Gavriella looked up to see the knight standing there.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked quietly.
She had a big piece of bread and butter in her hand, having just taken an enormous bite. In truth, she wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Did she feel better? Maybe physically. She was warm and clean. She had food.
Mentally was a different matter altogether.
After a moment, she lowered the bread and fixed on him. “You… I simply do not understand you.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Why you will not leave me alone.”
His response was to shut the door, but he didn’t bolt it. He shut it just enough to give them privacy with their conversation. “I told you why,” he said. “You became my responsibility when I helped you find your way out of Gomorrah.”
“And that includes pulling me out of the river?”
He nodded faintly. “I could not let you kill yourself,” he said quietly. “At least, not in my presence. It is a sin, my lady. Surely you understand that.”
She pushed the bread aside completely, her appetite waning at the subject of conversation. “Mayhap it is, but it is my sin,” she said. “You had no right to stop me.”
He regarded her a moment and as he did, something in him snapped. He was tired of being noble when it wasn’t appreciated… or wanted.
“My lady, I have gone out of my way this evening to present you with a courteous man of honor and you have done your very best to insult me every step of the way,” he said, a flash of temper rising. “I can tell you, plainly, that I have no motive in all of this. I saw a lady in distress tonight and I felt compelled to help her, but that will end in a couple of hours when the sun rises and I help you find your way home. After that, I will trouble you no further. Run back to the river and drown yourself if you wish because I will not be there to pull you out. If you succeed, then God have mercy on your soul. But I will wash my hands of you and your foolish behavior. I am finished showing any measure of concern for your safety because, clearly, you do not care.”
It was a scolding, probably far less than she deserved, but in those stern words, she began to see something in him that she hadn’t seen before. A hardness that he hadn’t shown her, a darkness flashing in those pale eyes. She sat there, looking at him, feeling indignation. Anger.
Pain.
“I never asked you to save me,” she said. “All I did was agree to permit you to help me find the way out of that horrible guild. That was it. You took it upon yourself to become my protector and I never asked you to do that, either.”
He just looked at her, slowly shaking his head. “God, you’re an ungrateful creature,” he muttered. “You may look like an angel, but you have the manners of a lout. Since you feel that way, I’ll pay for you to use this chamber for the rest of the night, but you can find your way home on your own in the morning. I am sorry to have wasted my time with you. You make a good act of being fearful and weak, but when someone tries to help you, you have no idea how to graciously accept such help or even be polite about it. What do you get out of this abusive game, my lady? Some kind of sick satisfaction?”
She was taken aback by his words. “What are you talking about? How I behave is not a game, my lord.”
He snorted rudely. “How you behave is as poorly as I have ever seen,” he said. “God help the next man who tries to give you any measure of assistance. You’re not worth any of it.”
She frowned. “How dare you say such things,” she said. “You know nothing about me.”
“And I do not want to,” he snapped back. “I honestly thought I was doing something good. You see, I have sisters and a mother and many female relatives, and in my family, we treat our women with great esteem and respect. It is natural to us. I was raised to be a chivalrous man and I thought you needed someone to be kind to you, but I was wrong. So very wrong. Therefore, I will not trouble you further, my lady. Good luck to you. You are going to need it.”
With that, he turned for the door and yanked it open. Stepping through, he shut it behind him, pausing a moment because he’d just yelled at a woman who had tried to kill herself. He tried not to feel like a monster. But her ingratitude had inflamed him. He didn’t expect praise, but simple thanks would have been nice.
But he’d been wasting his time.
He’d been an idiot.
With a sigh of frustration, he was about to step away from the door when he heard something.
It sounded like weeping.
Keep walking, he told himself. She didn’t want his help. She’d told him to go away multiple times. She didn’t want anything to do with him and she’d made that abundantly clear. Ungrateful, rude, bitter wench.
… so why couldn’t he seem to leave her alone?
Idiot!
Pausing unhappily, mostly with himself, he sighed again, this time with great annoyance, and opened the door. He could see her sitting there, head lowered, sobbing her eyes out. His gaze lingered on her for a few moments. He still held the opinion that he’d never seen a finer woman. That rude, beautiful, insolent, delicious-looking creature. He stepped into the chamber again and shut the door, but he made sure to stay next to it in case she did something else to inflame him so he could make a swift exit.
“Stop weeping,” he commanded softly. “It’s not as bad as all that. I didn’t mean what I said. I was simply frustrated.”
She didn’t seem surprised that he was there. Even when she told him to go away, he didn’t, and so far he’d proven adept at popping up in the most unexpected of places.
She kept her head down.
“You were right to be annoyed,” she sniffed. “Nothing you said is untrue.”
That was a surprising answer from her. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but it made him feel less like a monster for scolding her. He watched her lowered head and tried to figure out why he couldn’t seem to leave her alone, thinking that it had something to do with his innate sense of chivalry.
As a knight, he’d been taught to help the weak, but that usually involved a battlefield. He fought for the weak, the persecuted, and those he loved – family or otherwise. He’d never had a cause to fight for, like a religious cause, and he’d never had to fight simply to live. As a de Wolfe, his family’s superiority was well established. If he thought about it, he’d had a fairly easy life. He’d never had to claw his way to the top simply to survive.
But not everyone was as fortunate as he was.
He had a feeling he was looking at one of those less fortunate right now.
“Then why have you been so ill-mannered?” he asked quietly. “My lady, if I had wanted to molest you, I would have done it a long time ago. I would have done it when I found you in that alcove at Gomorrah. I would not have waited until I brought you to a tavern with two dozen people in a common room, hearing everything I did to you. I would have done it in the dark, with music and laughter and dancing to cover up my actions and your screams. Surely you realize that.”
She wiped her eyes. “I… I suppose so.”
She didn’t say anything more, still wiping at her eyes, and he finally shook his head. “What is so terrible that you would walk into the river and try to drown yourself?”