“in that I can live with myself when I awake each morn.”
“Meaning I am not able to? Or should not be?” He popped the cheese into his mouth.
She glared. “Loyalty is not a commodity to be bought and sold.”
“Of course it is.” Set deep within the lean face, his glittering eyes regarded her coolly. “If there is no price on it, my loyalty would be poorly regarded, indeed. I should be a fool.”
“And we cannot have that.”
A flicker of anger sparked in his eyes. “You are a child, Gwyn. Those who receive the kind of loyalty you describe are the only beneficiaries. The cherished loyalists are used, discarded, and the stench of their sacrifice blows away quickly. Should I be one of them, then? Truly, you surprise me. I thought you intelligent.”
“And I thought you decent. Of a sort.”
“Ah, Gwyn,” he said, chuckling. “You thought no such thing.” He leaned back in his chair. “But we would have made quite a union, you and I.”
She looked at him sourly. “What, with your lack of loyalty and my excess?”
“Nay. With your fire and my ambition.”
“Oh, that.” She took a deep breath. Now or never. “You must come pledge your fealty for the lands you hold of Everoot, Marcus.”
Marcus looked over like she’d lost her mind. “Did Sauvage send you here to tell me that?”
“Of course not. You’re lucky Griffyn didn’t ride here himself and burn all of Endshire to the ground.”
“Griffyn?” he echoed her use of his Christian name, rather than a surname or other, less intimate appellation.
She brushed an invisible piece of dirt off her skirts. “He doesn’t like you.”
“He owes me,” Marcus hissed.
She drew back slightly. “For what?”
“We go back.”
Gwyn searched her memory. “Your fathers had a history.”
Marcus ripped his gaze away. “My father was fond of Sauvage.”
“Christian Sauvage, the father?”
Marcus gave a bark of bitter laughter. “Not a bit of that. At least, not in the end. But he was fond of your Griffyn.”
Gwyn sat with this a moment. “More so than of you?”
Quick as a snake, Marcus’s hand swung out. He stopped it barely a grass blade’s length from her cheek. Gwyn’s mouth dropped open, her face drained of colour. They stared at each other, shocked.
Marcus flung his hand down, as if it were a separate object he could let go free. “I am sorry, Gwyn. What I have with your betrothed”—he spit the word out—“is not yours to worry on.”
“It might be,” she said, her words shaky. Whatever old wounds lay here, they were potentially as fatal as a dry riverbed after a storm. People walking through were likely to get swept away. And again, she had no choice.
“You must come. Pledge fealty,” she continued, trying to even out the tremble in her voice. “All the other barons are coming. Two weeks from now, our wedding. The night after, the ceremony of homage. You must be there.”
Marcus shook his head. “You’re asking an awful lot, Gwyn, with nothing to offer in return.”
“Oh, I have paid, Marcus. You’ve taken.”
He looked surprised. “Me?” He shook his head. “Not so much as your Griffyn.”