Chapter 2

The Lover

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"Y es," he said, a word that leaped out of him, loud and eager. Belatedly, he realized that no one had exactly posed a question to him, so he clarified. "I will marry her, and gladly."

He endured the incredulous look of his brother and the slightly stunned look of his friend, simply by avoiding them. Instead he watched his father, whose mouth had fallen open for the briefest of moments before snapping shut. The amazed look was replaced with suspicion.

"Is this mockery?" His father's voice was full of warning. "I have no patience for your jesting in this, Robert."

"It is no jest." He stopped himself from saying more, suddenly conscious he might reveal more than he wanted. Instead he gave his best imitation of a self-deprecating smile. "Can I not obey my father without I am mistrusted, at least once each decade?"

His brother Simon gave a snort from the corner of the darkened room. "But once in your life would be welcome."

"Then you should rejoice at my assent, and end this frowning." He took a step to reach the door, stuck his head outside and called for a servant to bring more wine. "To celebrate," he said. To soothe the shock for the others, he thought. To steady his own shaking hands.

"The match will bring you land and connections, but none can say if it will bring you an heir," warned his father with a speculative look. "She is old. If your brother is correct in his guess at King Edward's intent, there is fair chance you can gain a title from it, though. I would call that incentive enough for any man, if the man were not you."

Robert drank his wine carefully. He wished he could gulp it down, but that would too easily reveal his agitation. He tried to remember the mind-numbing details his father and brother had given only moments ago, before announcing that the best path forward was for Robert to marry at last. There were some lands that had belonged to a minor Welsh lord, a castle that had fallen, a woman freshly widowed whose inheritance included a large estate that was perfectly located for... well, for some endeavor that was vitally important to his father. But when he heard who this land-holding widow was, he lost the ability to think beyond her name.

Eluned . It sang along his veins, drove out all thought and replaced it with a wash of golden memories. He heard her name and in the next breath there was only the smell of fresh earth and the sound of bright laughter, the white flash of her thigh rising up through the murky depths of his memory to blind him before slipping away again. Eluned . Never had he thought to see her again in this life.

She was widowed at last. She held some lands of strategic importance, his family had some influence with the king, all of Wales was ripe for the taking – and by some wondrous accident of circumstance, Robert was asked to marry her. What care had he for the details of it, much less his likelihood of getting heirs with her? The lands she offered could be the foulest acre of Hell and still he would say yes.

His father watched him steadily, suspicion in every line of his face.

"Why?" His brother Simon asked what their father did not, honest in his bafflement. "Why would you agree to marry at all, at last? And to a woman who is so far out of youth, whose only certain gift to you will be lands and estates that are in England and not France? Mayhap a title, but when have you cared for titles?"

"Can it be I have tired of being predictable?" Robert shrugged. He was careful not to look back at Kit, who sat near but had said not a word. No doubt his friend felt awkward in the midst of this family scene. "I grow weary of France. Edward would reward me for my service to him there, but that service is ended. Why think you I take no interest in expanding our English lands instead?"

Simon scoffed, but it was their father who answered.

"Because you fairly sleep for the entire hour that we speak of land, yet come alive when I ask you to marry. I have struggled in vain to make you follow the least of my wishes, for years. Yet you yield to this one thing without I fight, persuade, or beg." His father fixed a shrewd look on him. "I am not so old that I grow simple. Tell me why I should not believe you lie or jape, that you will consent so readily."

He could not bring himself to say it was because he wanted her. He was too well known for never having wanted anything in his life. Instead of admitting the truth, he looked about this small room where his father now spent most days. He let his eyes roam over the shallow bowl on the table in the corner, used in his father's near-daily bloodletting, then to the bundle of herbs that hung on the bed-post, intended to keep disease at bay, and finally to the heavy blanket that laid across his father's legs. This casual inspection of the evidence of his father's growing weakness was answer enough, but he said it out loud.

"We both grow older, and change with our years." The truth of this bore down on him suddenly. His father would die one day, and all these years of bedeviling him would cease to bring any kind of satisfaction. "It flatters me that you would have Edward give such a rich prize to me."

