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Thornden bit down on his tongue savagely. He dearly wished Falco stood about three feet taller just now. It wouldn’t be an honorable thing to say or do any one of the ideas that popped into his head just at that moment. To argue would be childish, to strike out would be cowardly and stupid. He was annoyed to feel a hot flush rise to his face.
“Are you ready to go back, then?” he asked shortly after a pause. But still Falco’s words rankled him. ‘Now I won’t go tellin’ on you to Garstan that you left the boy alone…’ “I left the boy alone?” he burst out. “I wouldn’t be afraid of you telling anybody!”
“Well, you did leave him, didn’t you?” Falco asked, a mischievous (and infuriating) twinkle in his eye. Thornden felt Trystan’s gaze on him, and he saw Falco’s difficultly kept serious face and Garmund’s weak attempt to keep from laughing. He generally wouldn’t mind being laughed at, but Falco was painting him up to be ridiculous and foolish, and he did it in such a way that left Thornden almost entirely defenseless.
“Falco,” he said, his voice quivering with the effort to keep it even and low. “You know very well that I had little choice but to leave him in order to go and make certain that you weren’t being hurt or killed. You can say what you like when we get back to the hall, but if you open your mouth to make me out to be the careless one, I’ll tell Eodwine you’re not fit to leave the court without supervision on account of your foolish curiosity and daft disobedience to common sense. We’re leaving. Now.” He jerked his head in the general direction of the horses and stalked to the wall of ivy that they had come through when they first arrived. He swept away the broken branches and held it open for the others to pass through before him.
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