.

you sure?” Gervase whispered.

      “Yes. Please go now. There are matters…” She offered him her hands and, to her relief, he kissed them, bowed, and left quietly, leaving the courtyard to darken with hostility.

      “I think we should continue our conversation indoors,” she said, leading her guest along the walkway and through studded oak doors into the hall where tables were being prepared for supper. On one, pewter candelabra stood with candles already lit, and she indicated a bench, placing Sir Rhyan within the circle of light while she sat opposite, affirming as she did so that her late sister’s adulation was typical of her shallow insight. He was indeed exceptionally handsome, but looks could be deceptive. He had done his best to injure her, once. He would not be allowed to forget it.

      The hall servants kept a discreet distance, but Master Bonard was closer at hand in an obvious display of protectiveness, and although Merielle spoke in a low voice, she knew that he would hear. “Let us understand one another, Sir Rhyan, if you please. I had far rather Sir Adam himself had come to escort me to Winchester for then I would have been in pleasant company. I go with you on sufferance because we happen to be going the same way at the same time. Is that clear? I do not intend to make polite conversation with you for appearances’ sake and I would rather you respect my wishes to be left alone. A safe conduct to Winchester is all I require.”

      “Still smarting, I see. You got the land back, for all the good it’s done you. For all the good it’s done the tenants, rather. Sheath your talons, lady.” He held his head high on great shoulders and sturdy neck, his unusually blue eyes showing not the slightest flicker of consternation at her blatant antagonism.

      “It can be nothing to you, sir, whether I smart or not. It was an agreement between my father and yours, presumably based on some whim…”

      “No whim, lady, and you know it as well as I, so cut out the sham, for that’s something I cannot abide.” His glance bounced off Master Bonard and back to her again.

      “Then you must be having a hard time of it in this world, sir, for life is borne along on such minor deceits made out of our care for others’ feelings.”

      “And you must be well practiced, judging by the company you keep. Does Sir Adam know of the competition, or shall you sign yon pretty lad off on Sunday?”

      “Mind your tongue, sir! Until your appearance, the company I keep is of my own choosing, and my choice of husband will never be a concern of yours, whatever your late father chose to believe.”

      “Yours, too, don’t forget. And you are mistaken, lady, if you think that their agreement is now at an end by reason of their deaths. The pestilence that took them both from us in the same year does not alter one whit of what was written and signed while your mother was alive, and that agreement you are bound to, now and for ever. I shall enforce it. You obtained the king’s pardon once, lady, but you’ll not do it again.”

      “I paid for it, damn you!” Merielle snarled.

      “Yes, a fine. That was not in the contract,” he said, coldly.

      “I paid, wasn’t that enough for you?”

      “No. Nor was it enough for those poor sods whose living is made on the land you refuse to administer.”

      “I do. The bailiffs. The steward. They…”

      “No, they don’t! The pestilence took them, too.”

      Merielle breathed out, slowly, controlling the flow. “It returned? When?”

      “Last month. And never once since then have you enquired what was going on.”

      “I thought…” No, she had not thought.

      He watched her eyes search the table-top, then he leaned forward on thick leather-clad arms, his long fingers splayed. “The land your father leased from mine, the manor house, the villages, the fields and mills were taken for a term of three lives, remember. Three lives, not two. His own, his wife’s and yours, as the eldest daughter. And as security, because they both wanted to be sure that the property would remain in responsible hands even after their deaths, your father agreed to allow my father and his heirs the right to approve husbands for his widow and daughter. You, mistress. Your mother died, but you are still written into the contract which I took over when my father and eldest brother were taken in the sickness. And there you will remain for the rest of your life. But you chose to forget that, did you not? And after your first husband died, a man of your father’s choosing and approved by mine, you went ahead and chose a fool who acquired your property and then careered off to Jerusalem, for God’s sake, having no more care for the land that supports his tenants than he did for his breeding wife, it seems.”

      Merielle leapt to her feet, trembling with fury. How dared he speak to her like that in her own home? Her late husband’s home. “That’s enough!”

      But Sir Rhyan’s hand darted across the table and clamped around her wrist, holding her back. “Sit down, lady!”

      Master Bonard leapt to his feet, also. “Sir! You are a guest here. I beg you, release the lady at once!”

      He did not, but kept his eyes on her face, waiting for her compliance.

      Merielle sat, frowning at her protector. “It’s all right. I told you that chivalry was not in his book. Sit down, Master Bonard.” She felt her hand being released but would not rub her wrist where his fingers had hurt her. “I have always believed, Sir Rhyan, that no woman should be obliged to accept a man’s say in her private affairs. A husband, of course, but not a complete stranger who cannot possibly know what is best for her.”

      “Your feelings do not concern me—we are speaking here of families, mistress, not of one person only. Families who have a right to be protected by law. What did your late Canterbury husband know or care of Yorkshire estates hundreds of miles away to the north except for the rents that poured in each year? What do you know of them? He couldn’t even look after you properly, could he?”

      “You will leave my late husband out of this discussion, if you please. Had things gone differently, we would not now be having this conversation. You vented your malice by confiscating my property—”

      “My property! My late father’s. And I had every right to reclaim it. Who else would look after those families if I didn’t? Eh?”

      “I’ve told you. But you timed your vindictiveness well, didn’t you, Sir Rhyan? You waited until I was a widow—”

      “Nine months, I waited.”

      “—and had lost the child I so desperately wanted,” she panted, willing the tears to stay away, “and then you—”

      “I didn’t know of that, then. It would have waited.”

      “—sent lawyers to me. I suppose you thought I’d inherited so much from my father and husbands that I could afford to lose a little. Is that what you thought, sir? Did you care about my distress?”

      “Do you care about the distress suffered by those families at the hands of your so-called stewards, who knew damn well there’s no one to come and see what they got up to? The frauds? The thefts? The unjust punishments? The abuses? The taking of daughters?”

      “What?”

      “Yes, all of that, and more. It’s next to my land, woman, so I know what’s been going on. Is it surprising I wanted to get it back, to give those people some normality in their miserable lives? It’s good land going to waste with poor management, not enough oxen, ploughs, hardly a roof on the church. And you here, sitting around with your lovers—”

      His quick reaction caused Merielle’s arm to swing blindly through space, missing his head entirely and slewing her round with the effort. To steady herself, she braced her arms on the table and glared at him through narrowed eyes ready to kill with one piercing stare. “Hypocrite!” she spat. “It’s all right for men, then, is it? I’ll have you know, sir, that I can administer all my property in York, Lincoln