"What is left of Wales will be carved up and served to the king's favorites. So I ask myself who is owed reward from Edward, and who is free to marry the Ruardean widow and her riches? For that is who is like to be granted one of these new Marcher lordships." He paused to sip his wine and stare into the cup. Probably he saw all the ways Robert was unworthy of so great a favor. "It is fortune, and not your father, who flatters you."

Robert was unsure how to react to this. His usual way would be to give a reply that answered the sourness in kind. What he wanted was to warn his father against calling her the Ruardean widow and her riches , as if she were an object, the spoils of war. But now he only thought how he must not say the wrong thing and push his father into reconsidering the scheme. Maybe honesty was best – to say that he wanted Eluned. It was only a long habit of forced silence that prevented him saying it. There was no harm, yet he could not speak the words.

But while he hesitated, Kit spoke at last, a quiet but firm voice at his shoulder. "Such a lordship would give Robert near as much power as Mortimer has."

Robert turned to see his friend looking steadily at his father, and felt shame that he had not thought of this yet. He had not thought past Eluned's name, but now he saw what Kit must have seen from the first.

"I could use such advantage to speak for Kit," Robert said, as if it was his reason for agreeing all along. "For the return of his son who is held as hostage by Mortimer. With such wealth, and such grand favor given me direct from Edward's hand, Mortimer could not ignore me as he ignores Kit. We might at last make progress on that concern which drew me here."

With a quick look in the direction of Simon, whose countenance had grown suddenly stony, the mistrust began to leave his father's expression. He knew this much of his son, at least. Never had Robert cared for titles or lands or marriage. But he did care for his friend like a brother. Better than his own brother, in fact, by far. He loved Kit's son just as much. It was not hard to believe that Robert would do all this only for the chance of bringing the boy home and safe out of Mortimer's keeping.

"Mortimer is a law unto himself," grumbled his father, easing back on his pillows. "Haps you shall be a fit match for him. Leave me now. We will talk further in the morning."

They were almost out the door before Robert thought to ask. He turned back to see Simon arranging items at their father's bedside. His brother poured more wine, snuffed the candle, placed a fresh handkerchief near. Ever the doting son.

"Has she agreed to the marriage?"

His father did not open his eyes, though Robert was sure he heard. It was Simon who looked up briefly, like it was the most minor detail in all the discussion. He murmured a good night to their father and came to the door where they stood waiting.

"Not yet," he answered, watching Robert closely. "Soon we will have word from her son. Until then you may sleep easy as a bachelor, brother."

R obert made haste to be alone, away from his brother and the sharp eyes of servants, and climbed the stairs of the tallest tower. He breathed the frigid air deep into his chest and stared up into the vast black sky and did not even try to think in straight lines.

Kit found him, of course. He set a mug of ale on the wall before Robert. It was satisfyingly large.

"That's Meg's brew, and we won't find stronger."

"We won't," Robert agreed and took a deep drink. "But I wonder will just one be enough."

"As well did I."

Kit proved he was the best of friends when he nodded to a small keg he'd obviously hauled up and set in the corner near the stair. Then he raised his own mug, drank, and rested his elbows against the wall next to Robert. He said nothing for a long and quiet time, only looked out over the wall in the same direction as Robert and drank.

It oriented him, to have his friend at his side, waiting. It gave him something solid and real of the present to hold on to while the past pulled at him. Robert turned his face back up to the sky. There were clouds that obscured the heavens. He wished for them to part, even if only a little. If he could see but two stars, if he could peer into the empty space between the bright points of light, then he would see all the years between then and now – neatly contained, seemingly near enough to touch, infinitely distant.

"Was it her, then?"

It was a question, and not. Kit would not have forgotten, though they had never once spoken of it since Kenilworth. That was another memory, contained in the blackness between stars: an interminable siege and long hours to fill, finding a friend, and confiding his love for a woman he could not have. At the end of it, when they had surrendered at last and the siege ended, it was Kit who had carried Robert out of Kenilworth castle, wasted and half-delirious, endlessly shitting himself and puking. They had laughed at it, and he had been ready to die – had laughed at death, too. He had said her name for the last time that day.

But Kit would remember. So Robert braced himself with more ale in his belly, more cold air in his lungs, and said it again, for the first time in eighteen long years.

