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“I discovered it last eve after the feasting. There is a place such as this in most keeps. I like the quiet in such places.”

“As do I,” Caryn said. There was something about the boy, something of wisdom in his sparkling green eyes and rough yet slightly lilting voice. It made him seem older than his years.

“You look beautiful this eve,” he said, “yet I sense that you are sad.” He smiled at her, then did a quick little dance, making the bells ring. “’Tis my job to see that you are happy.”

Caryn smiled faintly. “Are you never sad, jester?”

“Aye, lady. There are times I am lonesome for my home, for friends and family I may never see again. But I have face paint to hide my sadness.”

“And I have only my strength of will.”

The jester reached out and took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. Caryn noticed how soft and supple was his skin.

“But strength is something you have a great deal of, I vow.” He had finely etched features, his handsome face almost pretty were it not for a pair of small protruding ears. “And there is always tomorrow. Who knows what the future may bring?”

“Who, indeed?” Caryn said, forcing herself to smile. But there was little besides bleakness in the future she foresaw. She might have said that to the jester, since he was a stranger and seemed so willing to listen, but when she turned he was gone.

Caryn’s thoughts lingered for a time on the jester, on the youth’s soft hands and bright smile, but there was her husband to face in the hall below.

By now he would be seated on the dais. So far he had not sent for her and she expected that he would not.

He was giving her time to accept what another wife would have known from the start—that a marriage was made for naught but heirs.

That a husband took his pleasure, but gave nothing of himself in return.

She needed no more time to accept that. The lesson had been most bitterly taught.

At the top of the stairs she forced a smile.

She was dressed as a lady, not one so beautiful as Lynette or Eliana, but pretty enough to turn the heads of the men as she moved between the heavily laden trestle tables.

Her husband’s gaze was among them, she saw to her surprise.

The expression in his blue-gray eyes hit her with the force of a blow, and it took an extra effort to keep her legs moving.

Caryn kept her chin held high and her shoulders squared, smiling to man and maid as she passed, pausing to speak a word here and there. When she reached the dais, Ral stood up and waited while she took her chair.

“I wondered would you join us.” There was an odd edge to his voice. “Your serving woman told us you were ill.” The look that passed between them said he knew it was not so, that he was surprised she had come, and that he wasn’t all that happy about it.

Mayhap he had not wanted to face her any more than she had wanted to face him.

“I hope you are feeling better,” said Lord Stephen. “My sister missed your company.”

“I am fine now. ’Twas only a passing weakness.” She flashed her husband a pointed glance. “I doubt I shall be troubled again.”

Beside her Ral frowned.

“Did you enjoy the hunt?” she asked Francois de Balmain. She smiled at him more warmly than she should have, and noticed a muscle bunch in Ral’s jaw.

“’Twas a day to remember, my lady. Your husband was fierce. He brought down a stag with his sword.”

She turned in his direction. “Is that so, my lord? After last night’s… revelry… I had feared a little for yo ur strength.” Ignoring the dark look he tossed her, she spoke again to de Balmain, then to Lady Eliana.

“I hope you’re enjoying your visit.”

The black-haired beauty smiled. “I intend to spend the summer at Malvern. Mayhap you could join me for a time.”

“My wife will be busy—” Ral broke in.

“’Twould please me greatly to see some of the country,” Caryn countered. “I am certain that my husband can survive for a few days without me.”

“We will discuss it when the time comes,” Ral said with a dark look of warning, then he changed the subject. “There is someone I would have you meet.”

For the first time, Caryn noticed the dark-skinned man who sat at a far end of the table. He stood as Ral looked toward him, and graced her with a bow of his head. It was covered by a flowing length of cloth that reached his shoulders and kept in place by a small circular band.

“Hassan is a surgeon,” Ral said. “He once served King William. At the battle of Senlac, he was the man who saved my life.”

Caryn had noticed the sword scar between Ral’s ribs. It was long but fairly even and not particularly obtrusive. She smiled thinly at the lean dark-skinned man.

“Then I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude, Hassan. For ’tis certain we would all miss him sorely.” She looked down at the trestle tables below the dais and saw the blond-haired head of Lynette. “Some of us far more than others.”

