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Gryff almost thanked him again for escorting Lady Margaret but thought it better to speak of anything else, so much did the thought of her sour his mood.

She was a rather timid and bland-looking lady, who dressed so plain and modest that he wondered what she could have filled her baggage with.

There seemed little to her character at all, aside from an overabundance of piety.

It was probably why Will disliked her overmuch.

He had a particular aversion to religious fervor.

Gryff turned the talk instead to affairs in Will’s lands, and the prospect of Edward’s intended crusade. It was pleasant, a welcome thing to see Will so relaxed and unguarded. “Time away from court suits you well, Will,” he said.

“It does,” he replied. “It can be a poisonous place.”

A silence fell between them that went on long enough that Gryff knew it was not by chance.

He braced himself to hear some bit of unwelcome news, some new thing the king wanted of him.

But Will’s words, when they came, were a different kind of blow.

He did not look at Gryff as he said them, but at the fire.

“She is not with child,” he said quietly, and took a long drink of his wine.

They had never spoken a word of it, but there was no doubt what he meant. Gryff stared at the embers. He wondered what exactly Will knew, and how he knew it. He wondered if he could be trusted, if his mother had confided anything about it, if anyone else at court knew.

He didn’t ask any of it. He just looked at the embers for a very long time in silence, and mourned a child that had never been more than a forbidden dream.

“Where is she?” he asked. He had tried to imagine her at Morency, with Fuss at her heels as she tracked down thieves or chased off poachers. Now he wondered if she was with Lady Eluned in the north of Wales, and felt a violent stab of jealousy at the thought that Will might have seen her recently.

“She journeys to Burgundy, and then on to Basel.” Will reached for the bottle and poured more wine into Gryff’s cup. He very kindly did not look Gryff in the face. “Some task she has undertaken for Lord Robert, to see some cargo safely through England and then to distant shores.”

Burgundy. Basel. They would not even share an island.

No more could he imagine, when he looked at the eastern hills, that she was just beyond them.

He fought down a sudden anger at her, the bitterness he carried every day in a secret corner of his heart, because she had not come with him.

She should be here. She would never be here, because she rejected what little he could give her.

Never will she truly need you, Philip Walch had taught him about fierce and beautiful creatures. She will stay with you so long as it suits her, but she will never be tame.

He knew he must try to stop wanting her.

He must. Even if he could do the impossible – find a way to give her more, or bring himself to abandon his people – it was too late.

The knowledge sat like a heavy stone in his breast, a lifeless weight that threatened to suffocate him.

She did not want him now. Her face when he left her was all he saw when he closed his eyes.

He was just another lord, like all the others who had used her.

“I would like to drink until I am blind with it,” he announced.

“A fine idea,” agreed Will. He drank down what was in his cup and reached for the bottle to pour more. “By God, I would like that too, after that journey. I hope you like your wife better than I do, or you will spend all your days blind drunk.”

“Another fine idea,” Gryff said, and held out his cup to be filled again.

W ill stayed less than a week, which was long enough to help negotiate a date for Gryff to be wed and to issue a warning about Rhodri.

“There has been no word of him. He is not in Rome and I would wager my own inheritance he does not journey there.” Will looked around the crowded hall suspiciously, as though Rhodri might appear from the shadows. “You are certain sure these men can be trusted?”

Gryff shrugged. “I know they have no love for Rhodri. They have given proof enough, and I may put my faith in that.”

Rhodri had left the king’s court the same afternoon that Gryff had arrived.

He had gone immediately to Aderinyth, hoping to claim it as his own with the support of the people – but he had found a cold welcome.

For years, the story of how he had tried to kill Gryff had been sung by the bards, who painted him as the villain he was.

The people of Aderinyth would not tolerate him, and he had barely escaped with his life.

Will loved that story, and asked Rhys to set it to verse and sing it every night of his visit.

After being run out of Aderinyth, Rhodri had announced that he would go to Rome and appeal to the Pope.

It was too ridiculous to be taken as anything but jest; he knew as well as anyone that the Church cared nothing about this dispute.

But Rhodri had disappeared and for nearly three months now, there had been no sign of him in England or Wales.

Either he was licking his wounds in private or plotting to somehow usurp Gryff’s place.

“Were I to die, would Edward grant him these lands?” Gryff asked.

“I hope not,” was Will’s answer. “But I dare not say it is impossible. We have a pragmatic king in Edward, and he sees the value in having a Welshman of the old blood as ruler here, one who owes his place to him.”

More than ever, Gryff did not like to think how Rhodri would rule these people if allowed. It was another vindication of his decision to return, despite the cost.

If not for Will’s persistence, they might never have settled on a date for the wedding.

Lady Margaret seemed as disinclined to wed as Gryff did.

She rejected every proposed date, citing Church restrictions on certain days of the week and saints’ days and the many periods of abstinence – all of which, when considered together, did not allow any day of the year when they might hold a wedding feast. Finally, they had agreed on a day just after Michaelmas, and the decision hung like a millstone around his neck.

Guests would begin arriving in only a few weeks.

His future wife’s only redeeming feature was that she was not outright scornful of his people.

She very obviously found their customs strange – the Welsh habit of warm familiarity that was more egalitarian than the Norman way seemed especially difficult for her – but she seemed to be attempting to adapt to it.

Gryff saw little of her, as she kept to the chapel and her chambers in the tower, and he preferred it that way.

He could not imagine their wedding night, or ever being happy to go to the bed of a woman so meek and pious.

One day after Will had left, Gryff came to the solar in the old manor house to find her there without her ladies, standing alone at the window. He felt a flash of anger toward her, because she stood where he had imagined Nan so many times.

They were nothing alike, in looks or temperament. Lady Margaret’s silence was not soothing. There was no mystery to it, or quiet communication, or even peace. He only felt quietly judged with every breath.

“My lord,” she said, and cast her eyes down demurely as she stood with folded hands.

It was not fair to her, or to the people who would soon call her their lady, to treat her as a stranger and a burden. It was not only the Welsh who called him lord, and his treatment of her would be seen as a reflection of his feelings for the English under his rule.

So he tried. He said that he hoped to keep this manor house despite the new castle being built nearby, but she only nodded.

He asked if she liked the view of the valley from this window, and she nodded again.

It was only when he said that this had been his mother’s solar and that she too was very devoted to her prayers that Lady Margaret showed anything like interest.

“Your mother lives with the sisters at Cairusk,” she said. Her voice was so timid he thought it must be an affectation, put on because she thought it would please him. “Always have I wanted... I have thought myself more suited to that kind of life.”

This was hardly a surprise, but he bit his tongue against saying it. Her father gave her not to the Church, but in marriage. No matter her preference, she could not be married without her consent, so she must have agreed to this.

“My mother passed many hours in prayer, yet served as lady to her husband and her children, and to our people.” He looked at her bowed head, her submissive pose, and felt more lonely than he had ever felt in his life. “In faith, I hope you will find such a life pleasing to you.”

She nodded again, never looking up at him, and asked if he would join her in prayer this evening, after the meal. He declined as gallantly as he could manage, telling her it was not his habit, that he spent those hours in important tasks that could not wait for morning.

It was the first of what was sure to be many lies to this woman he must soon call wife. After the meal, he spent the evening in discussion with the master falconer, and an hour talking with the bard of inconsequential matters.

Then he went to his chamber and whispered his own prayers in the dark, as he did every night. As he knew he would do for as long as he lived. Mary, Ida, Isabella, Gwenllian, Eluned. He thanked God for them, because they had saved her.

He would not forget their names, because he could not forget her.