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The woman he had once desired beyond all reason fell to her knees and threw her arms around him.

“Ranulf, I’m sorry!” she cried with seeming sincerity.

“I lost my temper. I regret what I did all those years ago. I rue the day I let you go. I’ll not speak against Lady Beatrice again, but please don’t make me leave. ”

“I am castellan here and you are no longer welcome,” he said as he reached down to raise her to her feet.

“Please, Ranulf, let me stay. I have nowhere else to go!”

“You have your lands, your estates, your castles. Go to one of them.”

She shook her head, her hair flying about as if tossed by the wind. “They belong to my husband’s nephew because we had no sons. Everything I possess is in this chamber.”

He thought of her fine gowns, and the jewels she’d sported. “You’re still rich. You can buy yourself a house in London, where you will surely find plenty of suitors anxious to share your wealth.”

“No, no,” she sobbed, real tears falling down her cheeks and genuine anguish in her no-longer-dulcet voice.

“I have no family, no friends there. My parents are dead. They died less than a year after I was married. I have no one—no one cares for me—and London is a cold, cruel place for a woman no longer young.”

Ranulf hesitated, torn between leaving this woman who’d once hurt him so deeply and offering her his sympathy, for he remembered well how it felt to be alone and friendless.

“You’re hardly an old hag, Celeste. You’re still one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and you’re far from ancient. ”

“Spoken like a man who loves another, younger woman,” she said between sobs.

“What would you have me say?” he replied. “I do love another and yes, she is younger. That is not going to change. But you are hardly without resources.”

Her hair disheveled, her bed robe gaping to reveal her thin white shift and the breasts beneath, Celeste wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “May I at least stay here until I can make arrangements to go elsewhere?”

He had not the heart to refuse her. “Very well.”

She gave him a sorrowful look that once would have made him do anything she wanted. “Thank you, Ranulf,” she said, putting her hands upon his shoulders.

He started to pull back. “Celeste,” he warned. “Don’t.”

“I’m not going to bite you, Ranulf,” she murmured, holding him firmly as her bed robe came undone and fell open. “I only want to thank you. A kiss of gratitude and nothing more.”

“I knew it!” Maloren screeched from the doorway. “Scoundrels and liars, the pair of you!”

A FTER LEAVING Celeste, Beatrice was determined to go straight to Ranulf until it occurred to her that might be precisely what Celeste wanted: that she go to Ranulf when she was angry and upset and accuse him until he got angry, too.

Even if Ranulf had returned from the village—and she wasn’t sure he had—she wasn’t going to fall into Celeste’s trap.

Nevertheless, she yearned to talk to someone. If Constance had been in Penterwell, she would have run to her. Her cousin always knew what to say to make her feel better, or offer her sound advice. Unfortunately, Constance was far away in Tregellas.

Maloren was out of the question. Indeed, Beatrice fervently hoped Maloren never heard anything about Ranulf making a wager that required him to deflower virgins. That he would do so was ridiculous, of course, but Maloren would surely believe it and waste no time telling everyone she met.

So Beatrice went to visit Wenna, and soon sat holding little Gawan on her lap, tickling his chubby chin. “Oh, isn’t he a handsome fellow?” she cooed.

Seated on a low stool nearby, working with her drop spindle, the young woman, who was only a year older than Beatrice, smiled. “I think he’s a pretty boy, but then, I’m his mother.”

“Oh, trust me, he’s a very handsome baby,” Beatrice assured her. “How are you , Wenna?”

Wenna sighed and stared at the spindle. “Well enough, my lady.”

As her son reached up to tug at Beatrice’s necklace of simple glass beads, Wenna suddenly regarded Beatrice intently. “Did he mean it, do you think, my lady? Will Sir Ranulf really make my boy a page?”

“I think that if Sir Ranulf said it, you most certainly can believe it,” Beatrice replied.

“Nor could your son have a better master. Why, Ranulf has made the garrison of Tregellas the most admired in the whole of England for their skill and discipline. One day, they’ll say the same thing about the garrison and knights of Penterwell, you’ll see.

And,” she added with significance, “once people start to hear that and know it for a fact, there’ll be few places safer to live. ”

“I hope you’re right, my lady.”

“And then perhaps the merchants will come with wares that are rare so far from London. You should see some of the garments Lady Celeste has brought with her.”

“Tecca says she’s very lovely. You’re not…?”

Although Wenna’s voice trailed off, Beatrice could easily guess what she was wondering about. Probably plenty of other people in Penterwell were wondering, too.

