"I can kill this man for you, my lady," Sir Rain said, hopping off the tailgate of the wagon and drawing his sword. He'd already been shamed once tonight when Marcel snuck up behind him with a knife to his throat and another to his back.
Now that there was a bit of extremely dirty work to be done, the last thing he was going to do was let a woman like Lady Ashlynn dirty her hands with it when he was there to do a knight's duty. Even if he hadn't been a knight, he still had enough pride as a man to stop a woman from having to kill a man for his crimes. It was already bad enough that, as the most senior noble present, she had to be the one to pronounce the sentence, there really was no reason to make her do this part too.
"Step back and I'll take care of this," he offered, trying to sound both gentle and gentlemanly as he made the offer, as if he was relieving her of a great burden by taking it on himself.
