Page 17

Chapter Fourteen Hast Thou Ever.

..

The tea party at which Lady Isobelle planned to introduce “Lady Céline” to her friends took place the following afternoon,

in the solarium in the south wing of the castle.

Olivia was still finishing up the gowns she was altering for Gwen, but she’d

located one that needed minimal alterations to fit.

Isobelle was a good bit shorter than Gwen, so Olivia must’ve gotten the

gowns from somewhere else, though neither girl asked her where.

“Just be yourself,” Isobelle was saying firmly as she all but bodily dragged Gwen down the corridor leading to the south wing.

“Avoid any mentions of the smithy or your village, and you’ll be fine.”

Gwen opened her mouth to point out that they’d spent the entire day teaching Gwen how not to be herself, but Isobelle had stopped in front of a door and turned to give her one of those wide, dimpled smiles she employed

to cover her true feelings.

She’s nervous. At least that’s something.

After a morning of etiquette lessons during which Isobelle acted as though none of Gwen’s slipups or mistakes mattered—as

though selling Gwen as a knight’s sister was the easiest thing in the world, with no life-and-death consequences for Gwen

should she fail—any sign that Isobelle understood the stakes was a relief.

“Here we are!” she announced, and then pushed the door open.

The solarium was a round room situated above Isobelle’s quarters in one of those inappropriately designed turrets of the castle,

with windows at regular intervals all around.

Sunlight streamed in through clouded glass, falling upon the soft, rich fabrics

covering the floors and the divans and daybeds strewn in a rough circle.

In the center of the room was a low, round table on which sat a gleaming silver tea service and several platters containing

tiny cakes and some kind of unidentifiable pastry.

A trio of young women were sprawled on three of the divans, with a fourth

empty one embroidered with pink roses clearly left for Isobelle.

Gwen recognized the trio from the day she met Isobelle at

the market, each of them wearing a different jewel tone, each of them with perfectly coiffed hair and gleaming jewelry.

And each of them turning in perfect unison to stare at the girl who’d entered with their ringleader.

When Gwen had first donned

the dress Olivia had provided, it had been the most beautiful dress she’d ever worn—now, she felt plainer than the drabbest

sparrow.

Oh god. Give me a dozen armored men on horseback over this.

“Girls, this is Céline,” Isobelle announced, sweeping into the room as Gwen paused to stare.

“Her brother is Sir Gawain, that

dashing young knight who unseated Sir Evonwald in the qualifiers. She’s in town for the duration of the tournament.”

An indistinct wave of protest rolled across the other girls, and they lifted their teacups to drink and wash away the taste

of that pronouncement.

“You said the ‘T’ word!” cried one of the girls, a honey blonde with shining braids and pink cheeks.

Gwen glanced between them and Isobelle.

“What’s wrong with mentioning the tournament?” she managed.

“It makes half of us furious and the other half start swooning,” drawled a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty in a maroon gown

that perfectly set off the warm brown of her skin.

She lounged against a navy-blue divan with utter self-assurance.

“Welcome,

Céline—I’m Sylvie. My, what lovely freckles you have.” The dark eyes narrowed, putting Gwen in mind of a tiger about to pounce.

Gwen had a sneaking suspicion that the girl’s comment was more a shrewd observation than a compliment—a noble-born lady was

expected to avoid the sun and preserve her complexion.

But was she merely nitpicking a new arrival to the circle, or was that

tiger-sighting-prey look a warning that Gwen’s masquerade was already under fire?

Gwen swallowed, smiled as best she could, and eased her way into the room.

The round-faced girl with a coronet of buckwheat-blond braids who’d protested Gwen’s mention of the tournament got up to wrestle

a fifth divan into the circle.

“Yes, welcome! I am Hilde—and you must tell us whether you are a romantic or not, ja?” Her

pink cheeks brightened with a smile.

Gwen sank down on the extra divan as Isobelle claimed her spot on the rose-embroidered one.

“Um... a romantic?” she echoed,

in confusion.

“Ja! Perhaps you can decide whether we are glad about the tournament or not.” Hilde’s Germanic accent gave her voice a rolling,

rhythmic quality full of dips and high points, expressive and cheerful.