“Lady Celeste knew Sir Ranulf when they were younger,” she explained, taking little Gawan’s hand and blowing onto his plump palm. “There’s no reason she shouldn’t visit him, although,” she confessed with a wry smile, “I have had a few moments when I wished she wasn’t quite so beautiful.”

“Sir Ranulf surely couldn’t prefer her to you,” Wenna said with a conviction that Beatrice found pleasantly flattering.

“Well, for a long time, he didn’t pay much attention to me at all,” she replied, “and when he did, it was more with a sort of patient forbearance.”

“But lately?” Wenna prompted as she reached out to take her child.

“Oh, Wenna, what would you have me say?” Beatrice replied, laughing as she blushed. “Would you have me tell you all my secrets?”

Her expression thoughtful, Wenna opened her bodice and put her baby to suck. “I want you to be happy, my lady, after all you did for me. I don’t know if I’d have made it through that night if you hadn’t been here.”

“I didn’t do so very much,” Beatrice said, rising to put more wood on the fire.

“I think you did, and all the other women here do, too.”

“You did the lion’s share of the work,” Beatrice noted with a smile.

“So you trust Sir Ranulf?” Wenna asked.

“Absolutely. There is no one I trust more, and the people of Penterwell should trust him, too.”

“I’d like to, but I’ve heard some things, my lady,” Wenna said slowly, and quietly, as if she didn’t want even her baby to hear. “Things about Sir Ranulf.”

Beatrice immediately thought of Celeste’s unwelcome revelations. “What have you heard?”

“Myghal told me something about Sir Ranulf and a wager. It was about seducing women, my lady. Fourteen virgins in fourteen days.”

Just because someone else had heard that lie didn’t make it true, Beatrice told herself. “I’m quite sure Sir Ranulf would never do anything so sordid,” she said with firm conviction. “Where did Myghal hear this astonishing tale?”

“From some fishermen down the coast. You also know about Sir Ranulf and his brother, then?”

“I’m equally certain his brother’s death was an accident,” Beatrice replied. She wondered who else had heard these stories. “Is that why the villagers won’t talk to him about what’s been happening? Do they really think he’s some sort of lascivious rogue who murdered his own brother?”

“Myghal’s told nobody but me what he heard, and he only told me because he knows I admire and respect you, and want only the best for you after all you’ve done for me. He wanted me to warn you, in case you didn’t know. He fears you’ve been deceived by Sir Ranulf.”

“I certainly have not,” Beatrice declared, rising. “Sir Ranulf is the best of men and it pains me to hear these lies.”

Wenna held out her hand. “Please, my lady, don’t be angry.

That’s what I told Myghal—that they had to be lies.

I said that if nothing else, your regard for Sir Ranulf meant he was a good and worthy knight.

And Myghal, of all people, ought to know how it feels to be mistrusted and looked down on when there’s no cause. ”

“Really?” Beatrice said, sinking back down onto the stool, her curiosity overwhelming her dismay. “Is it because he was the undersheriff?”

“Not just that, my lady,” Wenna replied as she moved little Gawan to her other breast. “His family hasn’t been trusted here since long before he was born.”

“Is there some kind of feud?”

“You could call it that, I suppose,” Wenna replied. “Folks say Myghal’s family’s too sneaky and shifty by far.”

“If they’re smugglers, I’m not surprised they’re devious,” Beatrice replied. “But lots of other people here are smugglers. I don’t understand why they’d consider those traits a failing.”

“Because Myghal’s family acts as if everybody else is out to rob them or turn them in. Suspicion breeds suspicion, as well as hard feelings, my lady. But no matter what anybody says, I won’t believe Myghal is a bad man, or that he had a hand in Gawan’s death.”

“They’ve accused Myghal of that, too?” Beatrice asked, dumbfounded.

Wenna flushed. “He wanted me for his wife, you see, but I chose Gawan.”

“What do you think?” Beatrice asked, remembering the discomfort she sometimes felt in Myghal’s company and wondering if he was not the good-hearted, trustworthy fellow he seemed.

“He couldn’t have killed Gawan. Myghal was hurt and upset when I married Gawan, that’s for certain, and he said some nasty things, but plenty of men say things they don’t mean when they’re upset and in their cups.”

“Did he ever threaten you or Gawan?”

“Oh, no, my lady, nothing like that! He, um, he called me a bad name. That did me no harm, though, as everybody knew I’d never lain with a man before I married. Believe me, my lady, in a village the size of Penterwell, they would have known if I had.”

Beatrice did believe it. “Then you’re quite certain Myghal had nothing to do with your husband’s death?”