“It was my fault!”
William opened his mouth to shut them both up but Aimery threw a punch at his brother and they both went down, tumbling over a table and crashing to the ground. William began yelling at them, moving to pull them apart, as Keller just stood there and rolled his eyes. He realized, to his surprise, that he was very close to grinning at the foolery of the Ashby-Kidd brothers. He’d seen them pull this kind of idiocy before and he’d always yelled at them, frustrated at their behavior. But at this moment, all he could feel was amusement, especially when Wellesbourne began tossing them about.
“Enough!” William roared, grabbing George by the neck and throwing him off his brother. “Sweet Bleeding Christ, Aimery, get off the damn ground. What is the matter with you, behaving like that?”
Aimery was furious as William yanked him to his feet. “George only backed off the pursuit of d’Einen because of me,” he insisted angrily. “It is not right for him to take the blame when it was clearly my fault.”
Keller put up his hands. “Shut your mouths, all of you,” he snapped. “God’s Bloody Rood, what a stable of knights I have. Throwing punches and demanding to be blamed for a failure? I have half a mind to lash you to the vault and beat you all senseless. Yet as much as it would give me hours of endless joy to do that, I must refrain. The fact of the matter is now that d’Einen has escaped us, we must locate him. That is our task at hand.”
George and Aimery managed to calm themselves, but it was a struggle. William slapped George on the head and directed the young man across the chamber, well away from his brother. When William was sure they weren’t going to charge each other again, he turned to Keller.
“As I told you, I have sent scouts out to pick up d’Einen’s trail,” he said quietly. “But I must ask this question; do you truly care if the man is returned? If he is gone, then the trouble he creates is gone, including the threat to your wife and her sister. Nether will be a more peaceful place, one would hope.”
Keller, too, was calming after his initial rage. The antics of the Ashby-Kidd brothers had managed to loosen him a bit. In fact, he was coming to appreciate these men who served under him. They were competent in spite of what he had said, and they were genuinely dedicated to his service. He’d spent the past two months trying not to get close to them, to let them into his world and into his thoughts, but he was coming to think that the wall he’d put up around himself to protect his damaged heart had been too big a wall. It was lonely being isolated like that. Chrystobel had already succeeded in knocking down some of that wall. Perhaps he needed to lower it further to include the men that served him. Especially Wellesbourne; he suspected the man would make a fine friend. With a heavy sigh, he turned away and sought out the nearest chair.
“And I would agree with you except for one thing,” he said, easing his big body onto the oak frame chair with the rigid back. “It is my fear that d’Einen has gone off to rouse trouble against us. His father mentioned that he was friends with a local lord. What if he goes to that lord and manages to rouse the man against us? At least if he is locked up in the vault here at Nether, he cannot create trouble.”
William agreed, somewhat. “I still say he’s better off away from Nether,” he said, scratching his blond head in a weary gesture. “But I will tell you what the scouts say when they return. Mayhap he has not gone too far and capturing him will not be an issue.”
Keller sat back against the chair, shifting when the wound in his back pained him. He shifted around a few more times until he could find a comfortable position.
“Mayhap,” he agreed softly as he moved around. Once he was comfortable, he cast William a long glance. “I understand that you tried to tell me of this situation last night but Lady de Poyer would not wake me. Is this true?”
William looked at him. “Who told you that?”
“I did,” George said helpfully from the other side of the room.
William gave George a rather exasperated expression before returning his focus to Keller. He hadn’t told Keller of Chrystobel’s intercession when he had gone to rouse the man, fearful that her actions would bring her husband’s anger against her.
“She said that you were injured and exhausted,” he said. “I told her that it was an urgent matter but she said unless the Romans were pillaging the castle and murdering people in their beds, she was not going to wake you. She was very firm about it.”
“And you naturally complied.”
“I had little choice.”
Keller suspected as much. He held William’s gaze for a moment before exhaling heavily and looking away. “I suppose that if I am angry with anyone, it should be her,” he muttered. “But I cannot bring myself to do it.”
William could see that the man was calming and he was thankful. “She was only thinking of your health,” he said. “You were injured and you had not slept in two days.”
Keller pondered his wife’s protective instinct. He’d never known anyone to be protective over him, ever, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He felt humbled, but he also felt suspicious. Why should someone care for him so much that they would be willing to protect him? He cleared his throat softly, uncomfortably.
“This is something very new for me,” he admitted quietly. “Is this how a woman normally behaves? That is to say, are you sure she was only thinking of me?”
William fought off a grin. “Of course I am,” he said. “She certainly wasn’t doing it to be cruel.”
Keller seemed rather perplexed by the thought. “Women can be domineering,” he said. “I have seen it. Are you sure she wasn’t trying to dominate me?”
William couldn’t help the smile. “God’s Bones, de Poyer, of course not,” he said. “She was doing what you would have done in the same circumstance. Would you not have tried to protect the woman if she was lying there, injured and sleeping?”
“Of course I would have.”
“Then you can understand what she was trying to accomplish. She was protecting her husband, and that happens to be you.”
It was a foreign concept. As he sat there and pondered the fact that his wife was evidently concerned for him, a soldier entered the solar. Keller, and the other knights, turned to focus on the man who was singularly fixed on Keller.
“What is it?” Keller asked.
“An army approaches, my lord,” the soldier said.
Keller’s brow furrowed as he stood up stiffly from his chair. “What army?” he asked. “Are they flying colors?”
The soldier nodded. “De Lohr pennants, my lord,” he replied. “Blue and yellow.”