She could see no such fury in him yet. When the village priest had sneered at them, the Welshman only stood taller and spoke haughtily. Like one who had imitated it his whole life, he summoned the arrogance of the highborn and wielded it easily, until the priest was scraping and scurrying to placate him.

The Welshman had served a lord, or was born to one, she was sure of it. A bastard son, perhaps, but more likely a master falconer to a great lord – they were among the highest members of any household, that would account for his airs. But she did not care to know, and pushed the thought away. She was always pushing away the thought of him. Even now when what she searched for waited just inside this door, her thoughts were on him. How well he looked now that the edge of starvation was gone from his face, the soft and longing way he spoke of his home in Wales, the smiles he gave to Fuss, the searching looks he gave to her – it all crowded her mind, and she pushed it away.

Mary. Mary was inside, with answers that would break her heart. She was ready to hear them. She would never be ready.

At her back there was the heat of his lust. Within it, she felt the pull of his fascination with her. But over it all, the buffer to these potent forces, was his infinite patience.

That was the one thought of him she did not push away now: his face as he waited for the falcon while it moved through the sky, diving and missing over and over again. How he stood serene and untroubled, like time had no meaning, calmly waiting for the moment to arrive.

She gathered that calm to herself, willed it to seep beneath her skin and to her bones, and raised her hand to the door.

Gryff did not know if he was meant to follow. He had felt the tension gathering in her all morning, and had bitten his tongue against asking why today was different. She had taken extra time to clean herself, put on fresh linen and her finer gown, and emerged with her hair carefully coiled into neat braids at the sides of her head, crowned with a crisp white linen fillet. Her forearms held no weapons now, the split in the sleeves tied closed. When she led them into the town and headed for the church, he thought she meant to attend mass.