“He’ll do well enough,” Marie said. Her voice was not soft, but rather diffuse, as if it had just arrived, out of breath, from a long journey. “He could stand to bleed a little.”

Just at that moment Jean-Claude was flailing his arms like a windmill in a hurricane in an apparent attempt to loosen his stiff shoulders. “It was at the Battle of the Lichfields that I got shot in my left arm, broke the long bone. Never could get it up since then. Hurts in the winter too.”

Djordji called, “Stop stalling and get on with it.”

Marie looked up at Bitterlich with her dead white eyes. “You hurt Isabelle. Why?”

Bitterlich had not been prepared for such a direct accusation. “It was not my intent.”

He was surprised she’d bring up the matter in public, but between the noise and the spectacle, absolutely no one was paying attention to them.

“Then what was your intent?” Marie said. “I watched you two together for months. You were in love with her. She was in love with you, Breaker only knows why. She never stopped talking about you. I’ve never seen her so happy. You got inside her head and her heart, and then you ran away. Why?”

“I just … I shouldn’t have let it go on as long as it did,” he said, the most lame and limping words that had ever been uttered. “I was just trying to save her from disappointment.”

“By becoming one? That is an interesting strategy.”

Bitterlich glowered at her. “What would you have me do? I cannot hurt her less than I already have. If I am unworthy, then you should be pleased I have bowed out.”

Marie refused this bait and said, “Tell me you don’t love her.”

Pain and shame twisted Bitterlich’s heart. “I never told her I did.”

“You’re a coward,” Marie said.

Bitterlich made no reply. He had no answer, for she was right. He had shamed himself and hurt Isabelle.

A shout, a groan of pain, and a heavy thump dragged Bitterlich’s attention back to the arena. He feared to see Jean-Claude maimed and broken, but it was Private Caron sprawled facedown on the deck, moaning like a cow in labor.

Jean-Claude adjusted his hat. Master of horseshit, indeed.

“D’ye think ye can manage it without a trip to the theater?” Djordji asked.

Jean-Claude buckled his sword belt and jabbed his thumb at Bitterlich. “No encore for me. Try your luck with him, if he’ll stand his ground instead of sacrificing a minion.”

The marines sent up a roar of approval at this idea. “Show ’em what for, Major.”