Gwen glanced at Isobelle, who was accepting a cup of tea from the third girl with a murmured, “Thanks, Jane.”

“I suppose I’m not much of a romantic,” Gwen said finally, smiling her thanks as another cup was pressed into her hand.

“My brother is the romantic in the family.”

Hilde clasped her hands together with a sigh—her teacup and saucer, perched precariously on one thigh, tilted at an alarming

angle.

“A young knight who’s a romantic? Ach, if only I were not promised to my Arnau, I would seek him out to know him better.”

“Gawain is, um, rather shy,” Gwen said, curling her fingers around the handle of the teacup.

“You probably won’t see him much.

Who’s Arnau?” Desperately, she tried to change the subject.

Sylvie opened her mouth, but Isobelle swooped into the conversation first. “Arnau is Hilde’s beau, and a very charming man

by all accounts.”

“He is away in France,” Hilde said with a sigh, gazing down into her teacup.

“We miss each other so.”

“Yes, they wrote each other constantly,” commented Sylvie, tilting her head back so she could settle a stray hair into place

with one perfectly manicured hand.

“For the first year or two. How long has it been now? Six years?”

“Oh, but he is so very busy there,” exclaimed Hilde, though Gwen could see her fingers tightening on the handle of her cup.

“He would write more often if he could.”

“So,” interrupted the third girl—Jane, Isobelle had called her—in an obvious attempt to change the subject before Sylvie could

needle poor Hilde any further.

“You say your brother is a romantic? Perhaps we will see him at the ball at the tournament’s

end, then. You must tell him to save his first dance for me.”

Jane leveled her gaze at Gwen.

She had a round, luscious figure, gleaming auburn hair and full lips, with eyelashes so long they swept her cheeks.

Just now, her eyes were fixed on Gwen, one corner of her mouth lifted in a smile that made her throat tighten.

Talk about a tiger sighting prey , Gwen thought, privately relieved Jane’s interest was in her fictitious alter ego and not herself.

“None of that, Jane,” Isobelle cut in swiftly before taking a prim sip of her tea.

“Sir Gawain is mine, you keep your hands

off him. His first dance belongs to me.”

Gwen barely had any time for her relief at the rescue to register before the rest of Isobelle’s words sank in.

“Uh,” she said,

trying to catch her eye.

“I doubt Sir Gawain will be attending any ball. He is more comfortable in his armor , after all.”

But Isobelle just laughed, her eyes gleaming.

Jane’s eyebrows had shot up, her teacup settling against her saucer loudly enough to cut through Hilde’s giggle.

“Hang on,”

she said.

“You’re into Sir Gawain? Has someone managed to displace Tristan of Cambridge? Are you telling me that his dark

eyes—”

“Dreamy eyes,” Hilde corrected her.

“She said they were dreamy —”

“That the poet’s dreamy eyes,” Jane graciously corrected herself, “have lost their hold on you?”

“He is a very talented poet,” Hilde informed Gwen, raising her cup to the absent man in a toast. “When he came through on

tour, Isobelle made us attend all three of his performances.”

“I never spoke a word to him!” Isobelle finally managed to break in, her gaze threatening to set the two of them on fire.

“More’s the pity,” Jane replied.

“The man’s diction was beautiful. No doubt just as beautiful as his—”

“Jane!” Finally Isobelle managed to quell her friend.

“Honestly, if a girl can’t admire a traveling poet, what’s left in the

world?”

“Sir Gawain, apparently,” Jane replied, unrepentant.

Sylvie’s eyes were swinging between Isobelle and Gwen, taking in everything and revealing very little.

“Perhaps he is merely

the least of all the evils awaiting this year’s dragon sacrifice.”

“Anyone’s better than Sir Ralph,” Jane agreed, wrinkling her nose.

“Sir Orson is a good man, is he not?” Hilde chipped in, with the air of one reviving an old argument.

“Isobelle has known

him since she was small, and there is something to be said for familiarity.”

Isobelle shrugged noncommittally.

“I wouldn’t mind being married off to Sir Gawain,” she said airily, before letting her gaze

slide toward Gwen’s, merriment making it sparkle.

