He said, "You'll be wanting my son, I expect." Then, with great disapproval, "He's been in a fight."
I didn't reveal that I'd already heard. Valentine's father disliked gossip as much as Aunt Agnes. Still, I couldn't help but defend Valentine. "Then he must have been greatly provoked."
If I hadn't known better, I might have thought Valentine's father eyed me with something approaching amusement before he collected himself and corrected me. "Gentlemen are not provoked by their lessers."
He glanced past my shoulder, along the green length of the Close, and although I did not turn to follow his gaze I knew where he was looking.
The Logans' house lay, like our own, on the long western edge of Bartholomew's Close, only more to the south, near the conduit. I made a point of not giving it notice.
"My son's with his friends, in the stables," said Valentine's father. "'Tis not the kindest of company for a young lady, but stop up your ears and you ought to survive."
And that, I thought, was humor, or his rare attempt at it. I smiled and said, "Yes, sir."
The stables were reached by a passageway hugging the mansion. Built broad enough to take a coach, it opened to the square enclosure of what, in the monastery's time, had been the cloisters. Here the walls and spire of the church loomed high and cast their shadows as though frowning down upon the fate that had befallen the once prayerful, silent walks and archways, turned to use as horses' stalls.
No doubt the church was frowning harder still this morning, I thought, with the language Valentine's close friends were using freely with each other.
There were three of them today. Their numbers changed from time to time, but from the day I had first met him, Valentine had always drawn a following.
It was no more than natural. He looked like every gallant knight I'd seen in tapestries and paintings—tall and sure of step, his golden hair a little wayward with its waves, his beard somehow managing, even when he trimmed it to a close and tidy point, to remain distinctly roguish.
And his eyes—those eyes that made me feel I was the only person in his view—were like the eyes of every hero who, when moved to action, had called men to come along with him, and found a sudden army at his back.
Except this morning, underneath one of those eyes there was faint bruising.
"Phoebe!" Valentine had noticed my arrival. "You look very pretty this morning." His eyebrows rose as I came close. "And very irritated."
"Not at you," I promised. "I do think of Andrew Logan."
"Why does he deserve your thoughts?"
"Because of this." I raised my hand to lightly touch the bruise beneath his left eye. "Does it hurt?"
"I feel it not at all, when you do that." He smiled, then asked, "What makes you think that it is Logan's work?"
"Because I heard him talking at the conduit this morning to the gardener, who was praising him for last night's fighting."
"Then you know what happened?"
"Only that you were attacked by Logan and his companions, and that your friends bravely took your part."
Looking at his friends now, it appeared they'd paid a price for that decision. One, much bruised, was leaning heavily against the coach while waiting for the groom to finish harnessing the horses, while another held a bandaged arm close-cradled to his chest, and the third was already within the coach, where shadows only half concealed his lounging and defeated pose and bandaged hands.
Turning my attention back to Valentine, I said, "I'm sorry you were made to fight. Could it not be avoided?"
"Not by me. Did not the gardener touch on how the fight began, when he was talking at the conduit?"
"The gardener took Logan's part, and seemed glad you'd been challenged."
"Oh? What did the gardener say, exactly?"
All the words were clear and stinging in my mind, and easy to recall. "He said that Logan had just done the Close a service, because you'd long needed to be taken down a peg." I frowned. "Why did it start? The fight, I mean."
