The trouble was, everything at Winterfalls was organised. The riding horses were kept in the stable, where there was always someone keeping an eye on them. When they were let out for exercise or to graze in a field, there were workers nearby, grooms, farmhands, folk going up and down the tracks with carts or barrows or herds of cows. Even if she could take a horse without being noticed, she’d have to pass through one of the gates to get out, and all of them had guards, except for a little one up near a copse of birches. Even there, someone would most likely see her. She might manage to gallop a short distance, but she’d be stopped before she even got to that patch of woodland across the fields. Dreamer’s Wood, it was called. Where that wise woman lived, the one she was supposed to go and talk to. It was days and days since Flidais had asked her to ride over there. She was running out of excuses for not going. A wise woman! Some old crone who’d tell her to pull herself together and be thankful for her blessings. Why would Flidais imagine she’d want to unburden herself to someone like that?

It wasn’t that Flidais was unkind. She was all right, as ladies went. She was youngish. She meant well. But she didn’t know what to do with Cara any more than Aunt Della did. She suggested looking at the books in the prince’s library. She invited Cara to sit with her and the other ladies in the mornings, when they all did sewing or spinning together. She didn’t mind Cara walking or riding around the home farm, but she always sent someone to tag along with her, Mhairi or Deirdre asking questions, trying to make her talk. And if it was Mhairi, she brought a wretched little dog, the snappiest, most ill-tempered thing Cara had ever met. When she’d tried to make friends it had bitten her finger.

In the evenings they all sat around and listened to folk playing music, or they told stories, or sometimes Prince Oran or Lady Flidais would read from a book of tales. Cara didn’t mind the tales. They let her pretend for a while that she was somewhere else. Or that she was someone else, someone who could speak when she needed to, someone who could go where she pleased. Except that when the story was finished and the book was closed the longing for home came back tenfold, an ache in her chest so strong she thought she might be sick from it.