She ambled around the market stalls, bending to sniff foods and examine objects so Marcus would not see her dismay. She purchased a little flask of mead and several candles. Marcus seethed alongside her the whole time. She chose a variety of dried stalks from a woman who sold herbs. One was hanging very high, and Marcus helped cut it down, then absently plucked a coin from his own purse to pay for it.

“Tell me, Sir Marcus, are you saying that the King has commanded that I am to live with my sister?”

“Since your husband is dead, you need a place. It disturbed him to learn you had retired to that Scottish convent for lack of a home. And that is his goal in all of this—to restore your family’s honor, and return Llygad ap Madoc’s home to his daughters.”

“Except in marrying my sister, the home will become yours.”

“It will also be hers again. And yours. Your nobility will be restored. Someday our son will gain it all, so your father’s bloodline will sit in the lord’s chair again one day.”

Not only her father’s bloodline. Not just the blood of a family that could trace its lineage back to King Hywel Dda centuries earlier. It would be diluted by that of this Englishman, and her nephew would be more English than Welsh, and sworn to do England’s bidding.

“Does he expect this to appease the men who followed my father’s banner? They will not lay down their arms, but only be angered.”

“I do not know what Edward expects, except from me. And that is to wed the daughter of Llygad, and be lord of those lands until our son succeeds me.”

“And crush the rebellion that her father started, so that it does not grow into something other than a small mountain band raiding English-held lands.”

“Aye, that too.”

She stopped and faced him. “Do you know why Edward disseized my father?”

“Your father raised his standard against the crown.”

“Do you know why?”

He looked past her, avoiding her eyes, exasperated by the question. “Everyone knows why, Nesta. The songs about it are still very popular.”

“Ah, the songs. Which one have you heard? That which describes how I was forced, or that which credits me with virtue and the King with restraint.”

His gaze swung back, sharply. “Both of those, and also the one that says you were willing.”

“There is a fourth song, of course. The one where the fault was all mine, where the Welsh temptress bewitched him. It is the favorite one in Wales among the common people. They laugh so hard when they hear of the great king made weak by lust that they split their sides.”

“That one I can most easily believe, having been a victim of your spell.”