Chapter 5

The Work to be Done

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C hristopher Manton seemed to her to be entirely too observant. It was an intelligent attentiveness, one in which he often noticed important things that others missed entirely. While virtually every member of their party stole quick, assessing glances at her as they traveled, Manton had saved his scrutiny for his friend, her husband. He was ever at Robert's side, whispering in his ear, watching him carefully, showing a concern so discreet that Eluned thought she was the only one who saw the extent of it. She did not have much personal experience of friends – none at all of deep friendship over many years – so she reserved her judgment of this behavior, of this friend.

"Kit," Robert said to him now as they all sat together in a private room just a day before they would reach Edward's court at Rhuddlan. "My lady wife would ask for Dinwen from the king."

He went on, naming the other lands that could be added to theirs if the king would grant them, but Eluned heard only the echo of him saying my lady wife . There was a hint of gravel in his voice that had not been in his younger self. It was not the voice that had lived in her memory, but it was a perfect accompaniment to the twist of irony in his words. He named her his lady wife as though it were a trick played on him, and he invited his friend to share in the humor.

Lands and wealth and worldly aspirations, on and on he spoke. She let his words float past, utterly uninterested in these things that had dictated her whole life. Instead she thought of the contents of her baggage, items packed with care and forethought of the task ahead. Her finest gowns, the gifts for Edward and his queen, bundles of medicinal herbs from Master Edmund; and alongside these necessities were her uncle's psalter, Madog's knife, a silver button from a forgotten shoe.

In her mind's eye she saw those objects, the metallic glint of them in the dark corners of her baggage, their real worth known only to her. How long does love live on, Madog, starving in the dark.

"Mortimer."

The name woke her, pulled her out of her reverie with a jerk that drew Kit Manton's eye. Robert was speaking now of the Mortimers, which pieces of Wales might be claimed by that family and how likely was Edward to favor the younger brother.

"I will wager the lady of Ruardean can tell us many things about the Mortimers," said Robert, who raised expectant brows at her. It put crooked furrows in his forehead, which mesmerized her for a moment. She had never thought of how his face might age. If she had, she would not have guessed at these rumpled good looks, this appealing ruggedness.

"If my lady Eluned has any insight, I will be grateful for it," said Kit. His look was just as expectant as Robert's, but without the edge of hostility lurking at the back of his eyes. She was fully awake to the conversation now.

"Insight?" she asked in a mild tone, watching him closely. "Into the Mortimers?"

Kit nodded. "The new Lord Mortimer, or his younger brother Roger who will be at Edward's court."

"But do you not have long acquaintance of them both? Can you not see their stronghold from your own estate?"

He blinked in obvious surprise, as though he had never expected her to know such a thing. And indeed she had not known, until she had decided she should learn something about this friend to her husband. Manton was a minor lord, his father granted the small estate by old King Henry, only a speck on the map next to such a vast and mighty force as Mortimer. He had been at Kenilworth, where he had probably met Robert. He had returned from France two years ago with a wife and some number of children. And he was like a brother to Robert de Lascaux.

"You see?" Robert reached for his cup with a sidelong glance at his friend. "I told you."

"Told him what?" she asked.

Kit Manton looked back and forth between Robert and Eluned for a moment before answering her himself. "That you believe there is no such thing as a small detail, nor is any person unimportant."

A small silence settled over them and she looked down at the table. It held a plate heaped with a variety of wastel bread, some stuffed with dried berries and some with bits of apple. Of course Robert would remember more than just the words of love they had exchanged. Of course he would. Just as she remembered which of these breads he would prefer, how he would tear the small loaf in half and then half again, before biting into it.

"Only a fool overlooks a thing because he thinks it beneath his notice, you said to me once." She could feel him looking at her, and she shifted her eyes away from the bread. "Anything might matter, and so it all matters."

She pushed away the memory of the servant who had told Walter that his wife had smiled too much at a young man. Yes. It all mattered.