“He’s a dreamboat.”

Gwen ducked her head to study the contents of her cup, doing her best to look merely demure instead of utterly rattled.

She

was used to the twinge of disappointment she felt whenever a pretty girl started talking about the boys she fancied, but the

compounded confusion in this situation made her body tense.

Is it still jealousy if the girls are swooning over my alter ego?

she wondered, raising her cup for a sip to cover her uncertainty.

In her haste, she accidentally took a somewhat larger swallow

than she intended to and braced herself for a burned tongue—only to choke, gasping, “Oh, fuck!”

The liquid in the cup was not tea.

At least, not only tea.

The drink burned all the way down her throat to settle, tingling, in her belly.

She covered her mouth with her hand, but the

epithet she’d blurted hung there in the air, like a big signpost proclaiming her lowborn nature.

Until Hilde burst into giggles, breaking the silence and triggering a cascade of laughter from the other girls.

“Mein Gott,” she gasped when she could, “did you actually think we drank tea at our tea parties? How dull you must think we are!”

Gwen was still fighting valiantly not to cough at the strength of the stuff—while simultaneously feeling an increasing urge

to taste it again.

“What is it?”

“My parents got it from an Irish merchant—they call it uisce beatha . It packs a powerful punch, no?”

Gwen sniffed at the contents of her cup, not quite game to take another taste yet.

One sip—albeit more of a gulp than a sip—and

she could feel it buzzing in her legs, like she’d just pounded an entire flask of wine.

“It’s, uh. That’s something, all right.”

She snuck a glance at Isobelle and found the other girl watching her with obvious delight.

Annoyance flickered at Gwen, nearly

as unsettling as the uisce.

Didn’t Isobelle understand how important it was that these girls accepted Gwen as a noblewoman,

as one of them ?

If Gwen could fade into the background as one of Isobelle’s flock of ladies, no one would pay her much attention.

She could

throw herself into her role as Sir Gawain, focus on the actual battles she had to fight, instead of wasting her energy trying

to pretend to be something she really wasn’t.

She felt eyes—other eyes—on her, and turned to find Sylvie watching her.

The lazy, disaffected air she gave off didn’t quite

conceal the keen edge to her stare, and Gwen found herself jerking her gaze away.

“So... do all of you live here in the castle?” Gwen asked, hoping to shift the focus off herself.

Hilde laughed. “Heavens, no! We are here for the tournament, staying in the castle guest quarters.”

“But we visit Isobelle a lot even when there isn’t a tournament,” Jane said with a languid gesture around the suite with its lush decor.

“She’s so much more fun than sitting by a window embroidering cushions. Plus, a girl tends to run out of options fairly quickly in a small county like mine.”

“By options, she means boys,” explained Hilde helpfully.

Jane fluttered her long eyelashes at Hilde in an over-the-top impression

of coy flirtation.

“I think,” said Sylvie slowly, tracing a finger around the edge of her teacup, “that we should play a game.” She hadn’t taken

her eyes off Gwen’s face.

“Oh yes!” cried Hilde, all delight and cheer.

“How about—”

“I think we should play Hast Thou Ever,” Sylvie said over her without skipping a beat, and still watching Gwen.

“Can you think

of a better way to get to know each other, Céline?”

Gwen’s instincts told her to brace, to find firmer footing than plush carpeting and a sagging divan that threatened to swallow

her, and get her hands on some sort of weapon.

“Hast Thou Ever?” she echoed, uncertain.

Sylvie’s eyes widened.

“Oh, have you never played before? We take turns asking questions, like—I’ll go first—hast thou ever

been alone in a room with a man who wasn’t related to you? And if you have, then you take a drink, like so.” She lifted her

cup for a demure sip, then glanced over at Jane expectantly.

“It’s only one sip,” said Jane with a wink, lifting her cup.

Her rounded cheeks were already pink.

“Even if you could justify

the whole bottle.”

Gwen could feel icy fingers of dread starting to creep up her spine.

It was one thing to have memorized the rules of who she was supposed to be in this situation.

