My Valiant Knight by Hannah Howell Page A

piercing look.
    “Are you certain you want the full truth?” he asked, stopping to face her.
    “Aye, ’tis always best.”
    “Sometimes it can be cruel.” Gabel wondered if he could diminish her loyalties with the truth. It might well stop her from enacting any dangerous attempts to escape just to save her father’s pride and coin.
    “The truth is still best. Aye, I would never tell a friend that the gown she wears makes her look like a grazing cow, nor that she dances like a goat with three legs, but, on most occasions, the truth does more good than harm.”
    “Then have the truth. Most of your father’s reply was a profane rant against ransoms, empty-headed daughters, and ambitious Normans. He feels you are at fault for this, you and your companion. The only one whose welfare was inquired after was your horse. Your father also told me that he can only afford to pay a pittance, a sum so small ’tis an insult to me as well as to you.”
    That did hurt, and did so more deeply than Ainslee felt it ought to. Hiding her pain, she gave Gabel a brief smile and stepped around him. “That does sound like my father.”
    Gabel fell into step beside her as she walked toward the narrow steps which led up the walls of Bellefleur. He wished he could see her eyes. It was hard to believe that she could be quite so nonchalant about her father’s cruelty as she pretended to be.
    “I have sent a messenger to him today,” he said, as he followed her up the steps, his gaze fixed upon the gentle sway of her slim hips. “I told him what I have just told you—that his offer is an insult. Since he ignored my mention of the king’s wishes for a cessation of his lawless ways, I have repeated them, and I warned him of the consequences of thinking himself beyond his king’s reach.”
    “My father isna a mon who considers the consequences of anything he does.”
    “Are there no wiser heads at Kengarvey?”
    “Aye, and they grace the pikes upon the walls of Kengarvey. My father’s reply to any advice is a blind fury at the one offering it. No one speaks out now, no matter how great a folly their laird commits. After all, one might survive Duggan MacNairn’s mistakes, but one never survives the urge to advise him.”
    “I am surprised that anyone remains at Kengarvey.”
    “Some have no other choice. Also, Kengarvey is their home. Even if they must endure a fool for a laird, they stay out of love for Kengarvey.” She sighed as she stared out over the walls of Bellefleur. “Kengarvey isna as fine as this keep, neither as sturdily built nor as comfortable, but ‘tis home and, for many, ’tis the only home they have ever kenned. There are fools there as weel, dim-witted ones who think my father is the bravest of men. They admire the way he spits in the eye of anyone who tries to rule him.”
    Leaning against the cool stone wall at her side, Gabel asked quietly, “Even his king?”
    “Do ye wish me to talk my father into a charge of treason?”
    “Such a charge already hangs o’er his head and, if he does not soon swear the allegiance asked of him, he will find out that the king he scorns can be a formidable enemy.”
    Ainslee shuddered at the thought of the fate her father tempted. The penalty for treason was death, a long, gruesome death. It would not be only her father who suffered it either. Most certainly he was placing his precious sons at risk, and could even be endangering her and her sisters. She could not defend her father’s actions, but she decided it was past time to begin weighing her every word. By neither word nor action would she help Gabel or the king brand her father a traitor. Although her father had done nothing to earn such loyalty, it could easily prove to be a matter of self-preservation.
    “My father but plays the ransom game, Sir Gabel,” she replied. “Verra few people bow to the first ransom demand made.”
    “I cannot believe you truly think that.”
    “What ye believe about me and my thoughts,