daughter started to follow along, the smith held up a hand. “Nay, bide you here, an’t please you. This is for the older heads. We’ll be back betimes, I vow.”
Einhard, Nithard, and Alianna all looked dissatisfied, each, perhaps, for different reasons. In the face of Theodo’s stony stare, though, and Alianora’s, they did not try to press their luck.
Holger didn’t seem happy to cut short his latest yarn, either. But he did it with such good grace as he could muster. Theodo and Alianora led him along a narrow, muddy path through the fields—and away from the children. Holger did have the wit to wait till they got out of earshot before asking, “Well, what’s this all about?”
“Sir knight . . . ” Theodo stopped and scuffed one boot in the dirt. Then he squared his shoulders. Though shorter than Holger, he was nearly as broad through them. “Sir knight, I want you to understand I speak to you without meaning to offend. Can you do that, please?”
“Go on,” Holger said grimly. “I’ll try my best.”
“For which I cry your grace.” Theodo sketched a salute. “Now, I am but a simple fellow, and not a traveled man. I can only tell you how things seem to me, and how they’d look to other village folk.”
“You can cut out the sandbagging.” Holger’s voice was desert-dry. When he saw Theodo and Alianora didn’t follow the phrase, he explained it: “Say what you mean to say, and never mind all the ‘simple fellow’ garbage.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Theodo’s face and was gone before Alianora could be sure she saw it. “Right well said. I will, then: when a man your age, or mine, looks on a lass like Alianna the way you’ve looked on her this past hour and more, well, here in the village we make goaty jokes about it. Is it the same other places you’ve seen, or is it otherwise?”
Holger’s cheeks flamed the color of heated iron. “I—I—I—” He tried three times, but nothing more came out. Then he tilted his head back and drained the stoup of beer, larynx bobbing as he swallowed. He took a deep breath, and another one. This time, he managed to speak: “I beg your pardon, Theodo. I did not know I was looking at her that way.”
“Well, you were,” Theodo said. Holger’s eyes asked Alianora a silent question. Regretfully, she nodded. He had been.
He winced. He swore in the language Alianora used, and added things that sounded hot in what seemed like several others. “I must be a perfect jackass,” he said at last. He met Theodo’s eyes with a courage Alianora had to admire. “And to answer your question, they joke about pretty young girls and not-so-young men everywhere I’ve ever been. I expect God made those jokes about twenty minutes after He finished making the world—uh, worlds. Maybe even sooner.”
“Mm, I’d not know about that,” Theodo said uncomfortably. Like Alianora, like most of the villagers, he spoke little of God. Such things were more for priests than for the likes of them. She remembered Holger had always had an easier way with the Deity. She’d got used to it in the bygone days. No doubt she could again.
“Shall we go back now, before the children do come after us?” she said.
She looked to Theodo, but her husband only shrugged. It fell on Holger to answer the question. “Yes, let’s,” he said. “I’ll behave myself, honest.”
“We do understand the why of it, Sir Holger,” Alianora said as they ambled toward the house once more. She almost said dear Holger , as she had so often while he was here before. But it would not do now. It most especially would not do right this minute. After a beat, she went on, “You’ve had yourself a whole great stack o’ surprises since you came forth from yon woods.”
“Surprises.” Holger’s chuckle was mirthless. “Oh, you might say so. Yes, you just might.”
Alianora heard the pain that lay under the laugh. “I would not hurt you for the world, Sir Holger,” she said, and came
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