Gwen stumbled, dropped the sword, caught its hilt on the rebound, and swore as she staggered. She whirled and kicked at the floor and let loose an absolute flurry of invective, using every word she’d been trying not to use in her guise as Céline.

A voice came from the shadows on the far side of the ballroom. “I thought you would be here earlier than this, Mademoiselle le Chevalier.”

Gwen let out a bleat of alarm and confusion, even as her brain identified the voice from its rasp and its French accent. Her eyes searched the other end of the room until she saw the dark form perched on a window seat, barely distinguishable from the piles of cushions adorning the benches.

A lantern flared to life, illuminating Madame Dupont’s features and striking her silver hair to white gold.

“I knew you would not be so foolish as to try to sleep the night before battle,” the Frenchwoman continued, her eyes gleaming with amusement.

Gwen, still trying to swallow her heart back down into her chest where it belonged, gulped for a breath. “I’m beginning to think you have a secret love of the dramatic.”

Dupont gave a light bark of laughter. “Secret? Ma chérie, it is not a secret at all. You are here to practice, non? I will light the fire so we can see.” She rose from the window seat and crossed toward the large fireplace at the end of the hall, her stick tapping a decorous rhythm with her steps.

Gwen sighed and sliced her sword down and to one side with a muted hiss of wounded air. “Practice? I’d settle for venting some of this energy. I feel like crawling out of my skin.”

“Then we shall vent,” Dupont replied. She knelt down before the hearth, where the beginnings of a fire had already been laid, and struck the flints together. Sparks shot from her fingers like magic. “Your lady is at the feast, I take it? Dazzling them all with her wit?”

Gwen forced herself to shrug, fighting the urge to rise to that bait and fire off a retort about how Isobelle wasn’t her anything. “I think so. I decided I’d be better off resting, or at least not letting her get me wound up.”

“Isobelle is an enlivening presence,” Dupont agreed with a dry chuckle as the sparks settled against the kindling.

Gwen muttered an agreement. “People think that she’s shallow,” she murmured. “But really, she just . . . throws herself wholeheartedly into whatever lies before her. Whether it’s choosing a dress or, you know, recruiting a village girl to ride in a tournament for her.”