Somewhere in the world, an old woman named Marie de Clere was growing even older. She’d made Roger two promises the day he asked for her hand in marriage. “I’ll be as true to you as you are to me,” was the first, which Roger had mistaken for a pledge rather than a threat. The second, “I’ll never leave France for you,” he mistook for a joke. Two mistaken promises that defined their life since. She had been attractive then, therefore he was attracted to her. He had mistaken that for love. And once upon a time he was unimportant enough that he could marry someone on such irrational grounds as love.

What he had endured in the many years since was a real love, the kind no poet would ever write about. There were no pretty whispers or flowery words that could describe the love that is forged over a lifetime. Real love is all crag and crevice. It looks different from every angle, each mood casting a different shadow.

It had been two years since Roger had seen his Marie, since his unusual appointment to this abominable sheriffcy. Marie had been many things, and half of them were infuriating, but the better parts of her had fit well with his own shortcomings. When he struggled with the pettiness and selfishness of mankind, she had a way of bringing him back. Over the last two years without her, those grudges had dragged him down. Had she been here, perhaps he could have found a way to placate his rebellious lords other than by giving in to their demands. Perhaps her absence was the reason he had failed, and so completely at that.

“You were speaking of blood,” Lady Margery whispered, looking over the lip of her own glass.

“I was speaking of blood,” he rose, to peer out the sliver window. It was an early evening outside, the sun setting, the Trent sparkling below. In spring there would have been a field of purple crocuses sprawling away to the west, but not now. Still he preferred the view from this room for its singular remarkable quality—that it contained not a single stone or citizen of Nottingham. “It doesn’t matter what I’ve done, all that matters is what is in my veins. Or, more applicably, that which is not. I am the third son of the third daughter in an unnotable family made no richer by its marriages. You’ll notice that none of the words I just said sounded anything like Richard.”

“Except for richer,” Margery said, and all of Roger’s thoughts scattered and hid in tiny black cracks. He chose to blink. She clarified, “Richer sounds like Richard.”

“Why would you stop me when I was being clever?”

“You weren’t being clever.” She shrugged. “If you’d been clever, I wouldn’t have found such an obvious flaw in your cleverness.”