He stood waiting while she surveyed him as though he were a battle terrain, this lady who held his fate and freedom. So far he had met his mysterious angel’s cousin and teacher, and it seemed as though he was now meeting her mother. It vaguely upset him. He’d thought her a messenger from Heaven, or Hell, then a nameless Welsh commoner, then an invention of his fevered brain. To find that she might be part of this household, kin to this woman whose intent toward him he could not yet know... It felt as though he had been lured into a trap. The armed guard who had followed, now fading back into the shadows, did nothing to help the sensation.

“It is well to see you recovered, my lord,” she said, inclining her head slightly. “I am the Lady Eluned. I regret my husband’s brother is not fit to greet so noble a guest, and so I welcome you myself to Ruardean.”

Ruardean. The name sparked a series of memories, each like the sharp tooth of a beast he’d thought dead. Ruardean, held by the Courtauld family – so he was not in Wales. And this would be the wife of the errant crusader, the powerful Marcher lord who had ridden off to the Holy Land so many years ago and never returned. Ranulf may not know much of the Welsh and their ways, but he knew as well as any man the power of the Marcher lords. They were a law unto themselves, not held to the same rule as Edward’s other noble subjects.

But there was more, something more that made this family known to him. He steeled himself against the instant alarm that rose up at the knowledge that he stood on such hostile ground. As he would on the field, he took the offensive here, striking the first blow to lay open her purpose in holding him.

“My lady, am I held here to await the verdict of that plaint your lawyers bring against me? The bed you provide me is soft, but I am loathe to grow old in it.”

If she was surprised to have her cold courtesy returned with challenge, she did not show it.

“Our grievance against you, my lord, did not bring you here. The complaint is an old fruit, ripened these many years. It will surely fall from the tree, in God’s own time.” She shrugged. If it were a lie, she told it well.

“In God’s own time? If there is a natural fruit that rots on the branch without falling to earth after thirteen year’s corruption, I pray you show me this marvel,” he dismissed. “Though this business of yours smells as rotten as that.”