"It was Eluned."

Kit gave a slight grimace of confusion. "All these years I have thought her name was Cariad."

"No." Robert gave a huff of amusement and welcomed the little stab pain that came with the word. "That is a word for... is an endearment, cariad . A Welsh word." He took another drink from his rapidly emptying mug. "But did I not say her name to you, when I thought I would not live?"

"In truth I thought you delirious and speaking of a bird. A linnet. Eluned." He shrugged. Robert let out a surprised laugh, but Kit only said, "Stranger things have I heard from men in their sickness. Though I did wonder why I should tell a linnet you could not regret nor repent of your love."

Love. Robert turned his face away and looked out into the night again. He contemplated the word, and time. He had lived long enough now to know how much a thing might be changed only by waiting for years to pass over it. So he must ask himself now, a thing he had never thought to question before this. What he had named love in his youth – had it truly been love? And whatever of it remained – was it deep enough, strong enough to still be called love, or was it only the echo of a youthful infatuation?

He had met her in the last year of Montfort's rebellion with the barons against King Henry, just months before Montfort was defeated. Robert's father had declared for the king and gone to fight against Montfort, which meant that of course Robert would not. But neither had he gone to fight with the rebels. He could not understand why everyone seemed so keen to get themselves killed.

Instead he traveled to a place high in the northern hills among lovely placid lakes, far from the fighting that tore at the heart of England. He'd been a happy wastrel, all of twenty years old and following a fair maiden whose name he utterly forgot when Eluned exploded into his heart. She was there, part of Lady Torver's household, keeping herself and her little daughter safe from the civil war that grew bloodier by the day. At first she was only another woman, pleasant-looking enough but married to Walter of Ruardean. And Robert did not care to risk discovery by any husband, much less one as volatile and powerful as Ruardean. There were maids enough without looking to other men's wives.

But one day they rode out with hawks to hunt and as the party rested and ate in the midday sun, he spoke disparagingly of the war. What had he said? Something about the weakness of the king, the zealotry of Montfort, and the foolishness of men who would follow either of them. And she had scoffed at him, called him callow and empty-headed and dangerously close to having no honor at all. It silenced everyone. Everyone but him.

"And for which side would my lady have me lose my head?" he asked, amazed by her self-possession, admiring the way she lifted her chin, already fascinated beyond all reason.

"It matters less which belief you die for, than that you believe in a thing enough to risk your life for it at all."

Her voice was different than any he had ever heard, forceful and melodic, filled with the music of her native Wales. He could not tear his eyes from her as she spoke with fervor on the topic of Montfort's cause. It was not what she said but the sight of her as she said it that captured him. Somehow – and he never could discover how, in all his years of remembering that moment – she managed to deliver an impassioned speech in support of the barons' uprising without ever once claiming that Montfort was right or that old King Henry was wrong. She was surrounded by women whose husbands and brothers and sons were in mortal peril because of Montfort, yet she argued it all so cleverly that they could not rightly object to a single word she uttered in defense of the man's ideals. Indeed her insistence on the rights of all men as bestowed by God and appropriated by the king shamed them all. By the end of it, they all turned their faces downward, cheeks aflame.

But he could not look away from her. Never had he seen anyone burn so bright. She was more alive than anyone he had ever known, in a way he had not dreamed was even possible. Everyone and everything was a cold and lifeless backdrop to her blaze.

The next day she walked out into the bailey and headed for the outer ward alone. He followed, held his cloak up to protect her head from the sparse droplets that had begun to fall, and she laughed at his solicitude.

"I am not spun from sugar that I melt under the rain," she said, and her eyes held a merry smile. "Certes you have seen I am more like to be made of vinegar."

"Nay," he said, glad that she slowed her pace and did not pull from his side. "Not vinegar nor sugar, but of spices that tempt a man's tongue."

And she, oh so bold and alive, widened her smile and called him a pretty rogue with a sideways sweep of her magnificent lashes. He was lost, heart bounding in his chest, everything inside of him leaping toward her.

