Her eyes were so like her daughter’s that he found he could not hate her, not really. She had grace enough to look shamed.

“I told you once you had not met my daughter. And verily, always have I believed that none knew her, who had not seen her with sword in hand.” She looked back to where Gwenllian clasped hands with Madog. “But then I saw her unarmed, with such tender feeling in her when she looked to you. Then did I fear the danger to her, even more than to give her to war, to know she would trust her life and her heart to the king’s man.”

Gwenllian turned, her veil a glowing white in the morning sun. Her eyes found him, settled on him. He saw the tenderness Eluned spoke of there.

“Nay, you need not fear,” he said. “I am her man. Hers and no other.”

The journey was a cold one, but the ground was smooth and hard, and they joined parties that rode swiftly. They would reach Morency in time for the Christmas feast, an event she seemed uncommonly eager to see.

“Hugh began planning for it even before the first leaf fell in autumn,” she said as they lay curled together for warmth at an inn at Shrewsbury. “He would have a tapestry to honor your first Christmas at Morency as lord. Is true you never lived there after Aymer died, but only came for rare visits?”

“Aye is true,” he said, and burrowed his face into her hair, tightening his arms around her, loving the feel of her. He did not say that it had not felt like his own, that it had ruled him more than he could rule it, until she had come there. Instead, he closed his teeth on the flesh of her earlobe, a soft nip. “But you try divert my attention from this tapestry that so frightened you that you must run to the mountains of Wales to escape the horror of it.”

She drew up her knees and gripped his hands where they lay clasped on the blanket. “Next time I am so struck with terror, I shall run to you instead,” she said solemnly. “I vow it.”

“And gladly shall I vanquish your enemy, my lady, and lay the broken loom at your feet. Less messy than the head of a dragon.”

She laughed then, that hard-won sound that swelled inside him and warmed him as nothing else.

When Morency was at last in sight, he sent Davydd ahead to give warning to Hugh. It was two days before the Christmas mass, time enough to rest and prepare for the Night Vigil and the feast. The leaves were all stripped from the trees, and the wind from the sea blew strong.