"An Immortal is good to his word," the Duke said gruffly. "You have a witness in the person of the Archbishop."
"Surely you will not require the Duke to swear an oath?" Santana exclaimed in a shocked voice. "My presence will certify—as if certification were necessary—that—"
"Enough, padre," Kesley said. There was nothing to be won by forcing Miguel into an oath; he had already given his word as an Immortal, and if he would break that, it was reasonable to suspect that no other oath would bind him.
He looked at the girl again. Daveen's daughter, he thought. He wondered what tangled relationship of cause and effect had brought him to this place at this time, and where van Alen, who had set the whole chain of events in motion, was now.
In a month's time Kesley had been transformed from an ignorant Iowa farmer into a killer of Dukes and a wooer of noble ladies. It was a strange progress, but it was hopeless, Kesley thought, to try to account for the vagaries of fate.
"Will you accept and enter my vassalage?" Miguel asked.
Kesley met the Immortal's gaze squarely and this time, it seemed to him, it was those dark, four-hundred-year-old eyes that gave ground instead of his own.
"I accept," he said.
He forced himself to kneel and kiss the golden hem of Don Miguel's jeweled cloak.