Damen set his jaw. ‘The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to regain face with your uncle’s men. They already talk about you like—’
‘I said that’s enough,’ said Laurent.
Damen was silent. It took a great deal of effort. Laurent was staring at him with a frown.
‘Why do you give me good advice?’ asked Laurent.
Isn’t that why you brought me with you? Instead of speaking those words aloud, Damen said, ‘Why don’t you take any of it?’
‘Govart is Captain and he has resolved matters to my satisfaction,’ said Laurent. But the frown hadn’t left his face, and his eyes were opaque, as though his thoughts had turned inward. ‘I have business to attend to outside. I won’t require your services this evening. You have my leave to retire.’
Damen watched Laurent go, and only with half his mind experienced the urge to throw things. He knew by now that Laurent never acted precipitously, but always walked away and gave himself time and space alone to think. It was now time
to step back and hope.
CHAPTER 3
Damen didn’t fall asleep right away, though he had more luxurious sleeping arrangements than any of the soldiers in the camp. His slave pallet was soft with pillows, and he had silk against his skin.
He was awake when Laurent returned, and he pushed himself half up, unsure if he was needed. Laurent ignored him. Laurent, at night when their conversations were done, habitually paid him no more attention than a piece of furniture. Tonight Laurent sat at the table and wrote a dispatch by the light of the table candle. When he was finished, he folded and then sealed the dispatch with red wax and a signet that he did not wear on his finger but kept in a fold of his clothes.
He just sat for a while, after that. On his face was the same inward-turned expression that he had worn earlier that night. Eventually Laurent rose, snuffed the candle with his fingertips, and in the shadowed half-light from the braziers prepared himself for bed.
* * *
The morning began well enough.
Damen rose and attended to his duties. Fires were doused, tents were packed up and loaded onto wagons, and the men began readying themselves to ride. The dispatch that Laurent had written the night before galloped off to the east with a horse and a rider.
The insults that were bandied about were good-natured and no one was thrown into the dirt, which was about the best that could be hoped for from this group, Damen thought, as he prepared his saddlery.
He became aware of Laurent on the periphery of his vision, pale-haired and wearing riding leathers. He was not the only one paying Laurent attention. More than one head was turned in Laurent’s direction, and a few men had begun to gather. Laurent had Lazar and Aimeric before him. Feeling a flicker of unnamed anxiety, Damen put the saddlery he was working on down and made his way over.
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.