“So what’s the plan?” Adam asked his cousin. “Are you going to keep fighting duels?”
“I don’t know,” replied William, who was still staring at me, then pulling his eyes away whenever I looked at his face. My face was starting to warm from the attention.
Perhaps Ann was right. And if I wasn’t having such a crappy day, I’d be more than a little flattered that he seemed interested. Or maybe he just felt sorry for me. It was so hard to tell with him. With his aloof and stoic manners, he kept everything close to the vest.
Minutes later—and smack in the middle of Mia’s story about working on a cadaver in her first year of medical school—William checked his watch and then abruptly stood. Her voice faded out as her eyes followed his movement. Thank the goddess for William’s interruption, albeit a rude one, because I was squeamish about stuff like that. Mia didn’t seem upset, so I guess he was excused because they were family.
“I need to go to the Clan Council.” William stepped over the bench and gathered our dishes. “Jenna has to come too,” he said and then left the table.
I popped up and followed him, but not before noting how Mia’s dark eyebrows arched upward. After quickly catching up to William, I fell into step beside him as we made our way to the large pavilion tent that belonged to our organization, the Barony of Anaya. It was named after two different cities in Orange County, Anaheim and Santa Ana. Above the doorway of the tent hung the heraldic banner, designed ages ago. It bore a white unicorn on a silver shield against a backdrop of deep purple—purpure in heraldric terminology.
Divisions of the Renaissance and Medieval Reenactment Alliance were patterned after feudalism. Territories called “baronies” grouped together under duchies and then under a kingdom, which represented a quarter of the country.
Kingdom leaders were usually chosen by combat competition. In fact, Doug had let me know it was his ambition to rule our kingdom. Goddess forbid. Thankfully, our local leadership had been chosen by consensus, and I was confident that they’d treat this situation in a fair and intelligent manner.
William and I stepped into the war tent, and I was relieved to find it empty except for the five people sitting at a table at the very back. One of the things I loved most about these weekend campouts was the feeling of living in another time period. We weren’t completely authentic, but we tried, wearing clothes that imitated medieval fashions and trading goods and skills in order to help each other out. I felt wildly inappropriate standing here in my jeans, but a girl had to do what a girl had to do.
I glanced at William, wondering if he enjoyed the club for the same reasons I did. That feeling of belonging and a comforting sense of community. Especially for a person as reserved as he was. In many ways, it was the perfect place for misfits like us.
William approached the table where the council elders sat. Lord Richard de Bricasse, our baron, was known in real life as Derek Richardson, a fifty-something businessman. His wife, the baroness, sat beside him, and along with three others, they ran the business of the clan, setting up meetings and making sure everyone followed the bylaws—all that boring stuff that the rest of us didn’t want to worry about when there was fun to be had.
“Sir William. Have you a petition to bring before us?” Lord de Bricasse began formally, as he usually did during the meetings.
William bowed at the waist, as was custom. “My lord and lady, gentlemen, I’d like to let Mistress Kovac speak for herself.”
William waved a hand toward me and I dipped in an awkward curtsy, made even more so because I had no skirt to grab. Then I faced the council table to find all of them looking at me.
“Mistress Kovac, do you have a complaint against Sir William?”
My mouth dropped open, then I quickly recovered. “Not against Sir William, no. He’s here to support me. My complaint is against Doug—I mean, Sir Douglas.”
Doug picked that moment to show up, striding in with his chest puffed up. He halted on the other side of William, like he was more scared of me than he was of the guy who had injured him with a big-ass longsword not an hour ago. I noted that he now had his arm in a sling and he threw a stinging glare at William, who either ignored him or didn’t notice.
“This ought to be good,” Doug mumbled, turning that glare on me.
I cleared my throat and once again faced the council, explaining my plight as quickly as I could while giving as few details as possible.
Lady de Bricasse cleared her throat and adjusted her seat. “This might be out of the purview of our council if Sir Douglas does not choose to follow our arbitration, but it would seem that the item belongs to Mistress Kovac. What say you, Sir Douglas?”
“It’s true that I was with Mistress Kovac on the day in question when she chose to hock her supposedly precious tiara in exchange for money.”
Lady de Bricasse raised her brow. “But you weren’t willing to lend it to her?”
He shrugged. “I offered. She said she didn’t take money from friends.”
Her gaze narrowed and my hopes soared. Getting the lady on my side was a coup. This might work yet. “Yet you spent even more money to buy the item back.”
Doug shrugged with his good shoulder. “I was trying to do something nice.”
I stiffened. “He wanted something to hold over my head.” I folded my arms over my chest, unwilling to go into the details. I’d tried to talk to Doug about breaking up weeks ago, told him that I didn’t think we were right for each other. But he’d begged me to give it another chance. I should have gone with my gut, but I suspected that Doug saw the tiara as a bargaining chip. Jerk.
I scowled at him. What had I even seen in him in the first place? He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, and sure he’d been charming and effusive when we first started seeing each other. It had even been sweet at first, and then…it became needy and weird. Three months with him had been way too long.