It was another thing entirely to figure out which rules she was meant to have broken in order to fit in with these ladies.

Sylvie could not have picked a worse game for Gwen.

Gwen snuck a glance at Isobelle, hoping to take some kind of cue there.

Gwen had been alone with men—they came every day to

the forge to make orders and pick up mended equipment.

But that wasn’t the sort of “alone” Sylvie was talking about.

Hilde had set her cup down on her saucer, making Jane snort into her uisce and pat her hand sympathetically.

Isobelle made

a show of setting her cup down, only to wink at the girls and lift her cup at the last minute.

Gwen found herself staring at the cup, distracted from the puzzle she was meant to be solving for herself in favor of a far

more compelling one.

She’s been alone with men?

Isobelle’s face betrayed nothing but cheerful enthusiasm for the game, as if she hadn’t realized yet how dangerous this sort

of conversation was for Gwen, living as she was a double life.

No, a triple life. Gwen the blacksmith’s daughter, Sir Gawain the knight, and Céline, his naive sister.

Good god, this was

a terrible idea.

But Isobelle’s dimples were rigidly on display.

Whatever she was feeling—whatever concerns she might have about the game they

were playing—she wasn’t showing it.

“Not you either, Céline?” asked Hilde mournfully.

Gwen blinked, then looked down at her cup.

She hadn’t taken a drink.

“My... my brother never would have let me hear the

end of it if I had,” she said finally.

“I nominate Isobelle to ask the next question,” Sylvie said lightly.

“Hast thou ever...” Isobelle began, drawing out the words as she thought.

“Left off your underskirts on a hot day, and hoped no one would notice?”

The questions continued in that vein, giving Gwen the opportunity to get to know the other girls in the group.

Hilde, the hopeless romantic, dreaming of the beau she’d been waiting on for years, deeply invested in finding happy endings

for all those around her.

Jane, beautiful, easygoing, and quick to love—and more than willing to share that love, by the sound of it.

Daring and kind

all at once.

And Sylvie. Reserved, guarded, with no interest in courting suitors or chasing marriage.

Revealing little of herself.

Observing

much.

It was Sylvie’s turn to ask the next question.

Jane had slid to the floor with a piteous cry of “Braid my hair, Hilde!” and

Hilde was giggling as she tried and failed to do something complicated involving ribbons.

Sylvie was smiling at Gwen as she suggested her next question.

“Hast thou ever worn another lady’s gown?”

For a split second, Gwen didn’t understand the sudden interest from Sylvie, why that question had made her watch for Gwen’s reaction.

Then her stomach clenched.

Whose dress was she wearing?

She’d assumed Olivia was altering Isobelle’s dresses for her, but she was closer to Sylvie’s size than Isobelle’s.

Was this Sylvie’s castoff?

Gwen’s mind went blank, sheer panic taking hold.

“Oh, come now, Sylvie, don’t torture poor Céline by making her drink every time.” Isobelle’s smile was honey sweet.

“Her trunks were delayed en route and should get here in a few days. I asked Olivia to alter a few of last season’s dresses to tide her over. Besides, we’ll all have to drink to this one—remember when Hilde spilled mead all over us a few years back?”

Gwen carefully lifted her cup for a sip, not meeting Sylvie’s eyes.

Instead, she caught Isobelle sneaking a peek her way.

A tiny reminder that Gwen wasn’t out here on the battlefield alone.

Isobelle may have been acting like she hadn’t a care in

the world, but she was monitoring the conversation like a hawk.

The questions went round and round after that, with the girls taking a special—if laughing, friendly—delight in following

suit with Sylvie.

One of the questions that made Gwen drink was Have you ever had black hair?

and another was Have you ever had a brother named Gawain?

Soon enough she was in a haze, and if she hadn’t had such secrets to keep, the haze—the hazing , she decided—would have been fun.

The temptation to let down her guard and give in to the game was strong.

Gwen’s head was positively spinning after a few more

cups of “tea,” and she was beginning to envy Jane’s spot on the floor by Hilde’s divan.

Isobelle was clearly feeling the effects of the beverage, too.

Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkled, and her voice spilled

out in laughing, burbling quips.