So his friend knew, then. In his face, in the way he held himself, she could see that this man knew Robert had been her lover. She could also see that Manton reserved his judgment of her, as much as she reserved her judgment of him. Yet why would a friend who was like a brother bother to reserve his judgment?

"Ah. You need me," she said to Kit Manton, dispensing of the delicate dance she might have indulged in, had she more time or inclination. "Is it some scheme against Mortimer, or must you simply get by him to achieve some other end?"

From the corner of her eye she watched a wry smile curl Robert's mouth. "I wonder if my lady can deal with a man without she schemes or looks to gain the advantage of him."

She would have scoffed at this critical tone and asked him if he had ever dealt with any men who did not scheme for advantage with every breath, but Kit Manton cast a silencing look at his friend and then looked directly at her.

"Mortimer holds my son as hostage, my lady, and I would have him back. Call it what you will, only help deliver him home."

There was an urgency to him, an intensity that suggested he felt danger breathing on his son's neck at this very moment. All her senses focused on him, everything in her alert and attentive.

"Which Mortimer?"

"It was their father who demanded a hostage, the old lord before he died. My son has dwelled in the household of Isabella Mortimer for more than a year."

Of all the Mortimers, Isabella was the least likely to instill fear. And to demand hostage was no strange or cruel practice in itself. She waited for him to say more, but he did not. It must be a tangled tale indeed.

"Come, tell me." She could hear that imperious ring in her voice, which had no place in this small room with these men. She took a deep breath and strove to control her tone. She did not like being in these close quarters with them, this intimate talk. She missed her cold and empty bower. "I can only advise you if I know the full circumstance. How came you to be compelled to give your son as hostage, and what are the conditions of his release?"

He nodded once, firm and decided. It made her like him, that he did not bristle at her impatience or take a condescending air, nor show an overweening deference. It was a rare thing to be accepted as an equal, from a man. Indeed it was a rare thing to be called to counsel her husband at all.

"My estate is small next to Mortimer, and to the great abbey that bounds us to the north, but its value is not small. There is silver in the ground at the western edge, and we are given permission of the king to mine it."

He went on to tell how thieves would come and come again, as frequent and unstoppable as rats to a granary, harrying the guards at the mine and stealing what they could. They slipped onto the property from the west – from Mortimer land – "Though I do not accuse Mortimers of profiting from it," he was quick to say. It was only that they did nothing to prevent the thieves. Finally one day, they had learned where the thieves were camped in the wilds just across the river on Mortimer lands. Word was sent to Mortimer's castellan, but Manton did not wait for his powerful neighbor before acting.

"The castellan gave no reply, and Mortimer himself would be at least a week in answer. And I knew he would only say that they could spare no men from their...Welsh campaign." Here he cast an apologetic look to her, then shrugged. "So I sent my own men. But when they arrived in the place, they found no thieves. They found only some of Mortimer's garrison men, who accused us of sending armed soldiers west without permission of the king."

He did not have to say more for her to know the accusations against him: Mortimer would have thought Manton had sent an armed party to Wales last summer, at the height of the fighting.

"Had you any dealings with the Welsh princes, that your allegiance to the crown might be questioned?" But she knew the answer. If Manton had ever inclined toward helping the Welsh, she would have known of him long ago.

"Nay, my lady, nor did my father ever have any such dealings. And so did I say to Mortimer, but still he saw aggression where there was none. He demanded proof that we did not conspire to lay claim to that corner of his lands. It was his true fear from the start." Here he waved a hand in irritated dismissal. "There was an old dispute over that border between our estates, but it is long dead."

"It would not matter," she said. "He would see only that you sent armed men onto his land without his permission, and he would seek to explain it as greed and ambition. As a show of good faith, you offered your son as hostage?"