Wherever she was going, she did not want him to follow. He felt her reluctance to move forward, and dared to take her elbow and steer her to a hidden corner between the stable and the curtain wall. He waited for her to pull away, but she did not. She only looked at him with that lift of her chin, and he felt the excitement in her. When he raised his hand to her face, there was a gentle warning in her look. She did not want his kiss, but let him touch her just barely, the tips of his fingers brushing the soft skin of her cheek.

Her eyes were gray and fixed on his face, her lips parted. She is hungry , he thought with a thrill, and then she was slipping away before he could act on the knowledge. He followed her at a distance, to see what destination or task she would hide from him. But it was only a small group of muddy boys who wrestled and fought with sticks and spoke a language not known to him. Just as he realized it must be Welsh, he saw with a shock that her daughter was among them, as loud and unkempt as the others.

The girl saw him, and eyes just like her mother's found his before he could turn away. The child said something to Eluned, who turned and saw him too. He watched her stiffen, her grip tightening on the girl's hand. Like a rabbit caught in a trap – but no, more cunning than a rabbit. Already he could see her thinking, marshalling excuses and explanations for the wildness of her highborn daughter. He forestalled it with a little shake of his head and then a smile of reassurance. What did he care that a child played in the mud?

In the days that followed it was a delightful dance between them, of looks and words, moving closer to one another and then apart again, caught up as in the pull of the ocean tide. Every minute of the day, he knew where she was and managed to exchange a glance, a word. The world around her was thrown into shade, so vivid was she – her words, her quick smile, her eyes alight with intelligence. Every hour of the night he imagined her breath as she slept and longed to feel it against him in the dark. The only thought Robert gave to her husband was to hope he would die in the fighting.

Finally, after a lifetime (or perhaps only days) of anticipation that was by turns delicious and painful, she gave him a look – over the edge of her cup, during a feast, as all around them grew drunk on wine and he on her eyes – and he knew she wanted more than just flirtation. He contrived to be at the door when she exited, waylaying her as she made her way alone to her room, drawing her unresistingly to a shadowed corner. He touched her throat through the veil she wore, felt the mad beating of her heart, and did not dare to kiss her.

It was she who dared. She who had boldness enough to reach for him and put her lips to his, but was so innocent beyond that one act that she gasped when he opened his mouth over hers, delved deep between her lips with his tongue. The hunger he had sensed in her came to life, caused her to hold him tight and pressed their bodies together against the wall. Her hips arched up into him, a sweet sound of pleasure and frustration on her lips. He thought he would perish of desire if he could not have her. Then a drunken reveler passed behind him, and she ducked her head to hide her face.

When the moment had passed he put his forehead to hers and felt the pull of her. Their breaths mingled together, hot and ragged.

"Tomorrow," he whispered. It was a plea, a prayer. "Come to me tomorrow." He told her a servant would wait to guide her to a place where they could meet alone. He tore himself away from her heat, lightheaded with the effort. He spent all night making the arrangements, paying servants for their help and their silence.

In the morning he rode out, his knuckles white on the reins, terrified she would not come. But she was there at the place he had found for them at the foot of the hills. He gave his horse to the waiting servant (Marc, who would serve him well for many years after) and went to her, took her hand, led her up and up until they reached the little clearing. Trees were all around the edge of the space, but on the far side they could look out between the branches and see the lake below. He pulled away the veil that she had worn high to obscure her face, and she said she could not stay above an hour.

There was a shyness in her, a hesitation, as though she had not until this moment considered the gravity of her actions. He too was paralyzed with uncertainty. That she had come, that she was here alone with him, that she could want him at all – it so overwhelmed him that he did not know what to do. It was as if he'd never been with a woman before.

Finally, in desperation, he said, "Will you kiss me, Eluned?"

And she did. It was a careful flutter at the corner of his mouth, and then her hands were on him, and they could not stop. They established the pattern that would repeat every day that they could manage it throughout that spring and summer: his cloak spread on the ground, her limbs white in the sun, her dark hair unbound and spilling around him as they pleasured each other and he fell deeper and deeper into love. Afterwards, he would rest his head on her bare breast and look up into the sky with her as they talked, and never let himself think of how it could not last.

