“It will be pouring into the ground out there, that is where it will be.”

Marcus lifted his hand. “I have done my duty to try and avert this. If you want a battle, so be it.” He reached down for a sack resting near his leg. “Here are some of your things, Nesta, so that you are not without some comforts in that camp.”

Nesta reached for the sack, but another hand grabbed it first. Casting a suspicious glance at Marcus, Arundal loosened the string and rummaged through the contents.

His eyes narrowed and glinted triumphantly. Giving Hubert a knowing nudge, he withdrew a folded parchment. “Well, what do we have here, Marcus? A love poem? Or something more damning?”

Barely containing his glee, he unfolded the parchment. His face fell with disappointment. The sheet fluttered from his hand to the table.

It bore only a painted picture of a lamb and four angels.

Nesta’s eyes subtly widened. Carwyn’s gaze locked on the image before he darted Nesta a sharp, questioning glance.

“Reconsider, Carwyn,” Marcus said quietly, looking Nesta directly in the eyes. “This will not unfold as you expect.”

“Even if we lose this skirmish, we will not be defeated,” Carwyn said. “Others will join us.”

“Others may join you, but no one will aid you.”

Carwyn began to speak, but Nesta’s hand moved almost imperceptibly, silencing him. She leaned over and whispered in his ear.

A silence fell, broken only by the sounds of Arundal pawing deeper in the sack.

Nesta looked right at Marcus, and he looked straight back. He read the question in her eyes, and he let her see the answer.

She rose. “I will not be an ox sold at a market, or a prisoner who keeps trading one cell for another. Before any further discussions take place, I will speak with this marcher lord alone.”

She turned and left the tent without waiting for agreement. Marcus followed, not waiting for approval either.

She mounted her horse before any squire could help, and began trotting north, toward a hill on which the flank of Marcus’s army was positioned. Marcus swung up on his own horse and followed, catching up and falling into place beside her.

She did not speak or look at him until they reached the hill. “Tell them to leave,” she said as she pushed her horse to climb to the top.

Marcus gave the word for the soldiers to go down the hill. There, on its top, with the English army spread out on one side and the dense forest filling the other, with the high hill in the distance banded by Welsh, she dismounted.

She would not look at Marcus. She could not. Her shock at seeing the design in the tent had not dimmed, and the war in her heart raged as it never had. Anger that he had obstructed her final move clashed with heartbreaking humiliation that he had discovered her final betrayal.