"Aye, on the condition that he be returned to me when I renounced any claim to that land. And so I did, but old Mortimer died just days before the quitclaim reached his hands. Now his son pretends ignorance of the terms and keeps my boy as surety against future aggression."

No doubt there was some reason, something that motivated Mortimer to keep a hostage of seemingly little value. With time and ample consideration, she might guess at it. But she had stopped caring why cruel men were cruel, and what their cruelties revealed. All that mattered was that the Mortimers did as they pleased, and took whatever they wanted only because they wanted it.

"How old is the boy?"

"Robin has had his eleventh birthday last week."

She could not help but give a little flinch at the name, but resisted looking toward Robert. "I do not say it is right, but still you must see that he is in as fine a household as you could hope for, at an age where he would be sent as squire anyway. Many would be glad to have their child in the charge of a lady such as Isabella Mortimer."

"He is not there as squire."

"Nay, but I do not doubt he is tutored as one and treated well." It made her tired, these cares of his. She did not want more cares, not even for a moment, not even borrowed from this man who could not simply be glad that his son was whole and healthy. "I have said it is not just, but there is no harm and much good that may come of it until you learn a way to gain Mortimer's trust. Wherefore this urgency to have him out of her hands?"

"But that's just it, my lady. Isabella will soon deliver my son to the safekeeping of her brother Roger Mortimer."

At this, the fatigue in her fell away and a flare of rage rose up to steal her breath. It was so swift and fierce that she felt dizzy with it. She was saved from voicing her outrage only because words were impossible to marshal, so she simply stared at him with eyes wide and her mouth falling slightly open. Kit Manton spared a glance toward Robert, and she saw some kind of understanding between them. It was Robert who spoke, and now his voice was gentle again, devoid of irony but still a low rumble that reminded her he was no longer a boy.

"The Welsh princes of Powys," he said. "I did not doubt you would know of their fate."

"They were kin to me," she said, the fury pulling her voice tight. "Through my mother's side, they were kin. I petitioned the king for their keeping when they were orphaned, but he gave them to Mortimer."

She had fumed about it for months. Two orphaned boys, last in a royal Welsh bloodline, and Roger Mortimer had been made their guardian. When their little dead bodies washed up on the shores of the River Dee two years ago, with no one left to inherit their vast lands and wealth, it was Roger Mortimer who was granted everything. The vicissitudes of fortune, said the Mortimers. Murder by design, believed Eluned and many others.

For a moment, she imagined Robert's reaction, and Kit's, if she told them she was already planning to kill Roger Mortimer and so they need not worry. They would laugh and think it a jest. Even she almost laughed at it, the idea of someone like her – a slight, aging woman of diminishing worth and importance – somehow killing a professional soldier as formidable as Roger Mortimer. That was why she could do it, of course. There was sometimes great value in being dismissed as unimportant. There was an advantage to absurdity.

But these men before her did not think her unimportant, nor dismiss her worth. Kit Manton looked at her, honest and grave, concern for his son written on every feature. She could see how, in this one aim, he was like her: Whatever it took, no matter who must be made ally and what must be sacrificed, they would do it all and gladly, to win against Mortimer.

"I lived away from England too long," he was saying. "I tell you plainly, lady, that I understand little about the Marcher lords save that they are known to have more power than other lords of equal rank."

"More autonomy, I would say," she corrected him. "And more of a taste for brutality, among other things. They answer to no one but the king and even he cannot control them entirely, as I presume you will have discovered when you appealed to Edward."

It was Robert who answered her. "He said it is not a matter to be settled by the crown, and dismissed it."

"As is to be expected. It is a dispute between two lords, and the more powerful man wins." She paused as Kit's features hardened with a bitterness she understood more than he could ever know. "It is a harsh truth, better accepted than denied. Might wins in the Marches as it does in all the world."

"You do not think I can win against so strong a house as Mortimer, then?"