More than her body, more than her kisses and her sighs, it was the talking that stayed with him in the years to come. She asked him about everything he had ever thought, every place he had ever been, all his loves and hates. He asked her questions until he had a picture of her life outside the patch of grass they shared in those stolen moments. She was raised in a family of Welsh nobility and her marriage to the Norman lord of Ruardean was an alliance to keep peace between their families. She had been thirteen when she went to him as a bride, and had her daughter before she was fourteen. Three years ago she had borne a son but the boy died in his first year, she told him. She said it to the sky and did not turn to him when he asked if it weighed heavy on her heart.

"I give thanks for my daughter every day," was her answer. "She is healthy and strong, and she is mine in a way a son cannot be. But it is a hard thing." She cleared her throat, and he felt the heat that rose up in her chest, her neck. He saw the tear that stood in her eye but did not fall. "When I dwell overmuch on the sadness of it, I pray for those women who have lost many children, and I thank God I have a child who yet lives, and that I live too."

Then she took a deep breath and stuck her chin up at the sky and said, "But I do not wish to be sad with you." She turned her face to him, her hair a heavy fall around her face, a smile touching her lips. "Nor do I wish to talk of God, or sin, or prayers. I would have you kiss me once more before we must go, my Robin."

The lightness in her, the joy, warmed him in the moments they were together and haunted him in their hours apart. Every morning he went to the chapel to look for the carefully placed stone that was her signal she could meet him, and his whole happiness depended on seeing that rough and rose-colored pebble. When it was not there, he lived in fear he would never see it again. He thought he must be nothing more to her than a dalliance, a summer's distraction, while he burned for her, body and soul. She was above him, and though his family's lands in France were not insignificant, it was nothing to the great estate of Ruardean. And in England his family's holdings were even less, a single manor house and a paltry bit of land. He tried to tell her more than once, how the disparity between them troubled him, but she seemed only to hear that he wished to increase his holdings.

"Tell me," she said one day as they huddled together under the extra cloak he had brought to guard against the light drizzle. Rain did not deter them, but only caused them to retreat to a spot where the branches were thick above them. "Have you ready funds enough to purchase a small estate not far from your current lands? It can be had for a good bargain, I think."

Then she told him of Whittington's debts, how he had put this small estate up as collateral on a loan from a Jew who lived in Lincoln. "By law, Aaron cannot own land, but he can sell the debt to you. The interest has grown until Whittington owes so much that he is more like to kill Aaron than to pay it. So Aaron will gladly sell the debt for much less than its full worth, only to be rid of it."

When asked how she knew of all this, she gave an impish smile and would not answer until he had played his fingers along her ribs, tickling her mercilessly. She shouted with laughter and cried mercy. She lay next to him, girlish giggles fading as she regained her breath, pushing her hair from her smiling face – a sight that he kept in his memory and hoarded like a precious jewel. Then she said that months ago, when a betrothal had been proposed for her daughter with Whittington, she had made some inquiries among the moneylenders. Thus had she met Aaron and learned a great deal about the finances of many local lords. "I learned also how foully the Jews are used, and that they justly live in fear of all debts to them being declared null. So he will sell most gladly, to be rid of that risk."

"And I shall risk Whittington's anger, when I demand repayment."

"Which he cannot repay, for he has not the means, and so you will gladly take possession of the holdings. What is his petty anger to that fine prize, hm?"

Her eyes sparkled with amusement, but there was a satisfaction in her voice too. "And why would you, my sweetest Eluned, wish to see this man so neatly tricked out of his land?"

She scoffed. "Tricked! It is Aaron who is misused, forced into usury because by law he may not earn any other living, and then unable to demand repayment nor take possession of the lands given as collateral. Whittington knew the terms of his loan, and he is a fool did he not see the risk of this."

He watched how her eyes flashed with indignation, and decided to ask her later how exactly she reconciled her admiration for Montfort with that man's poor treatment of these Jews she defended. He did not think she wanted him to buy this debt to aid Aaron, but rather to thwart Whittington.

He said so, and her expression changed subtly. A faint pinch came to her lips, and she said, "I like Aaron very well. And mayhap I have heard that Whittington called my daughter homely, and said he would rather find a bride with more beauty and less Welsh blood."

