Upon A Time

Chapter Twenty-Five

Duke Frederick held the branding iron, heated at the point of a torch, toward the man’s face.

“Perhaps you will reconsider your ill-advised loyalty to the Prince and tell me exactly which village it is where he is hiding.”

“Never!” the man cried, bracing for the burn he was sure would come. Instead, he found himself run through with the blade of Frederick’s sword.

He fell to the ground, and those around him stepped back.

“Perhaps YOU would be wiser, and will learn from your friend’s mistake?” Frederick shouted, nodding his head toward another. One of his guards wrestled the man over toward Frederick, who sat atop his horse with the branding iron in one hand and his sword in the other. “Perhaps you will reveal the Prince’s location and perhaps save your life… or your eyes.”

“They’re in St. Fleur!” the man blurted, desperately afraid. “Just across the river.”

“Thank you,” Frederick said, and then he ran the man through with his sword as well. “Let that be a lesson to any of the rest of you who nurse a deadly devotion to the Prince. Unless you wish to join your friends in Hell, I suggest you reevaluate where your loyalties lie as we travel to St. Fleur.” He gestured in the air for his men to follow him and spurred his borrowed horse on. Oh, how he would make those traitors suffer for having dared to steal his beloved steed.

“They’re in St. Fleur!” Frederick shouted. “And soon, so shall we be!”

* * *

Renee sat on the front porch of the house, feeling out of place as Julien prepared for the upcoming confrontation with the help of Charlotte’s family.

Thomas, too, felt out of place here now. “May I join you, Lady Renee?” he asked. She gestured for him to sit, and he did.

“So… I’m free,” she said, waving her hands in the air in a gesture she seemed to think better of a moment later. “I’m a free woman for the first time, and I don’t know, for the life of me, what to do.”

“I thought I knew where my life was going,” Thomas muttered. “Now I see where it’s headed and it’s nowhere I imagined.”

“Your knighthood is assured. Does that not please you, Sir Thomas?”

Hearing her call him that, something that had once only been a precious nickname from Charlotte and one she had ceased using only recently, made Thomas’s heart ache. He wondered if he could, or would, ever get used to being called that by everyone, instead of just the one person he wanted to hear it from.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to live at Court, so we will have to see what arrangements can be made, if, in time, they are to be made,” Thomas replied. “I have lived in St. Fleur my whole life; I do not think that I can leave it. Especially since…”

“Since she likely will be leaving it?” Renee replied, and she believed she realized now in an instant why her charms had been lost on Thomas. He was in love with someone else.

Thomas stared at his boots.

“Knowing more of you than I do of him, even if that be a little,” Renee said softly, turning toward him, “I envy her, and think her foolish if she makes the choice to leave.”

“My Lady,” Thomas rose, clearly uncomfortable. “Please, excuse me.”

“I’m sorry, Thomas!” she called, but it was too late. He had headed to the barn, to begin preparing the horses for what was to come.

Renee turned and looked in through the curtains as the wind blew them gently aside; and she saw Julien emerge from the bedroom, resplendent in his grand clothing.