He had the look of a plain-dealing man forced out of his element. Her eyes roamed over his fair hair, ears that stuck out straight from the sides of his head, the lines around his eyes and mouth that showed he had lived a life of laughter. She felt a sudden pity for him, so clearly was he a good man whose only concern was his son's safety.

"I think force will not win your son back. Cunning is a more sure way, but first you must have something the Mortimers need badly enough to give up this advantage they have over you. And that will likely require too much time – years, even. Since force and cunning are not available to you..." A faint smile tugged at her lips. "You can wrestle with a trained bear or dance with it, my uncle used to say. You may risk looking foolish to dance with a bear, but are a little less likely to be torn to pieces. That was always the strategy he employed when he must deal with Mortimer."

Kit's eyes lit with curiosity. "You have an uncle who has won against Mortimer?"

"Against old Mortimer, and only in small confrontations." She looked at her hands, white fingers against the dark wood of the table, and prepared herself to speak the words. She had not needed to say it aloud, before now. It would hurt. "He is dead. In the fighting this summer past."

"Not your Uncle Rhys?" Robert held his cup suspended halfway to his lips.

At her nod, such a look came over him that she had to turn away. She tried to swallow through the terrible burning in her throat. She had only to endure it until it passed. From the corner of her eye she saw that he reached toward her as though to take her hand. But he stopped the movement short, and that hurt too.

"He called you the keenest wits in your family."

She gazed at him for a long moment, enduring the pinpricks to her heart, the unexpected flood of gratitude that left no room for anything else. She was suddenly a starving child who is given a crumb and would beg for more. Who else was left to her, that knew this about her uncle? Who else understood what he had meant to her? If she thought there was a chance she could do it without losing command of herself, she would ask him to repeat to her everything he remembered of what she'd said. She would beg for every word and every story about her uncle that she had told Robert, that he had kept fresh and pristine in his memory, locked in the same place as his foolish love for her all these years.

Now he raised his cup and said, "A good man, and a life well lived. May his soul be at peace."

Kit murmured something similar, and they drank to her uncle's memory. She nodded, pressed her trembling fingers to the table and fought for composure in the lengthening silence. It came only when she recalled they had been speaking of Mortimer and how best to win against him. She could help this man.

"Edmund, the older brother, will be like his father. Concern yourself with his judgment," she said when she was sure her voice was steady. There, that was better. Easier to talk about these mundane plans, soothing even. "To play friend to Roger Mortimer is wise as well, but by law it is Edmund who holds your son. Roger has nearly as much power as Edmund, and from rumor he will soon be equal in wealth too. Is certain he will be given a piece of Wales to call his own. But it is too much to hope the brothers will be rivals. They have too often acted as one in common interest."

"You say I am to play friend to the Mortimers? While they falsely hold my son?" It was gratifying to see that Manton did not seem offended by the suggestion, merely skeptical.

"At least you must not play at being their enemy, which is what they will expect from you. You have sought my experience of dealing with Marcher lords and what I know is that without fail, they hold tight what power they have and seek to increase their lands at every opportunity. Where opportunity does not exist, they create it. This is even more true of a Mortimer, by far."

The weariness had crept into her again. Endless hours spent in consideration of how best to kill Roger Mortimer only energized her, yet these few minutes of focusing on someone else's problems exhausted her. It left her undisposed toward diplomacy, yet she must think of a kind way to tell Kit Manton that he was weak, that he must be like the dog who bares his belly to show submission. "You must discover why he thinks you are a threat to him, and then show him you are not. You must make him believe that you do not share these ambitions."

"That will be easy enough. I do not share them." Kit eased back in his chair, his features relaxing. "I am not an ambitious man. I leave it to my son to strive for more one day, if he is so inclined."

"Nor will he be inclined, if he is anything like his namesake," said Robert. Then he slanted a crooked smile in her direction, a careless little thing. It caused warmth to bloom in a region of her heart.