He laughed and called her fierce, and Whittington an unfortunate fool to have crossed her. She kissed him and with a playful rise of her brows said, "Ah yes, beware to my enemies, who shall be forced to pay their lawful debts. How very vicious I am."

So he sent word to Aaron, who by chance would be in Blackpool on business within the month. Robert met him there and, after agreeing that Eluned of Ruardean was a marvel, they negotiated the sale. It would double the Lascaux English holdings and though it pained Robert to do something that would no doubt bring his father great joy and pride, well – it was a small price to pay to give Eluned her little revenge.

But all the long ride back from Blackpool, he could only think of how it bought him no more than that. It did not make him her equal and even if it had, still she could not be his. She belonged to another man, and Robert was but a diversion, a lady's brief amour. Then all thought was gone when he saw her again. He had been away for almost two weeks, and half-expected her to have come to her senses in his absence. But when he came to the stables she was nearby, as though she waited for him. She lingered at the edges of the courtyard with a restless and fretful countenance.

He saw the moment when she caught sight of him. Her face became like the sunrise.

Later in their hidden place among the hills, he told her what he had heard on his travels, of the war. Montfort and the king's forces were like to meet in decisive battle any day now. Montfort was the better commander, but would welcome more trained men with mounts.

"I think to fight for him," he said as his fingers stroked over the dark birthmark on her throat, set to the left of center over her pulse and shaped like a teardrop. He loved that mark. He put his lips to it to keep himself from saying that he would enter the fight only for her, because she believed in the ideals for which Montfort fought. Because it might make her love him. It might make her look at him that way again, all of her lighting up at the sight of him, if he went off to war and came riding back to her.

She pulled away to look him in the face, confusion furrowing her brow before it was replaced by something he had not dared to hope for. "You will not," she said fiercely. Her lips began to tremble, tears edging into her voice. "Please, cariad. Say you will not."

She gripped him as though she could keep him there by force, and he stared in wonderment as she pleaded with him to stay far from any battles. He stammered in the face of this outpouring, trying to explain his wish to be worthy of her, to win her respect and love. "Fool," she said softly to him. "Fool. Do not risk death to win a heart that is yours already."

Then she whispered her love between kisses, and he could only bury his face in her hair and hold her hard against him, marveling that they had found each other and were given this time together.

But it must end. Of course it had to end.

In August Montfort was killed in battle, and the royalists were confident in their victory. When next he stole away to meet her, Eluned had a letter from her husband that gave details of the battle and commanded her to come home to Ruardean.

"It is infamous," she said, stunned. "They did not spare any of the barons who fought with Montfort, not even for ransom. They tore their bodies apart. Mortimer sent Montfort's head to his wife as trophy."

"You will go to your husband now?"

"And they call us savages." She did not seem to hear him. "Now his cause is collapsed. They all lose heart without him to lead."

That was when he asked her to come away with him. Leave her husband, bring her child. Come to France. She waved off the words. He thought she did not even hear them. She took his hand, pulled him to her, and told him he must come to her at Ruardean. Her husband would be there and then away – he was ever off on either the king's business or else a pilgrimage. Rarely did he stay for more than a month or two. "I will send word," she said, laying her head on his chest. "You will come to me. I will find a way."

He stopped thinking of the future then and kissed her, freed her hair from its golden net, lost himself in her body and her sweet ecstatic sighs. But after, as they held each other and looked up at a perfectly blue sky, he thought of being apart from her for weeks and weeks. He thought of her at Ruardean, and could not hide his outrage that she would lie with her husband.

Of course she must, she said. And of course she was right. He did not want to think of these ugly practicalities, though, and so they argued. He said he could not bear to share her with another man; she said that he had always shared her. He shouted that she was clever enough to devise some reason to stay from her husband's bed, but chose not to. She shouted back that he had less wit than a peahen, if he truly thought she could simply choose to shun her husband's bed for the rest of her life.

A great many things they shouted at one another, none of which he remembered well years later. He only remembered that they argued, and she was breathtaking in her anger, until she said she must get back before she was missed. She would start the journey to Ruardean immediately, she told him, as she twisted her hair and stuffed it back into the golden net. Still he protested that she would make such haste to be with her husband, as she dressed herself and snapped her impatience at him. She searched the grass for a button that had come off her shoe and in the end left without it.

