‘Shut up,’ said Aimeric.
‘He was lying. He wouldn’t take you back. You’re too old.’
‘You don’t know,’ said Aimeric.
‘Thick-voiced and rough-cheeked, you’d make him sick.’
‘You don’t know anything—’
‘With your ageing body, your overripe attentions, you’re nothing but—’
‘You’re wrong about us! He loves me!’
Aimeric flung the words out defiantly, they came out over-loud. Damen felt the bottom fall out of his stomach, a feeling of total wrongness passing over him. He found he had let go his grip on Jord, who, beside him, had taken two steps back.
Laurent was looking at Aimeric with curling contempt.
‘Loves you? You paltry little upstart. I doubt he even preferred you. How long did you hold his attention? A few fucks while he was bored in the country?’
‘You don’t know anything about us,’ said Aimeric.
‘I know he didn’t bring you to court. He left you in Fortaine. You never asked yourself why?’
‘He didn’t want to leave me. He told me,’ said Aimeric.
‘I bet you were easy. A few compliments, a little attention, and you gave him all the naive pleasures of a country virgin in his bed. He would have found it diverting. At first. What else is there to do in Fortaine? But the novelty wore off.’
‘No,’ said Aimeric.
‘You’re pretty enough, and you were obviously hot for it. But used goods are not appealing unless they are something worth using. And the cheap wine you drink in a backwater tavern is not the kind that you serve at your own table, given choice.’
‘No,’ said Aimeric.
‘My uncle is discriminating. Not like Jord,’ said Laurent, ‘who’ll take a middle-aged man’s sloppy seconds and treat it like it’s worth something.’
‘Stop it,’ said Aimeric.
‘Why do you think my uncle asked you to whore yourself out to a common armsman before he’d deign to touch you? That’s what he thought you were good for. Screwing my soldiers. And you couldn’t even do that right.’
Damen said, ‘That’s enough.’
Aimeric was crying. Ugly, wracking sobs that shook his whole body. Jord was ashen-faced. Before anyone else could act or speak, Damen said, ‘Get Aimeric out of here.’
‘You cold-blooded son of a bitch,’ Jord said to Laurent. His voice was shaky. Laurent rounded on him, deliberately.
‘And then of course,’ said Laurent, ‘there’s you.’
‘No,’ said Damen, stepping between them. His eyes were on Laurent. His voice was hard. ‘Get out,’ Damen said to Jord. It was a flat order. He didn’t turn around to look at Jord to see whether or not his order had been obeyed. To Laurent, in the same voice, he said, ‘Calm down.’
Laurent said, ‘I wasn’t finished.’
‘Finished what? Reducing every man in the room? Jord isn’t any kind of match for you in this mood, and you know it. Calm down.’
Laurent gave him the kind of look a swordsman gives as he decides whether or not to slice his unarmed enemy in half.
‘Are you going to try it with me? Or do you only take pleasure in attacking those who cannot defend themselves?’ Damen heard the hardness in his own voice. He held his ground. Around them, the tower room was empty. He had sent everyone else out. ‘I remember the last time you were like this. You blundered so badly you gave your uncle the excuse he needed to have you stripped of your lands.’
He was almost killed, for that. He knew it and stayed where he was. The atmosphere rose, hot, thick and deadly.
Abruptly, Laurent turned away. He put the heels of his palms on the table, gripping its edge, standing with his head down, his arms stiffly braced, tension across his back. Damen watched his ribcage expand and deflate, several times.
Laurent was still for a moment, then, sharply, he swept his forearm across the table, a sudden, single movement that sent gilt plates and their contents crashing to the floor. An orange rolled. Water from the pitcher dripped from the table’s edge onto the floor. He could hear the sound of Laurent’s unsteady breathing.
Damen allowed the silence in the room to stretch out. He didn’t look at the wrecked table, with its spilled meats, its scattered plates and overturned, fat-bellied pitcher. He looked at the line of Laurent’s back. As he had known to send the others out, he knew not to speak. He didn’t know how much time passed. Not long enough for the tension in Laurent’s back to unwinch.
Laurent spoke without turning around. His voice was unpleasantly precise.
‘What you are saying is that when I lose control, I make mistakes. My uncle knows that, of course. It would have been an amusing pleasure for him to send Aimeric to work against me, you’re right. You, with your barbaric attitudes, your brutish, domineering arrogance, are always right.’
Laurent’s hands on the table were white.