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“Good gods, no,” he agreed. “I shouldn’t think she would make any man happy.”

Aimee deflated. “Oh. Then … Then who did you mean?”

He waved this aside. “It is not your concern anymore, wife. You have other things to occupy you.”

“He is still my father!”

“If I did not know any better, I would almost think you had conspired with the queen to get Magnatrude out from under my roof,” he mused.

Aimee glared at him speechlessly a moment. “You must think me bossy indeed if you think that I can bend a queen to my bidding!” she said bitterly. “But as a matter of fact, that had nothing whatsoever to do with me!”

“No,” he agreed fairly. “You just knew you did not want it to be you or Freda that had to do it.”

Aimee stewed on this a moment. “Trude is much better suited to the role than either of us would have been,” she pointed out with wounded dignity.

“Agreed. Just as you are much better suited to your new role. Even more so when I give you a few children, I daresay, to keep you occupied. And now, if you don’t mind, I have a day’s competition ahead of me. We cannot have this discussion now. I need quiet to focus. If that is too much to ask from you, then I will go and ready myself in the attendant’s tent.”

Several emotions warred on Aimee’s face before she swallowed, nodded, and swung around presenting her back to him. Well, he supposed he had asked for that. She certainly would not be ogling his naked body this morn.

Konrad finished his ablutions and dressed in silence. By the time Jakeman arrived, the atmosphere in their pavilion had grown sadly oppressive. Konrad flung off to the competitor’s area, skulking around the less populated areas while he tried to get in the right frame of mind to compete.

If he had felt a good deal too mellow and benign when he had first awoken, he now felt twitchy and annoyed. In truth, his current mood was closer to his habitual one but for the niggling guilt gnawing at him for being ungracious with his wife. Had he gone too far in defending himself? He had not meant to wound her, just give her something to think about.

He did not usually have to deal with guilt, as he lacked the compunction. He was a tactless bastard at the best of times, and he knew he had not handled things well that morning. Well, all had been fine until the moment he had climbed out of bed. Maybe he should just have stayed in it, he thought irritably. All had been well until that point.

He should have told his wife previously about that visit he had paid to Renlow in town, he acknowledged, picking up a lance and testing its weight, but he had not done so. Mostly because he knew he would have to go into minute detail to please Aimee, and he had not wanted her to dwell so much on her sister and brother-in-law on this trip. He frowned. He had wanted her to dwell on more important things. Namely him. If that was selfish, so be it.

Jakeman arrived some while later to help him into his armor, and it was as much as he could do not to demand his wife’s whereabouts. He knew full well Aimee was being collected by Lowell who was escorting her to the stands. It had been arranged the previous evening within his hearing. He scowled and Jakeman, glancing up, asked if he had fastened the straps of his greaves too tightly.

He waved away the question irritably. Maybe he should stash his wife at Bartree, away from all the unwelcome distractions she surrounded herself with. He considered the matter as the rest of his armor was assembled. It was hard to imagine Aimee at his family home, for he had not seen her in such a setting.

He conjured from memory a few of the old familiar faces. Ernald, his father’s aged steward, old Clothilde, the alewife. Before he even knew it, the certainty crept into his thoughts that Aimee would soon hold them all in the palm of her hand. It would not even be a sennight before she had learned all the names of their children and grandchildren, knew all about their hopes for the future, and supported them in their endeavors.

Wherever he took her, the blessed woman would be worming her way into the affection of others. He snorted, and it was only after Jakeman announced that his horse had been brought around that he realized he had not even troubled to enquire whose name he had drawn for the first tilt, let alone marshalled his thoughts around his strategy for the day.

What in the name of the gods had he even spent the past hour dwelling on?

*

He might have known from the outset that the day would be an unmitigated disaster. The morning passed uneventfully enough. He won all three of his jousts and avoided the majority his fellow competitors in between. This was not difficult as Symes lost his second tilt and went to join Lowell and Aimee in the crowd. As for Farleigh, he was in a different grouping to Konrad, so their paths did not cross, and he did not catch so much as a glimpse of him all morning.

Still, he could not shake the ill mood that had descended on him. He had spotted Aimee in the crowd from the first and told himself it did not matter that she looked wholly unaffected by their spat that morning. If his eye strayed to that same spot several times throughout the day, he maintained it was mere chance. The last time he looked at her, she seemed to be pointing someone out to her companions. Someone that was not him.

Not that it bothered him.

By the afternoon, the competition had been whittled down to the final forty. By three o’clock, there were only twenty knights remaining. Unsurprisingly, de Bussell and de Crecy were among their number, as was Farleigh. In quick succession, Konrad beat his opponent, de Bussell knocked out Farleigh, and de Crecy advanced with seemingly little effort to the final six.

Jakeman offered him the choice of two lances, and as Konrad deliberated, he said in a low voice, “Your next opponent will be de Bussell, my lord.”

Konrad looked up with a flicker of interest. “Indeed?”

“Aye, my lord.”

He glanced across to where he had last seen de Bussell lolling against a tree and met his gaze squarely. Sir Armand grinned and raised a hand in salutation. He was having another of his good days. Konrad regarded him thoughtfully a moment before returning the gesture. It was funny to think how vastly your opinion could change of someone in a mere few days.

If de Bussell had performed at Areley Kings the same way as he had here, word would surely soon spread that the curse of his inconsistent performance had been broken. He had only to crown this winning streak with a win at a royal tournament for his fame to spread far and wide.

Konrad set his chin grimly. If he were not to win, he would have vastly favored de Bussell over Jeffree de Crecy. That bastard had said he would crown Aimee tourney queen if he won, just for spite. He scowled and ignored the uncomfortable sting of his conscience which reminded him he had been the one to initiate that particular insult. It had been different back then. At least … no, he scowled, it had been wrong back then too.