"Conlan Agrippa is a personal friend," Areinh sniffed. "I doubt he would greet kindly word of your... unmannerly behavior."
Conlan Agrippa was a personal friend to some, including Vargis, but he was not a personal friend of the Lady Areinh. Then, she hadn't said that he was. It hardly mattered. A complaint would see all of them hoeing a patch of turnips for a week at the tail of summer's end. The last thing Eragos wanted to do was think of himself sweating over black earth that he didn't own and didn't plan to own. There were some punishments worse than death.
Only a few.
"Our conduct always influences the Captain's thoughts," Eragos remarked solemnly. "He would hardly be a good Captain if it did not."
"Quite," Areinh agreed.
The hood she wore drew closer to her face. Eragos could still see the flowing black hair of the lady at the edges of her hood. Swept back over her ears in deference to the heaviness of the fur-lined hood. There were no lines in her face, nor creases on her brow. Young enough to seem young in Eragos' eyes, but not young enough to be spoken down to. Eragos had caught himself trying to decide if Lady Areinh was as beautiful as the stories made her out to be. The hood must be there for the sake of proper behavior.
She had used his rank to address him, rather than the only title he claimed, and when he'd corrected her she seemed intrigued by the correction.
As if she could not imagine 'Rider' being a more worthwhile title than 'Lord'. Eragos had his own hood pressed against his cheeks, drawn down tight against his skin to ward off the hard sudden winds. Turning around to look at Eithne now would be entirely too obvious. Instead he glanced to his right, and found Vargis grinning at him from beneath a layer of brown cloak.
That son of a bitch.
"And you," he called over his shoulder; no need to name names. "Should stop looking for a fight. We'll have one soon enough."