The Silver Sword by Angela Elwell Hunt Page B

mouth, Son.” Lord Laco pressed his lips together in anger. “She would never have come with you; the girl has pride—a great deal more than you, from what I can tell.”
    â€œFather!” The son recoiled from his father’s hot eyes and tried on a smile that seemed a size too small. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œDon’t you?” For a moment Laco’s eyes met D’Ailly’s, and he smiled in apology. “Forgive us, Your Eminence, while we participate in a small family squabble. My son has no patience and no sense.”
    â€œFather, you can’t ruin this for me. I’ve wanted her ever since I saw her in the marketplace, so you’ll have to get her. There’s not another girl as pretty within miles of Lidice, and if she won’t come willingly, you’ll have to send someone to fetch her.”
    Laco closed his eyes, opened his mouth—his signal that Miloslav had transgressed the bounds of human understanding. “I have heard, Son, about the knights you sent to follow the girl. And I myself saw her blushing in church that Sunday we went to Bethlehem Chapel. I can only imagine what you did to embarrass her so.”
    The self-centered youth lifted a brow. “Nothing. I only smiled at her.”
    â€œNothing less than a glimpse of the devil himself could have put such fear and loathing into her eyes,” Laco answered, propping one of his heavy boots on his knee. “I warned you to stay away from her, but you would not.”
    â€œYou said I could have her.”
    â€œI said you could
inquire
after her. But you approached her yourself and scared the maiden away. So now her father would rather die than allow her to come to us.”
    â€œIs he dead, do you think?” Miloslav turned slightly in the seat and looked out the window as if he could look back down the road and see into Prague.
    D’Ailly crossed his legs, wearying of the conversation. “I cannot imagine your father’s knights letting him live,” he dryly inserted, offering his host a small smile of acknowledgment. “Nor can I imagine a father allowing his daughter to be spirited away. Yes, I would imagine he is dead, and probably the old knight, too.” He lifted his arm and rested it in the window frame. “The old knights are doggedly stubborn about such things as virtue and honor.”
    â€œThen can I have the girl?”
    D’Ailly looked at Miloslav and felt his stomach churn. He had seen many faces as hard, cruel, and pitiless, but rarely upon men so young. In the past month he had observed that the younger nobleman would commit almost any act to gain his father’s attention; this was probably just another ploy to earn Laco’s notice.
    The Lord of Lidice wasn’t watching even now; his cold eyes were fastened to the window and the passing scenery.
    â€œWait and see, Miloslav,” D’Ailly suggested, turning his gaze to the mountains outside. “Patience is a godly virtue, remember?”

    Running, stumbling, sobbing, Anika ran through the alleys and streets, purposely taking a circuitous route to confuse anyone who might attempt to follow her. What had they done to her father? And what had they intended to do with her? She would have gone willingly with the loathsome lord’s men if she had known her father’s life would be at risk if she did not, but she had not been given a chance to negotiate. And now her father—a harmless
copyist,
for heaven’s sake—remained behind, battling for her life and honor. Only God knew what would become of him and Petrov.
    â€œAre you all right, miss?” A tall and richly dressed nobleman suddenly stepped out of a doorway, and Anika shrank from him as if she had seen a ghost.
One of them.
Trembling in every sinew, she turned and darted down another alley, confusing her already muddled sense of direction.
    She walked