She grasped his face, placed a firm and definitive kiss on his mouth. She said, "You are a great fool, my Robin. But I love you still. I will love you until I die." Then she clambered down the path to where her horse waited, her shoe flapping loose around her foot.

Three weeks later he went to Ruardean, because her husband had come and gone. But when he arrived, he learned that Walter had unexpectedly returned again. So Robert played the part of a nameless wandering knight begging shelter for an evening. Through his servant, she bade him stay out of sight in the room that was his in the knights' quarters, and she would send word. In the black before dawn, a young boy came and told him, in a voice so thick with Welsh accent that Robert barely understood, that Eluned waited for him in the garden by the kitchen.

That was where it ended. He remembered little of it with any clarity, except the smell of rosemary. He remembered the outline of her, just discernable in the dark, and how she did not even touch him in greeting. He remembered his denial when she told him they could meet no more, and that she said, "It has been a dream. And now we must wake." She did not explain why now, why so suddenly. He said again that she should come away with him, to France. And she asked him what life there would be for her there, a life as nothing but a disgraced and corrupted woman who shared his bed in sin.

She said my daughter – and he must have said something very foolish in return, for her voice grew hard and warned him that he would not be well pleased by her answer, did he ask her to put her lover above her child. He remembered the feeling of futility, the anguish of comprehending that she had already made up her mind. She made him swear to come nowhere near her ever again, for her sake and his own. It was over. It was dead.

"It was a stolen season," she said, and then she startled to hear the hushed voice of the Welsh boy who stood guard just outside the arbor. It was a warning. They had only a moment more.

Robert had reached out to touch her one last time, knowing that soon she would be lost to him forever. His hand found her face and when he felt it was wet with tears, the first winds of desolation swept through him. For if she wept – if she, so clever and determined, could not think of a way for them to be together – then truly it was over.

He remembered saying her name, declaring his love, the pain that cut through him at knowing she would pull away soon.

He remembered that she was utterly composed, completely in command of herself until the very last moment. "Oh God," she breathed, and a sob burst from her. "I cannot see your face."

He remembered the feel of her face turning into his hand, pressing a kiss to his palm. And then she was gone.

N ow he said to his friend, "I prayed for her husband's death and when he did not die, I prayed for my own."

Kit sat slumped against the wall, carefully focusing on Robert's face. They were well and truly drunk now. Robert did not even know how much of it he had spoken aloud. Enough for Kit to understand the most basic facts, at least.

"Then...you came to Kenilworth. Just before winter."

"Came a week later," Robert confirmed. "Or more. Or less." He shrugged. "As soon as my horse could get there. There were a lot of taverns on the way."

He had had some idea of dying for her cause still, the kind of morbid fantasy a rejected young lover would have. Montfort's son was at Kenilworth with the last handful of the anti-royalist forces, so that's where Robert went. He had liked the idea of a last stand against the king's men. He did not anticipate that it would last for months. It was December of the next year when they finally gave up, the whole starving and diseased lot of them.

"Good terms, though, Kenilworth," he said now, apropos of nothing. "Got to keep everything, almost like it never happened."

"That King Henry," said Kit. He blew a raspberry. "Pushover king. Good thing for us, though."

The ale was gone except for a trickle in the bottom of the keg, which Kit poured out. Half went into Robert's mug, half splashed on the floor between them.

"Then you went to France," said Kit.

"Then I went to France," he nodded once. "And fought, and Edward holds Gascony because of me. Well," he waved his hand and swallowed the last of his drink. "More or less. He owes me. Can't give me any more of France, but he'll give me a piece of England."

"That's what they say. Your father. Brother." Kit sat up and clapped a hand on Robert's shoulder. "If you marry the linnet."

It seemed to Robert that it was likely more complicated than that, but he nodded. "The linnet," he agreed.

Then he could not stop the smile that spread across his face. "They want me to marry Eluned. They thought they would have to persuade me."

He burst into laughter, the sound of it cutting through the cold night air, bouncing off the stone walls, greeting the rising sun.