Her gaze skimmed the house and shed that he would sacrifice. “You risked much to help me. I am sorry that you will lose everything.”

“My grandfather died fighting with Llywelyn. My father had his livelihood taken away. When the time comes, we do what must be done and can’t count the loss, can we. Whether we live in the marches or the west or north, whether we serve the English as clerks or priests, the chance to have Cymru back will not be forsaken because of some wooden wheels or a bit of bread. It was thus for my grandfather and me, and it will be thus for my grandchildren and theirs.”

His words touched her in ways he could never know. Her eyes teared, and shame ripped at her. She turned away from him, embarrassed by his loyalty because her own had been so unreliable.

Marcus walked his horse toward her. David waited on his wagon, and Sieg on his horse.

The chance to have Cymru back will not be forsaken for some wheels or a bit of bread. She had been ready to forsake it for something less necessary to her life than those wheels and bread were to the wainwright’s. Something as frivolous as pleasure, and the foolish, childish dreams that could sleep in a woman’s heart.

Marcus lifted her onto his horse and swung up behind her. As if he guessed what had happened, he did not speak to her. He left her to her private humiliation.

She tried to ignore his tense body behind her, and the fury pouring off him. She spilled all of her attention onto her self-loathing and disgust. She made it a point to not notice how comforting it felt to have him there, even if he was angry.

She tried to block her mind to how his arms surrounded hers much like a gentle embrace, and how his breath on her hair soothed her turmoil in a reassuring way.

Marcus dropped Nesta inside the gate, and then turned his horse and rode toward the hills. He went to a spot he had often visited as a boy, where the ground dropped away precipitously into a valley. As a child it had seemed to him that he could see the whole world from here, and he still found the vast view soothing.

It did not soothe him this day. He paced along the ridge, daring the red stone to crumble beneath him.

He had always known that he would face the devil’s choice about Nesta. He had hoped, however, that it would not be this soon, and this dangerous.

He was furious with her, and with himself. Despite his warnings, she was pursuing whatever scheme she had become embroiled in. Today had proven that, just as it had proven that protecting her had become his first thought, his only thought, when she was in danger.