Lady Margery pursed up, her face sour. At length she squinted at Arable, the crust in her wrinkles flaking. “Aren’t you lucky, dear? My son has a soft spot for pretty faces. Be sure that we never see yours again.”

Arable searched the man’s face for any sign of compassion, but he merely frowned. “Listen to me, then. You’re to stay in this room for the rest of the night. By morning they’ll surely know we’ve left anyway, and then you can do as you wish. But I’m leaving one of my men outside the door until then, to tell any visitors my family is quite indisposed. In the morning, he’ll catch up with us in Warwick. His name is Kendrick, and he is not a kind man. If you so much as touch these doors, I give him full authority to do anything he wishes to you. For your sake, you should hope he kills you at the end of it. However, stay inside and quiet until morning, and you have nothing to fear. Tell me that you understand.”

Arable swallowed, gasping for air. “I understand.”

“You’re too kind.” Lady Margery d’Oily was fixing her hair. The fact that she considered rape and murder a kindness made Arable shiver.

The young Waleran squeezed Arable’s shoulder. His face was suddenly kind, and relaxed despite the circumstances. Arable whispered to him, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I believe you,” he whispered back. “But that doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

Arable stayed there, in the middle of the floor, and they subsequently forgot about her entirely. They collected their belongings and side-stepped around her as if she were a puddle of mud. Eventually, Arable closed her eyes and sank further down, exactly as important to the world as they made her feel. She wrapped her arms around her knees and tried to think, tried to find whatever it was she was missing. Her options couldn’t have run out, she simply had to figure out what was left. Her mind scattered, running down every opportunity left before her, but found only dead ends. She stayed there even as they left, even as the sun crawled across the floor, waiting, desperate, for anything to reveal itself.

Closing her eyes, she wondered what Roger de Lacy would do.

“Give up,” de Lacy suggested, rapping his fingers together, and snuffing out the candle on the desk. “What is the point in continuing to live when there is no one alive who wants you to do so?” He walked to the back of his office, pushed open the window and heaved his body out headfirst, his robes ripping as he slid through its opening and out into a plunge to the bailey far below.

She shook away the false memories. There had to be something.