She heaved a deep breath as though readying herself. It made him remember her with her back against a tree, fighting for her life against a brigand. Trust and honor, she had said – and he had stayed to fight by her side. Edward ordered marriage, and she had not run from it. It was becoming a habit, this standing together in dire times.

He strode toward her and caught her hand, ignoring the slight tremble in it. A smile, even the ghost of one, would do.

“Fair lady, there be no bread that can hope to sustain us so well as to look upon you.”

She looked at him blankly. Well, and she had only lately warned him that she had no talent for courtly speech. He tried again.

“Full pleasing is your gown, my lady.”

She blinked and gave a hesitant nod. “It is my finest.”

Her discomfort in it was so evident that he almost wished he could apologize. Instead, he squeezed her hand firmly and swiftly, then brought her to her chair.

“You have found the chamber to your liking?”

“Aye,” she said, dipping her fingertips in the bowl of water presented by a servant. “There are windows of polished amber. I have never seen their like.”

“Amber is found on the shore here.” He stopped himself from saying that there were many pretty bits of it about, set in ladies’ baubles. Wherever those bits were, he could not offer them to her or to anyone. Like so much of the riches of this house, they were carried off by servants when Aymer died.

But he needn’t have bothered to offer her jewels, as her next words proved.

“I shall walk in search of it, I think. Master Edmund is always in want of amber for his sore joints.”

He gave a short laugh. “My lady, I am amazed you do not pry it from the walls to serve your ceaseless physicking.”

She set down the bit of fowl she had been preparing to eat. Her fingers picked it up again, rolling it about.

“You think it unseemly, that I should gather remedies.”

It was almost a question, her voice hushed and hesitant but still betraying a note of defiance under it all.

In a sudden rush of understanding, he knew what she feared. It was not just the strangeness of being out of armor and away from her men, or the weight of responsibility. It was all the eyes on her, while she was so ignorant of how to be a lady.

“I think it a great asset to Morency, and to all who dwell in it,” he assured her. It was true. She had saved him from a fever that would have killed him, with naught but bits of leaves.

She looked at him, startled. Those wide gray eyes.

“Why did you learn it so well? Is rare a lady studies so deep.”