She knew without asking that it was only one such tale he might tell, of the viciousness he had seen here. The people were ever ready to cringe from him, so accustomed were they to unpredictable brutality from their lord.

“Never have you committed such a cruelty.”

“Have I not?” An echo of his mocking smile came to his lips. “Little do you know of my sins.”

It angered her and pained her, his easy rejection of her good opinion. But she would not give in. She knew him too well now. She pressed her hand to his chest, felt his heart beating there. “Much do I know of you.”

He tried to push it away, but she would not let him. Instead he left his own hand there, atop hers as his breath came faster, more shallow. His gaze was trained on her face, unfocused.

“Is not only this first sin for which they name me Edward’s butcher.”

“You have killed on your king’s command, even outside of war?”

He gave a faint nod. “Twice has he asked it of me, to dispatch enemies in secret. I... once by my own hand, and once I made certain it was done.”

She remembered the rumor of Edward’s enemy who had died by Ranulf’s sword, the accident that was no accident. She thought of her mother, cold dread spiraling in her belly.

“As well disobey God as your king,” she said firmly. “Is Edward’s sin, and not your own.”

“It must be my sin,” he insisted, “Else her ghost would not haunt me.”

He must mean Alice. But Gwenllian did not believe in ghosts, and had seen none in this place. “To dream of a dead woman does not make it a sin.”

“Not only in dreams. I saw her waking, as clear as you stand before me now. But in dreams did she speak, and bade me save my immortal soul lest I become as wicked as the man who raised me. She bade me commit no more murder, even if Edward commands it.”

And so he had fled, and was lost in Wales. Almost could she laugh, to think how her mother and her men were sure he had come to commit some villainous act his king had laid on him. He was entirely opposite of everything they had believed. Her conscience pricked her, knowing she had believed it too.

“But when I woke you were there,” he said, in a voice that squeezed her heart. His hands moved again to her veil. “I thought you another vision.”