“I am glad that you have met her, and that you are pleased. I pray that you find love with her, Mark. It is worth far more than all the lands in Wales.” Joan no longer watched her husband. Warmth still suffused her expression, only now it was for him, her brother.

He did not respond. For one night, after some kisses in a garden, he had dared to wonder if he might know what Joan hoped him to find. It had been an exhilarating, but childish, fantasy. The Lord of Anglesmore was born for other things. Duty called.

Joan caught Rhys’s eye and gave a little signal with her hand. Rhys nodded, and rose from the ground where he wrestled with his two little boys. The children clung to his tall body as he stood, hanging from his shoulders and strong arms. With laughs and gentle hands, he pried them loose and lowered them to the ground.

“Come with me, brother,” Joan said. “We have something to show you.”

Marcus accompanied Joan over to a mason’s workbench. A tall form stood on it, shrouded in canvas. It had been there every time that Marcus had visited since he resumed coming here four years ago. Since Rhys never seemed to be working on it, Marcus assumed it was an abandoned project, such as happens when a man moves on to other things. Rhys Mason no longer carved stone but designed great buildings for the King.

Rhys joined them and pulled off the canvas. A gleaming statue of Saint George was unveiled, its face bearing the likeness of the last Lord of Anglesmore. The marble had a slightly yellow hue, giving the face even more realism.

“It took many years, since I have other duties now,” Rhys explained as he glossed his fingertips over a section of carved armor, his blue eyes and sensitive touch checking the surface. “Joan helped me rough it out, since my hand by itself does not have the strength for that. She also did some of the work on the face, since she knew your father’s countenance.”

Marcus gazed at that face, so real in the dimming light, so similar to the one of his boyhood memories. His last sight of it had been when it wore the mask of death, but Joan had shown their father years younger, and alert and alive.

His throat thickened. He had requested this of Joan years ago, but thought it had been forgotten. He pictured his sister and her husband working on it all this time, bit by bit.

“It is perfect,” he said. “Weak hand or not, you have not lost your skill, Rhys.”

“Our skill. It is not just my craft here.”

“Now we have to find a way to get it to Anglesmore,” Joan said.

“I can help there,” a new voice answered.