Eventually the sunlight shifted through the trees, a stray bit of it catching her sword where it lay before her, and woke her from her trance.

“We push hard today, with the weather so fine,” she finally said.

She stood and belted her sword, then pulled out her small knife to strip leaves from the shrub. Tansy buttons would do as well as rue, added to these, and they were easily found. If she needed it.

A choice must be made, but there was time yet to decide. Weeks and weeks, if it was not decided for her by nature and circumstance. Until then, she must keep moving.

She carefully folded the leaves into a cloth and pushed them deep into her saddlebag before riding west, her armor softly chinking.

CHAPTER 18

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Ranulf had not imagined his remorse could grow keener, nor his anger more ferocious, until he returned to Morency to find her gone.

But he stayed silent when the quaking servant told him, not trusting himself to say more than a simple, “Where?” That itself was enough to make the man turn white as he stammered his ignorance.

Hugh Wisbech questioned servants for hours, sure that one must know something of Lady Morency’s whereabouts. The ladies who were her attendants showed a genuine confusion but little concern, saying that she had gone to search for some plants far afield and had expected it might require a few days. They felt sure she would return at any moment, though they admitted it was troubling that Ranulf’s party had not encountered her, nor word of her, as they had traveled among his tenants. Sir Gerald, his best knight, wanted to mount a party immediately to search for her. The man was sure her absence for so many days without word could only mean that she had been lured into a trap and was held ransom.

It was this ludicrous conjecture that made him look to Davydd. The boy stood in a corner a little apart from the rest, listening to this theory with a wry half-smile that matched his own. Gwenllian, captured, playing the part of the lady in distress. He would have laughed at it, if he could. But laughter was suddenly an impossible, mythical thing.

Davydd met his eyes for a moment, then looked away. It told him everything.