She found herself on her feet, the sound of her chair scraping against the floor filling the room. Both men looked at her with slightly widened eyes, as startled as she was by her sudden move.

"I would rest before the evening meal."

They both hastened to rise even as she made her way to the door. Manton opened the door for her and made a brief bow, thanking her for her counsel. She looked at his gleaming gold hair flop over his forehead as he straightened, and watched as he pushed it away in what was surely a habitual gesture. She decided that she liked him. In the usual way, a man like him – easygoing, no great ambitions, artless in every way – would only rouse her contempt. But the world looked very different to her of late, as did the men who moved in it. If more were like Kit Manton, perhaps she would have been quite different, too.

"I will speak to Isabella Mortimer. She holds Edmund's trust. We can hope that she will give some indication of why they contrive to hold your son, but she is no fool," Eluned cautioned. "And she is a Mortimer through and through."

Kit smiled at her. "If I could choose any wit to match against hers, lady, I would choose yours."

She could think of no reply to this, so she merely nodded in what she hoped was a graceful acknowledgement. As she left, she caught sight of Robert choosing a round of wastel bread. He picked one that was stuffed with apple, as she had known he would, and he tore it in half and in half again. What useless bits of knowledge her famed wit held onto.

T hey sat together at the high board in this little manor house a half-day's ride from the place where Edward held court. They were joined by other highborn guests, as was usual, but there were few in this place. She watched as Robert laughed with Kit Manton until that man said he would find the scribe and send a letter to his wife before they reached court. Now the guests next to her spoke to one another, leaving Robert and her alone in an expectant silence. He drank, and she watched his throat move as he swallowed, and was made dizzy with a lust that was no longer only a memory, no longer theoretical.

She had miscalculated, or had failed to calculate at all, the effect he would have on her.

How careless she had been, to think that she was past the age for such feelings. In all the memories she had forced herself to stare in the eye, she had somehow forgotten the physical reality of him. He was only an inch taller than she was and did not tower over her as her husband had done. Though he had thickened with muscle, his youthful litheness was not entirely lost. The result was a presence that was not intimidating or dominating in the least, but still imbued with a very comfortable masculinity. It infiltrated her senses until she could taste him on the air she breathed.

She did not know where he slept at night, but it was not at her side. The young girl in their party with the copper curls and inviting smile often drew his eye, but if he bedded her he was uncommonly discreet about it. Eluned looked now for the girl among the diners and found her in a cluster of other maids, her bright laughter at a finely calibrated volume designed to draw male attention without grating on the ear. The girl was clearly vexed at Robert's failure to look in her direction and surreptitiously shifted her glance to Eluned, who was poised to meet it.

It was an unexpected pleasure to watch the flush on the girl's face grow deeper until it was almost purple. It was exceptionally unbecoming, Eluned thought, clashing as it did with her red hair. The poor thing looked mottled and mortified. Ah, youth.

Robert's inquiring voice interrupted her thoughts. "It is more than a decade, is it not, that you ruled Ruardean in your late husband's absence?"

"Fourteen years." Her breath quickened uncontrollably, though she told herself it was witless to grow nervous because he spoke to her. It was only that he had not spoken to her alone like this since their wedding night. She was unused to it, to him.

Poison , she thought. The blade. An accident . These were her options for ending Roger Mortimer, and repeating them had become as soothing as prayer. But she felt Robert's eyes on her and was not soothed.

"I have not offered you sympathy for his death." He gave her a frank look, assessing but not unkind. "Should I?"

They had never spoken of Walter. She had never said she loved him, or hated him, or felt anything at all toward him – and except for that long-ago argument they had had, Robert had never asked. He had never wanted to know. Yet now, he did.

"I spat on his bones," she heard herself say.

He took a moment to consider this. "No sympathy, then," he said blandly. Then he gave that roguish half-smile. "But I shall save a drop of it for his bones, little though they need it."

