I wasn’t thinking about shame. I was thinking how remarkable it was that something as simple as human touch could lift a person’s spirits so quickly. My tears were still falling, but with his arm around my shoulders I felt . . . safe. Safe from my own anger. Safe from my own sorrow. Able to imagine a future like the one Mathuin had ripped away from me. For a moment I closed my eyes and let myself drift. Then I got up, shrugging off Grim’s arm, and moved over to the fire, where I pretended to warm my hands. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Nothing wrong with me.’ A pity my voice made such a lie of the words. I changed the subject; hauled myself out of deep water. ‘Flidais is sending a girl here, maybe tomorrow. A young woman who’s staying in the prince’s house. Wants me to talk sense into her, I think. Will you be here?’

‘Got a job on,’ Grim said. ‘Big job, up at Wolf Glen. Wanted to talk to you about that.’

‘Mm-hm?’ Wolf Glen. That was where Flidais’s girl came from. ‘Talk away, then.’

‘Been asked to help with the building up there. Some kind of house or hall, special job. Might take a while; could be right through summer, the fellow said. Good pay. We could put quite a bit by.’

I thought of all the reasons Grim would not want to go and stay at Wolf Glen over a whole spring and summer.

‘Ride up in the morning, ride back before dark,’ he said, as if he could read my mind. ‘Sleep here, work up there. Told the fellow that was the only way I’d do it. Told him any day the weather’s not right I won’t go.’

‘And what did he say to that?’

‘He said fine by him. Said he’d lend me a horse.’

‘That’s generous.’ It was generous enough to make me suspicious. Was someone trying to separate us? My mind filled up again with Mathuin, with plots and traps and perilous lies.

‘Fellow said he wanted someone who doesn’t need telling what to do all the time. And he wanted someone big and strong. Lot of heavy lifting. Fancy thatching to do later on. Said he’d asked around the district and everyone told him I was the man for the job.’

‘It sounds like he needs a whole team of men.’

‘Didn’t talk about it much. I told him I’d go up there in the morning and have a look. Said I couldn’t give him a yes or no till I’d seen it. Be gone most of the day.’

‘Oh. All right.’

‘Sure?’ He was looking at me rather more closely than I found comfortable.