“Oh, well, I’ve leave to do as I like for so long as we remain here. Please don’t call me Lady Rainault, that’s my mother.” She fiddled with a lock of bright hair, that had come loose while she shot, while she talked. “I probably would not be allowed to dress up in armour and compete in the melee, though,” Summer laughed. “Father does have his limits. I thank you very much for your kind offer.”
Walking down to the targets, she began to tug the arrows loose, trying to preserve the heads if nothing else for later reuse. “I sometimes feel this castle is stifling, very closed in,” she said over her shoulder.
He looked at her and watched as she walked to the targets, and Henry followed her as he too collected the arrows, he turned to her at her last comment and a faint smile crossed his lips.
He had been known in his younger days to be a vagabond and be seen across the inns in London, but those times were now gone and changed and the only freedom he had was when he rode Pointers in the mornings.
“That’s when I come here,” Summer went on. She looked down at the arrows in her hands. “I can at least pretend to freedom here.” Most of them she could shoot again immediately. Good, because this conversation was starting to depress her. Striding back, kicking at her skirts as she went, she nearly snatched up the bow in her haste to turn her mind to different things.
With a quick gesture, she offered the bundle of arrows to Henry. “Will you shoot first?”