“You think I am a fool, don’t you. You do not care for her.”

“You are wrong there. I admire her greatly. She would have made a great merchant.” He smiled at the notion. “If you are not going to join her, and you are not going to expose her, what will you do?”

Marcus had come to this ridge to determine the answer to that, and he suddenly realized that he knew what it was.

He gazed down at the crumbling ground two feet from his boot. He would be walking a similar edge for the next few months.

“I am going to stop her.”

Nesta followed the steward up the stairs to the manor’s second level. The formal way that Marcus had summoned her to his solar did not bode well for her.

She instinctively touched her bodice near her heart, and felt the little bulge there. Upon arriving back from the disaster at the wainwright’s, she had found her father’s ring and hidden it in her clothing as a talisman against more weakness.

For hours she had been numb, living in a daze as she accepted what she had done, and had refused to do. Her delay in agreeing to join Carwyn had almost gotten him captured. In the light of that, other delays and betrayals had suddenly grown in significance.

She had let Marcus seduce her into complacency, and at the most crucial moment in her father’s plans. Worse, she had let him get too close and know her too well, so that slowly, bit by bit, he was anticipating her every move and then blocking it.

She touched the ring again, and squared her shoulders. She tried to swallow the alarm that had risen in her when the steward came for her. Marcus had not returned to the manor until late, and had been cool and indifferent at the evening meal. Perhaps he had captured Carwyn after all. Maybe, on reflection, he had realized just what he had seen in that shed, and surmised just whom she had met.

She half expected to find a manor court waiting for her in the solar. Instead only Marcus was there.

Nay, not Marcus. Not the young man who had held her in his arms. The person sitting in the large chair near the hearth wore little warmth in his expression. He was all nobility and power and sternness.

She had been summoned to face the King’s man.

The steward departed. Marcus coolly examined her. He appeared calm enough. His arms rested on the sides of the chair in a relaxed pose. He did not speak, and seemed to be waiting for something.

It entered her mind that, considering the formality of this audience, perhaps he expected her to kneel. She would not. He was not her lord.

“Who was the man you met at the wainwright’s?” His voice was quiet, but firm.