enough to do this without armour. He clearly didn’t think he was going to lose, not if he was inviting the entire troop to watch it happen. He wasn’t thinking clearly at all. Laurent, with his unmarked body and his pampered indoor skin, would be fresh from palace sports where his opponents would have always, politely, let him win.