Page 15 of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love

‘As will mine,’ Gwendoline said gloomily.

‘And what happens when they say, “Right, they’re clearly not going to kill each other if left in the same room alone, let’s celebrate by setting a date for the wedding”?’

‘I don’t know. We get married, I suppose.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Arthur. ‘Glad this all has a happy ending. If we’re lucky, some insurgents will rise up and kill us all in our beds before we have to say “I do”.’

‘Don’t give me hope,’ said Gwendoline. ‘It’ll only make reality all the more crushing.’

Arthur looked at her. She was staring listlessly up into the branches of an apple tree, looking almost as miserable as he felt.

‘It’s a deal then,’ he said, keen to conclude the conversation as quickly as possible so that he could achieve his dream of being imminently horizontal.

‘Yes – with some caveats. You can’t get caught with … people. It’ll undermine the whole thing. You can’t do anything to embarrass me. If you must go out, try to be … I don’t know, discreet.’ She looked at him doubtfully, as if thinking that he’d never once been discreet in his entire life.‘You can’t tell anyone. And we have to make it believable.’

‘I have to tell Sidney,’ Arthur said quickly. ‘He’s going to know something’s up anyway, if we start batting our eyelashes at each other.’

‘Yes. Well. I suppose … Gabriel will have to know at least part of it. I don’t think I can trust Agnes, even if I swore her to secrecy—’

‘Aha. Agnes. That’s her name. The brunette.’

‘Take this seriously, Arthur.’

‘Fine,’ he said curtly. ‘We should pretend we’re meeting in secret. Like we can’t stay away from each other. But we should do a bad job of it, so word gets out. Quick and effective, and it means we don’t actually have to spend much time together.’

‘Fine. But the first events of the tournament start next week, and we ought to be seen there. Let’s lay the groundwork then.’ Gwendoline glanced over at the gate and Arthur followed her gaze; Sidney was clearly visible through it, talking to Agnes. She was holding a sugared bun and looking delighted.

‘You can go,’ said Gwendoline.

Furious that she felt she had the authority todismisshim, Arthur half wanted to stay just to spite her – but his head was pounding, the sun was too bright, and he really fancied a bun.

‘Whatever,’ he snarled, turning on his heel and stalking away, worried that his magnificent display of anger may have been slightly undermined by the shower of petals that fell from his shoulders as he went.

Gwen had never been particularly interested in the occult, but at that moment she would have traded her father’s entire kingdom for one tiny, pathetic trickle of Arthurian magic.

She just needed enough to turn back time, sprint to the orchard and remove that damned diary before Arthur could get his hands on it. She trembled with rage every time she thought about it, but she wasn’t angry at Arthur – not more than usual, at any rate. She was furious withherself.

She should have burned it years ago, but it was the one place she had allowed herself to voice her most closely guarded secrets. Some part of her liked that she had a record of first sightings, brief encounters – every scrap of Lady Leclair that she had been able to collect. There had been precious few of them: a nod from across a courtyard when Bridget had still technically been a squire, shadowing a knight from a neighbouring county; brief glances in Gwen’s direction when Bridget was paying her respects to the king during the tournament; an incident where Sir Blackwood, the Grand Marshal, had tripped over his own hem and they had been the only ones to laugh.

She had collected rumours too, throwaway remarks and the tail ends of stories she had overheard. People said that Lady Leclair could fight off two grown men by the age of twelve. They said she spoke six languages. They said that a stable boy had tried to grope her once at a regional tourney, and it had taken him six weeks to regain full use of his legs. Everything Gwen had heard about Lady Bridget Leclair just made her want to know more.

She had been there the first time Lady Leclair entered the lists, had watched with her heart in her mouth as she went out in the first round to a chorus of boos and jeers – it had just been all the sweeter the next year when she’d won, and kept on winning for weeks, until she’d been knocked violently from her horse and forced to retire. Gwen could have sworn that just once, during a golden August evening as she sat next to her father in the royal stands, she had caught Bridget staring at her intently when she thought Gwen wasn’t looking.

All these memories were tainted now, thanks to Arthur.

It felt wrong to withhold the finer details of what had happened from Gabriel, but the sight of him sliding into the chair opposite her in their private dining room that evening, wan and exhausted from a day of royal duties, gave her pause. She had been pausing like this for years, never quite sure how to talk to him about Lady Leclair, occasionally testing the waters with a passing comment about the knight’s choice of armour or prowess in battle, but never able to take the next step. She was sure that shewouldtell him everything at some point – she had to, she had never withheld anything from him for this long – but, as always,she told herself that it simply wasn’t the right time.

Their parents had been called to a private dinner with the elderly archbishop of Camelot, so Gwen proceeded to tell Gabriel approximately half of what had transpired since they had last spoken, the cracks in her story conspicuous despite her efforts to paper over them.

‘G, I don’t really understand how this is some dastardly plan,’ he said, rubbing at his temple.

‘Do you need me to explain it again?’ said Gwen, biting into a gooseberry and wrinkling her nose as her mouth flooded sour.

‘No, I grasp the basic concept, I just … You caught him kissing somebody? And now you’re covering for him? Why?’

‘Charitable spirit?’ Gwen offered, and Gabriel raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s agreed to be civil, Gabe. It’ll get Mother and Father off my back.’

‘But if you justexplainedthat he’s up to no good, they’d probably call the whole thing off. What aren’t you telling me?’ He looked very, very tired, and it made Gwen feel even worse for lying to him. She stared down at the picked-at plate of fruit in front of her, her throat feeling suddenly tight.