She looked away sharply. He had lost none of his charm at all. From the moment he had lifted her down from her horse in front of the church where they were wed, she had seen her mistake. There always was some flaw, in all her plans, born of impatience or blindness or her own arrogance. In this case, it was all three: impatient to get at Mortimer, blind to what Robert might still feel for her, arrogant enough to think her own feelings could be easily controlled. There were other men she might have made her husband, and gotten the advantages of marriage without this constant flood of feeling, these uncomfortable twinges of conscience. Other men who would not be hurt by her indifference.

"I make no claim to be the best of wives," she said. And then her tongue defied the iron rule of her reason once more and said, "I never was, as you have certain cause to know."

He opened his mouth but before he could answer, servants came to fill their cups and offer fragrant plum tarts. It did not break the atmosphere that she had conjured with her words. She thought of the little pink stone, of how often she had plucked it from her pocket and set it in the precise spot where he would look for it. How she had hugged the secret to herself until he came and pulled the clothes from her, as a starving man peels an orange. She was sure he must think of it too, so heavy did the memory of their sin hang in the air between them.

When the servants left them, she watched him as he slowly twirled a spoon in his fingers.

"How many others have there been since me?" He tried for a careless curiosity, but she heard the bitterness in it even before she understood his meaning. "I was the first, I think, but I wonder now how many came after me. Fourteen years, fourteen men?"

He might have stricken her and called her whore before all the king's court, and she would not have felt so insulted. She sat frozen in the face of it, trembling with an outrage so sudden and complete that she could not think past it. She was the lady of Ruardean, daughter of a noble line that stretched back to antiquity, mother to a warrior and a mighty Marcher baron, and she would not suffer such offense. She sucked in her breath to answer, but bit her tongue when she realized the only words she had were inadequate and overly defensive.

His spoon was digging at a plum, reducing it to paste, his mouth in a sullen curve. She had hurt him. He had lain himself bare to her, confessed his love without reservation, and she had called it a dream. Now he believed what had been between them was so trivial to her that she would repeat it with another – with a great many others.

Let him think it , she commanded herself. It would be easier for them both, and kinder to him. Hope had no place in her plans.

"Eighteen years," she corrected him, despite her intentions. "Never think I forget that number any more than do you." Then she slowed her quickening breath and returned to a more brisk tone. "But it was fourteen years that I had the sole rule of Ruardean, because my husband did not honor his duty as its lord. If you are so fortunate as to be granted a lordship the equal of Ruardean, I will offer you what experience and knowledge I gained in that time. Then I think you will not malign me, but have cause to be glad of my many years without a man by my side."

He looked as if he would say many things, but kept himself from it. After a moment's pause and another idle stir of his spoon in the wrecked tart, he said, "These Welsh places that Edward would call England and rule as his own – think you it can be done without more blood is spilled?"

"Do you weary of fighting?"

"Do not all men weary of fighting, in time?"

"Edward does not," she answered. "Nor will he stop until his dying breath, to call the whole of this island his. But he has spilt the blood of the last Welsh princes who would resist him. There is little need to spill more, so well did he break the spirit of those who followed them."

A grim look overcame Robert's face. "I have heard Dafydd was tortured and torn in pieces as his punishment."

"You have heard it and I have seen it." She looked away from the pulpy mess of plum tart, the blood-red wine in her cup. "I went to Shrewsbury. He was hacked, not torn."

She knew he watched her, but she did not turn her face to him. Instead her eyes found the girl whom Robert had flirted with so often, and she stared the copper curls. They shone in the firelight and bounced gaily about her fresh young face. It was a lovely sight. Truly it was.

"Eluned," he said, and his voice was full of feeling.

She wanted nothing more than to lay her head against him and rest. It was not her lust and longing that threatened to undo her, but the warmth that came from him in these small moments. With just one word, he could reach inside her and speak to her innermost sorrows. No one else even guessed that she felt such things.

