Marcus glanced to the house. It was of good size, as befitted a man who was a principal builder to the crown. Marcus himself had lived in this house for a few months as a youth, before Anglesmore had been restored to him and Joan had married the man who had given them shelter. A house too wide for one person, Joan had called it back then. She and Rhys had filled it to the point where it bulged with family and love.

He looked across at his sister. She was watching her husband and children. Tenderness veiled her expression. Marcus instantly experienced the jumble of reactions that he felt whenever he saw that look on her. His heart filled with happiness for her, but also resentment and even jealousy.

The latter emotions were not worthy of him, but he could not deny they were there. They had been in his soul since he had learned which life Joan had chosen. As a youth they had ruled him, and kept him from visiting her when he came to London. The estrangement had lasted years.

In part he had avoided coming because this house and neighborhood reminded him of the bad years after his father died, when Anglesmore had been lost and he and Joan had been reduced to poverty. Mostly, however, it had been anger at Joan that had kept him away.

Finally, he had been forced to come. Addis de Valence, the lord who served as Anglesmore’s warden after Marcus got his place back, had shown no inclination to relinquish his hold when Marcus came of age. Resentment at that had led him to confront Addis.

“You should have stood aside months ago. Why do you delay, and keep one hand on my shoulder?”

“I am waiting for you to show that you are a man.”

The insult had been infuriating. “Meet me with swords and I’ll damn well prove that I am a man if you have any question about it.”

“I do not speak of skill at arms. There is a woman in London who waits for you to visit her. Whenever you journey there, she spends her days listening for your bootstep. A man will set aside whatever anger keeps him from that house. It is the boy in you who cannot reconcile what happened, and what she sacrificed, and how she then rejected all that she had fought to regain.”

And so he had come to this house, and was glad that he did. But the anger still lived in his gut. He was only alive because of Joan. He only had Anglesmore because of her. She had slaved for three years to get their place back after they lost it. And then, at the moment of victory, she had walked away from it, from him, because of a man.