“Hassan will be returning to Braxston a few weeks hence,” Ral said, ignoring the bite in her words. “Mayhap he can teach you the use of some of his herbs.”

“I shall bribe him to do so.” She smiled dryly. “Who knows what sort of potions one might learn to brew.”

Ral’s eyes met hers and he read the bitter taunt there. Though he muttered an oath beneath his breath, she thought she might have caught a flash of admiration.

The evening progressed and through it they enjoyed the entertainment. At least Caryn prayed that she looked as though she did. She laughed and smiled, and spoke gaily with Lady Eliana. Which in itself, she discovered, was no easy task.

Stephen’s sister was different, unsettling in some way, and there was a darkness about her. It shrouded her like a thick night mist, making Caryn even more uneasy, though she did her best to hide it.

Just as she hid her feelings for Ral. But everytime he looked at her, something squeezed inside her. It was all she could do to sit there beside him, all she could do to smile and call him by name.

She didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to see his handsome face, didn’t want to see the smiling face of his whore.

She wanted to run from the table, to return to her room and never come out.

She wanted to call him every vile name she could think of, to weep and wail and pound her fists against the wall to vent her fury.

Instead she smiled sweetly and laughed at the jester’s fare.

Remembering their brief meeting out on the parapet, she wondered again about the strangely compelling, fair-haired boy.

On the floor below the platform, the lad did his cute little jig, ringing the bells on his hat and around his neck, then began to recite his verses.

A lover of old in fair Mort

Had arms that were strong but too short

When for wenches he reached,

He was forced to choose each

From the narrow and spanable sort

The men laughed good-naturedly and called out for more, and the jester readily complied, his face breaking into a half-black, half-white smile .

A wicked young lad from Travatt

With maids would enjoy this and that

A touch and a kiss

Did he mean by his this

You can guess what he meant by his that!

The jester was delightful, holding everyone’s attention, teasing and jibbing and calling forth their cheers. For the first time in weeks, the dimples in Richard’s cheeks appeared and later in the evening Caryn saw him speaking to the jester near the fire.

She watched them a moment, envious at the laughter they shared, feeling sad and forlorn inside, yet still smiling brightly. It took such concentration, she missed the heavy footsteps that marked her husband’s approach behind her.

“You appear uncommonly gay this eve,” he said. “’Twas hardly the mood I expected.”

“Because of what happened this morning?”

“Aye. ’Twas tears I saw last on your cheeks.”

“The last of their kind you will see, I’ll warrant. The tears of a foolish young girl. Tonight I am a woman. One whose eyes have finally been opened.”

“I did not mean to hurt you.”

“’Twas hardly your fault that I was such a fool.”

For a moment Ral said nothing. Then he took her arm and started for the stairs.

“What are you doing?” Caryn jerked her arm away.

“’Tis late. ’Tis time that we retired.”

Caryn’s gaze narrowed on his darkly handsome face. “Since we’ve guests in the hall this eve, you may walk me up the stairs. If you mean to join me in our chamber, you will find that you are no longer welcome.”

Ral clamped his jaw. “You are my wife. ’Tis your duty to accept me in your bed whenever I wish it.”

Caryn laughed, the sound unnaturally harsh. “If you believe for one moment, my lord, that what we shared before will be anything like what you will get from me now you are sorely mistaken. You have chosen to sleep with your whore. ’Tis the only place you will find comfort.”

She started toward the stairs and felt her husband’s presence beside her.

By the time they reached their chamber, Caryn’s heart was pounding.

He could force her; he was certainly strong enough.

But she meant what she had said. ’Twould be bitterness he stirred, not passion.

He could take his pleasure, but she would feel nothing but icy resentment.

“I will give you some time. Soon you will learn ’tis only a man’s way to find ease with a number of women.”

For an instant, Caryn faltered, her cool facade slipping away. Pain filled her eyes and with it a glistening film of tears. “I have always learned quickly, my lord. You may be certain this lesson will not soon be forgotten.”

Something flashed in Ral’s eyes, then it was gone. Caryn turned away from him and went into her chamber, closing the door on her husband and her dreams.

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