The Promise by T. J. Bennett Page B

meant to imply by your question, isn’t it?” In profile, his clenched jaw said more than his words ever would.
    She tugged on his arm, forcing him to stop.
    He turned to look at her. “What?”
    “I meant to imply no such thing.” She stared at him and realized he was not annoyed but hurt, and not for the first time, by her words. In a moment of clarity, she also realized Günter might be one of the biggest, fiercest warriors in the company, but he had a tender heart.
    She wondered if any of the other women of his acquaintance had comprehended it, or if by his jesting and careless attitude he had fooled them into believing he thought of little other than his beer and his blades. Deep inside, she already knew the answer.
    “Who was she?” she asked softly.
    His gaze narrowed. “Who was who?”
    “The woman who hurt you.”
    He remained silent for so long that she thought he might deny it, might refuse to speak. Then he sighed.
    “She is—was my brother’s wife.”
    Shocked, Alonsa dropped her hand and simply stared.
    He looked back at her with a self-mocking smile.
    “She was my betrothed first.” He picked up another short branch, rubbed it between his palms, and gazed at it as though it might reveal its wooded secrets to him.
    “I had known Beth since we were children,” he went on. “There was an affinity between us. Our parents betrothed us as soon as we came of age.”
    He stared off into the forest, but she suspected he did not see the landscape before them.
    “I suppose I loved her, but I was not yet ready for marriage. I wanted to travel, to see the world.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “I asked her to wait for me. She did, for years. And then, I suppose, she grew tired of waiting.” He threw the branch into the gathering dark with a sharp flick of his wrist and stared after it.
    “What happened?” she gently prodded.
    He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck in a gesture of weariness. “I had gone to study music and art in Florence. Then one day, my older brother Wolf arrived on my doorstep, all the way from Wittenberg, unannounced. He told me I must see to my betrothed, and he’d come to drag me home if need be. You see, there was someone else, though I did not know whom at the time.”
    “You do not mean …”
    He smiled, sharp and quick, but she saw the pain around the edges of it.
    “Ah, you guessed what I did not. The trip to Florence was Wolf’s desperate attempt, I suppose, to do the right thing. That is Wolf,” he mused, shaking his head. “Always doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Regardless, when I came home, Beth explained to me quite tearfully that she couldn’t marry one man while she loved another. It would dishonor them both, she said. It didn’t take long for me to discover who the other man was.”
    “Oh, Günter. They … betrayed you?”
    “Nay, they claimed the opposite. They swore to it, in fact. But it mattered little, in the end. Her heart had changed, while mine had not. Yet it became obvious to me there would be no future for us, not with Wolf in the middle.”
    Günter wandered over to grasp the black trunk of a gnarled pine. He picked absently at the aged strips of bark, which told a story of strife and hardship in a harsh land.
    “To her credit, I don’t think she meant to hurt me. She was so young when we were betrothed, she hardly knew her own mind. By the time she did, it was too late to change our course.”
    “Did you decide to marry her anyway?”
    “Nay. Wolf offered to leave, to take himself off to Nürnberg, but I wanted no more of either of them. I left, enlisted in the Fähnlein one day while stinking drunk, and did in fact get my wish to see the world.” He laughed that humorless sound again. “Just not as I had expected.”
    “What became of them?” She wanted to know.
    He sighed again, giving the tree a brief pat of understanding. “They eventually wed. Two years later, Beth died giving birth to their daughter,