“Will you never learn to obey? I told you not to speak.” He pressed her back with his arm and moved her forward. “I am not so foolish as to help you escape. I merely want to be with you for a while, but not in this prison. Now, be silent.”

He guided her through the sleeping manor. Down the stone steps, past Hubert’s chamber, through the timbered hall. They stepped out into the silent yard.

The rush of crisp, fresh air made her heady. She gazed up at a beautiful sky dotted with hundreds of bright stars. Her soul stretched at the sight, and her heart filled with gratitude that he had given her this temporary reprieve and had let her taste the world again.

He waited while she absorbed it, then took her hand. “Come with me.”

He led her over to the chapel. She wondered if the priest slept in his chamber at its rear, and if he would ignore them.

They did not enter the chapel, however. Horses waited in the shadows where it met the wall. “We will go away from this place, Nesta. Outside the wall, where I am not the King’s man, and you are not a Welsh traitor. Put up your hood. You are wearing one of my squire’s cloaks, and this is his horse, and in the night no one will think twice about the person riding beside me.”

“If this is discovered, Arundal and the others will think—”

“They will think that I am a man hungry for a woman, who took advantage of a desperate lady’s hope for mercy in order to ease his need. Maybe they will be right. I do not know myself anymore. If they are angry, it will only be because I would not allow one of them to try it.”

They rode out the gate. The guards only noticed Marcus. The camps slept as soundly as the manor, and they trotted through them, heading to the west. Finally, Marcus led her up a low hill behind the outskirts of his army. No fires burned up here but many could be seen below, dotting the rolling land much as the stars did the sky.

“One is hard put to determine where the sky ends and the ground begins out there,” she said.

He dismounted and lifted her off her horse. “The night appears endless, doesn’t it? There is freedom in the sight of it.”

“Perhaps I will be given a prison chamber with a little window, so that I can see stars like this some nights.”

He laid his palm against her cheek. “Let us not speak of that. We came out here to be away from it.”

The eyes gazing at her contained their own fires and stars, like a continuation of the lights of the night. The comfort of his touch had her spirit calming. She no longer felt chilled.