Doug’s face contorted into a facsimile of sadness. “Mistress Kovac is being unnecessarily cruel and throwing my kind deed back in my face.”
I turned to him, fists clenched at my sides. “It would have been a kind deed had you chosen to give me the tiara and let me pay you back. Instead, you are claiming it’s yours.”
“Would you allow her to buy it back from you?” asked Lord de Bricasse.
“Hmm…” Doug put his hand to his chin as if this was the first he’d heard of the idea. Ass.
“I offered to buy it back at triple what he paid,” intoned William. “He refused.”
Doug made a show of lowering his head, emphasizing his “heartbreak.” I almost groaned.
“I’m willing to give it back, but I don’t want money attached to it. It will sully my memory of my time with Mistress Kovac.” His voice trailed off, and this time I did audibly scoff.
The council all turned to look at me. “You aren’t sympathetic, Mistress Kovac?”
“No. I’m not. That item…” My voice faltered for a minute and I swallowed. I didn’t want to go into it—not now, not here.
How could I explain this tight ball of panic in my chest at the thought of losing yet another part of my past? Before I could stop it, the memory of my dad placing it my hands with sorrow in his eyes overwhelmed me. “Kci,” he’d said—the Bosnian term for “little daughter”—“You have to be brave…be brave for Mama and Papa.”
My fists tightened at my sides and I was tempted to stomp my foot. I gave Doug major side-eye. “If not money, then what do you want?”
Doug got that look in his eye again, as if he were contemplating the answer to that question. But he’d already figured out what he wanted. Either I’d have to undo the breakup or…. Goddess, I had no idea, actually. He knew I was planning to follow the Renaissance Faire in a few months. I would not leave without that tiara any more than I’d leave without my right arm. Maybe he was using it to keep me here?
“If Sir William is willing to stand in as her champion, then I challenge him to a duel of honor at the Beltane Festival in May.”<
br />
I opened my mouth to protest, but William was faster. “I accept that challenge. As the prize, I will accept Mistress Kovac’s tiara.”
“If you win.” He sneered and then turned back to the council. “And as my prize, Sir William will agree to exile himself permanently from our community.”
The silence was so solid in that tent, you could have set a full table on it. People had been filing in and taking seats on benches and floor cushions in preparation for the formal meeting to take place in a few minutes. Usually there was a great deal of chatter before meetings, but no one so much as whispered.
Lord de Bricasse’s jaw had gone slack and his wife was biting her lip, glaring at Doug. It was then I remembered that William was a favorite of hers.
After a few beats of awkward silence, William cleared his throat to speak. But before he could get a word out, Lord de Bricasse held up his hand. “This is highly irregular, Sir Douglas. What you demand of a member in good standing is unreasonable—”
“I can demand what terms I want.” Doug jerked his head toward William. “It is for Sir William to decide whether or not he will agree to them. I offer him a chance to recover his besmirched honor from the dishonorable defeat—”
“It was not dishonorable—” Lord de Bricasse countered.
Doug shrugged again in that profusely exaggerated way. “Whatever. I’d rather defeat him without having won on a technicality.” He turned and glowered at me, making sure I understood that this punishment of William was about me.
Or maybe not…
Maybe he saw William as a threat to his bid to win the kingdom someday. William had just proved himself as good a fighter as he was. Maybe this was Doug’s way of eliminating the competition.
Doug cleared his throat and continued. “Sir William has a chance to win her bauble back if he wants to. But only if he accepts my terms if he loses.”
All eyes shifted to William, but it was my turn to speak up. “No. I won’t allow William to do that.”
William turned his head toward me with a scowl on his face. “I don’t need your permission.”
I ignored him and continued. “That item is legally mine, and I’ll go to small claims court to get it back.” Then I turned to taunt Doug. “You obviously aren’t a man of your word.”
William looked at me, shocked. “You don’t question a knight’s honor…ever.”
Clearly outraged, Doug turned dark red and jerkily grabbed one of the leather gloves hanging off his belt before slapping it on the floor at my feet.
Everyone one around us gasped.
And I was completely at a loss for what had just happened.
I looked up at William and he was staring at the glove, then he bent and swept it off the ground. Holding it up, he said loudly, “Sir Douglas has thrown down his gauntlet at Mistress Kovac’s feet. I accept this challenge on her behalf and fight as her champion.”
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.
Overall, the weekend with the clan went well—after the duel and the affair of the tiara, that is. Even better, Doug had left soon after the council meeting, so I didn’t run into him again after our awkward breakup.
Now if only I could hire a cat burglar to get my tiara back from him. But as I was eternally broke, it looked like I was going to have to rely on William.
***
Several days later, I was awakened early—after having gone to bed too late—when my phone rang. Blinking in the darkness, I fumbled around my nightstand when I caught a glimpse of the clock: five a.m. This had better be an international call or I’d be pissed.
Glancing at the caller ID, I confirmed that the call was indeed coming from Bosnia. What was Maja thinking? She knew damn well the time difference between LA and Sarajevo. I cleared my throat but still croaked into the phone. “Hello?”
For The One (Gaming The System Book 5) Page 4