But he thought she had many lovers. She had hurt him. And she had other work to do. Poison, the blade, an accident. It was better this way. If she succeeded and was found out, she could not say what punishment there might be for a murderess, even one as highborn as she was. Until recently she would have assumed she would be imprisoned for the rest of her life, or banished to exile. But after the torture and execution of Dafydd, none could say what punishment might be called reasonable. Every day the rules were made anew for Edward's kingdom.

She blinked, swallowed hard, and spoke before Robert did.

"You need not fear that any grand battles must be fought to hold what land the king may give you," she assured him. It was easier, and soothing, to talk of these more commonplace worries. "There is no troublesome viscount who will lay claim to it, such as you dealt with in Gascony."

"Nor a Castilian king to ally with such a rival. But if the Welsh wish to resist, there are as many mountains for them to hide in."

"Let them hide there, and they will starve with only their pride to fill their bellies."

He furrowed his brow. "Would they not steal out in the night to help themselves to my cattle and crops?"

"Some may try, but only if they are not treated fairly under English law. Any resistance will die quickly if they are assured they can prosper without a fight." She allowed herself a small smile, but made sure she did not look directly into the warmth of his eyes as she did so. "Your French vassals gave you no such resistance, I think, or your wine would not taste half so sweet."

Even if she had never known him well, there would be no mistaking the pride in him. She was glad to see it, in spite of herself. He had built something to be proud of, in spite of his claims that he had no ambition.

"Gascons may quarrel among themselves, but put all quarrels aside in the face of outside threat," he said.

"Certes you were an outsider when you came to them, and they had known only the rule of a steward since your father was a boy. Yet you won their love, and defended Edward's lands too, and all the while your land increases its yield. Few estates are so esteemed for their wines." She thought of how different from Wales was that fertile, sunny place he had lived so long. "By whatever means you achieved it there, you may do so here as well."

"It only wanted patience," he shrugged with a modesty that she could not imagine any other man would show, "and common cause in peace time as well as in strife. And in France I had me no clever wife to smooth the way."

She wanted to ask why he had not married in all these years. She wanted to ask about Kenilworth, and why he had stayed so long from England, and if he had never made peace with his father. Instead, she said, "Wife or no, the lessons you learned there will serve you well here."

He was looking intently at her, so she reached for her cup and drank to prevent herself from saying more. The girl with the copper hair laughed again, throwing back her head, glancing toward the high board to see if Robert noticed.

"Patience and common cause," he said, still studying Eluned. "A clever wife indeed."

Probably he thought they had common cause as man and wife. There was a great prize to be had from Edward in the form of lands and power, and she should care about that. Probably he thought it only wanted patience, and they would grow together again, build a life in common. Probably he thought she cared about his friend's son, and would work to see him brought safe out of the arms of the Mortimers.

But she did not care. She did not want to build anything, not a fortune or a dynasty or a marriage. She had no care for Manton's boy, but was glad to know another detail about her enemy that might prove useful one day. She had only one cause, and it had naught in common with her husband's aims.

"You would do well to rely on virtues more constant than my cleverness," she warned him. It was spoken with a tartness, but meant as an honest bit of counsel.

"And what else about you can I rely upon, Eluned?" He sat back in his chair and looked her over. The ironic twist was back in his words. "It seems you offer me little more than your wits and your wealth."

An ache was forming between her shoulder blades, so stiff and straight did she hold herself. In truth, what had she to offer him? Only bitterness, and a hatred that ate at her. A few tables away, the copper-headed girl fended off the attentions of a knight.

"I will not deny my lord his right to our marriage bed," she said.

She thought of the cold stars, of quick poisons and sharp blades, while she awaited his reply. Finally he let loose a scornful breath, a sound that scoffed at her as he stood up from the table with cup in hand.

"Is no wonder your last husband wandered in the desert for half your marriage." He gave her an elegant bow. "We all thought him mad, but I think he was only seeking some warmth."