Lord de Bricasse raised his brows. “Well, I assumed you would say that even before his histrionics. Really, Doug….” he said, slipping from his role for a second.
Doug puffed his chest out even further. “This is within the rules. I’ve checked.”
He’d obviously planned it this way and now appeared very pleased with himself. I turned to William. “You don’t need to do this. It’s my problem, not yours. Doug obviously has a problem with me. I can take this up with the guy who gave me the loan.”
William shook his head. “I will fight as your champion. The challenge has been issued and I accepted it. These are the rules we abide by and they are very clear. There is nothing left to say.”
I almost howled in frustration. What if he lost? Was I going to stake my most precious possession on a fight that he might not win?
Triumphant, Doug bowed dramatically and held out his hand to William for the glove. Then, without so much as a thank you, he turned, saluted the rest of the occupants of the tent and marched out. Asshole to the nth degree. I glared at his back the entire way out. What the hell had I ever seen in him?
William still stood before the elders, and Lord de Bricasse was asking him if he had any further business with the council. I stepped up to put a stop to this.
William held out his arm to hold me back. “No, we’ll settle this the old-fashioned way. After all, it’s what we’re about.”
“But…” None of them had any idea what that “bauble” meant to me. I wasn’t about to leave my fate in someone else’s hands. But I didn’t say anything until we were outside the tent. “Wil…”
He stopped and turned to me, eyes fixed on my shoulder. “Yes?”
“I think it was very nice of you to offer to defend me, but…”
He waited while I summoned the courage to question his ability to do this.
“The Beltane Festival is only two months from now. How do you know that—that the same thing that happened today won’t happen then?”
He continued to stare at my shoulder. At his sides, his fists opened and closed several times. Then he rubbed his palms across his thighs. Following the motion, I studied his muscular physique, wondering what he’d look like in a fitted pair of jeans. Probably hot as hell…
I shook my head to reorient myself, since he was answering me. “I’ll practice every day. I’ll work out and train. I’ll get better.”
I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, only now realizing that my hands were gripping each other tightly. “But will that help? What if you still stress out and violate the rules? Then he wins on a technicality—again.”
He frowned. “It wasn’t stress. It was…”
“What?”
“More like…dread.”
Dread…I knew about that. Being born in the middle of one of the bloodiest wars in recent history would do that to a kid. Then being torn away from half your family and shipped to the other side of the world to be “safe?” Yeah, I knew all about dread.
I took a deep breath and relaxed my grip on my hands, letting them fall to my sides. “If you want, I could help with that. Like…we could make it part of your training.”
His brows rose. “You can help?”
“Yeah, uh…I’ve had some experience with dread.”
That really seemed to shock him.
“Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” I said before he asked the question.
“Okay,” he said slowly, as if he didn’t completely understand what I was saying.
“You know, we could have avoided this whole thing if I’d just gone to the police. I still could, in fact.”
“You could. But I still have to fight him.”
I drew back, stunned. “Why?”
He looked as if that was the stupidest question ever. “Because I accepted his challenge. I won’t back down now. I’ll go to battle against him, and if I lose, I’ll withdraw my membership in the clan.”
I gasped. “You can’t let him drive you away like that.”
“Those are the terms of the duel,” he said with a slight frown. “I’ll accept those terms if it comes to that. But I don’t intend to lose.”
I thought for a moment before coming to a decision. “I want to help you win, William. Not just because I want the tiara back, but because someone needs to take Doug down a few notches.”
William’s frown deepened. “Take him down from where?”
I wondered if he was pulling my leg. After noting his serious expression, I realized he wasn’t. “It’s a figure of speech… it means he needs to get off his high horse—”
William opened his mouth, and I could see the question on his face. He clearly didn’t understand that one either.
“Um—it means he needs to be humbled.”
He nodded. “Oh. Okay. Yes, I agree.”
“So, do we have a deal? I help you with your issues with crowds, and you kick the—I mean, you win this duel like a boss.”
“Like a boss,” he repeated, grinning. “Deal.” He reached out to clasp my hand and I returned his grip. Something electric sizzled up my arm from where his long fingers tickled my wrist. Suddenly, my body flushed with heat and the breath hissed out of my lungs.
I blinked, momentarily dazzled by his touch and his good looks. William didn’t smile a lot, but when he did—wow. And though half the time his hair was in his eyes, when it wasn’t…well, he just had the most beautiful dark brown eyes. Even if they never seemed to meet mine.
William was delish and he didn’t even know it. That made him even tastier.
I bit my lip. No boys for you, Jenna. Not now. Not when you’re going to leave anyway…
In the end, I politely declined William’s offer to stay in his tent for the night. Ann, Caitlyn and their friend, Fiona, one of William’s biggest fangirls, squished their bedrolls closer together to make room for me in theirs. William, thankfully, did not seem offended. He was probably relieved that my virtue was intact, or some other old-fashioned notion like that.
I noticed that he took a lot of his social cues from our organization, often acting as if he was roleplaying even while having both feet planted in the twenty-first century. I imagined that for a socially inept person, the stricter codes from an earlier time served as a comfort. There were rules for everything, whereas in modern times, you just had to instinctively navigate your way around situations as best you could, often inadvertently offending people.