Gwen tried to keep her eyes on each of the girls in equal measure, but it was hard not to

watch the queen of this court, presiding over her ladies with the perfect mix of tipsy whimsy and graceful composure.

The next question from Jane, Hast thou ever been from France?

, made Gwen choke and take the tiniest sip she could manage from her cup.

“Please, I beg of you,” she pleaded, laughing.

“Any more and I will lose the ability to speech. Speech.” She paused, then

tried one more time.

“ Speak. ”

Isobelle snorted, the sound rather startling Gwen—she usually kept herself in better check than that.

Gwen wasn’t the only

one who’d had too much of the uisce .

Hilde let out a long, lusty sigh.

“Hast thou ever kissed a boy?” she asked, though no one had nominated her to ask the next

question.

Jane slumped down into a supine position, moaned something about being personally victimized by this game, then downed the

rest of her cup in one swig.

Gwen watched Isobelle out of the corner of her eye, her own heartbeat sounding very loud in her

ears.

The queen bee of the group reached for the handle of her cup—but only to turn it on its saucer, adjusting its position.

“At least when I do,” Isobelle said cheerfully, “I’ll be ready for it.”

“There is that,” agreed Hilde with a giggle.

“Practice makes perfect.”

Gwen was missing something, she felt sure—but before her fuzzy brain could quite grasp what it was, Sylvie was leaning forward,

gazing at her with interest. “Hast thou ever kissed anyone ?” she asked pointedly.

Everyone—except Gwen—drank.

Gwen watched Isobelle’s cup rise to her lips and lower again, her mind churning as it tried to understand, through her haze,

the significance of that.

Hilde noticed Gwen’s cup still on its saucer and lurched upward.

“Ach, but, Céline, how will you be ready? Surely you have had friends to practice with, back in Toussaint? Come now, we will teach you. Maybe not Jane, unless you wish to lie down on the floor.” She took Jane’s cup from her, receiving a mild protest—or possibly a thank-you—from the supine girl.

Gwen’s heartbeat was surely loud enough now to be heard.

This time she very carefully did not look at Isobelle.

The pleasant warmth in which the uisce had wrapped her suddenly felt heavy and cloying, an anxious knot

twisting inside her.

“Um... you all kiss each other? To practice for men?”

“It is a skill to be perfected to attract a rich husband, like any other.” Sylvie’s smile was wide and languid.

“And it’s fun,” Jane supplied from the floor.

“I would offer,” Sylvie continued, “but I’m so comfortable. Besides, I think it should be your friend, no? Perhaps we’ve been

playing the wrong game all along. Izzie, I dare you to kiss our new friend here. And make it a good one.”

Isobelle was rolling her eyes at Sylvie, though Gwen noticed she rather hastily put down her cup and saucer.

Eager, or trying

to hide an unsteady hand?

She glanced back over at Gwen, blue eyes dancing and the tiniest bit unfocused.

“It’s just for practice,”

she assured her, her already pink cheeks going a little pinker.

“And only if you want to.”

Gwen’s lungs constricted, her mind summoning up memories of girls in her village who would play at flirtation, never realizing

Gwen felt something different, something deeper; never noticing her heartache when they ran off back to their beaus.

Gwen was frozen, gazing at Isobelle as she rose from the embroidered divan and came to drop down next to her, mirroring her

pose with one leg folded under her—knee to knee, shin to shin.

The dimples were there, but trembling slightly as she gazed

beseechingly into Gwen’s face.

Of all the things that should’ve been running, screaming really, through Gwen’s mind—that this was risky when Isobelle was meant to be courting Céline’s brother, that this whole party was like something out of a nightmare, that they were both drunk and silly and maybe it didn’t matter—the only thought Gwen could think stood out like a fiery beacon amid warring feelings of longing and confusion.

Not like this.

Isobelle was actually leaning toward her when Gwen jerked back, sliding off the divan and getting unsteadily to her feet.

“Um, sorry,” she managed, over the pounding of her heart.

“I... I think I’ve had too much to drink. Forgive me.”

And without waiting to figure out if that was a ladylike, appropriate way to excuse herself, she turned tail and fled.