For that alone he might not have wakened fully. He stirred, murmured something, and the arm that circled Alice drew her closer, but then a sound, faint but persistent, broke through his sex-drugged sleep and brought his eyes, protestingly, open.

The sound was there still. There was someone at the door. And now a voice, soft but urgent, was added to the tapping.

“My lord! My lord Alexander!”

Anyone who interrupted this night, thought Alexander dimly, ought to be hanged. But then anyone who did so – his mind cleared very quickly as he slid from the warmth of the bed, and the chill air of dawn struck his naked body like a cold shower – must do so for some very urgent reason. And that could only mean (as he snatched up a bedgown and flung it round him) that could only mean some sort of serious trouble.

It was Jeshua outside the door. In the smoky light from the cresset by the doorway his face showed pale and tense.

“What is it? The duke?”

Jeshua shot a glance past Alexander to where Alice lay sleeping, then said in an urgent undervoice: “It may be. No, he’s not ill, but I think there’s danger to him, or to you. I ask your pardon for disturbing you now, but I think we must talk.”

“Danger? To the duke?” Alexander had, naturally, looked with curiosity and speculation at Count Madoc in the courtyard, and afterwards in the hall of feasting, but he only saw that the count, though not at first quite able to avoid showing an understandable chagrin and anger at the failure of his marriage plans, had appeared to control himself reasonably soon; and at the wedding feast, where he was seated at the duke’s left hand, he had behaved with reserve, but with smiling and careful courtesy. Alexander had seen no more than that; with eyes only for Alice, and thoughts only for the coming night, he had noticed nothing else. Nor had he given a thought to what might have passed between Madoc and the duke in their private interview after the feasting.

Now he said softly: “No, wait. Over here.” Shutting the bedchamber door softly behind him, he took the other man by the arm and led him across the passageway into an embrasure where a window let in the chill air of dawn.

“Now. Tell me. You’re talking about Count Madoc?”

“Who else? My lord, not for anything less would I have disturbed you tonight, and I left it as long as I dared –”

“Never mind that. Get on. What do you know?”

“Only that the count would do anything, dare anything, to get possession of these lands. Beltrane told me other things that have happened, but no matter of that now. I do know one thing that was to pass tonight between him and the duke, because I shall have to make the arrangements. The count is to leave, though not for a day or so. This for form’s sake only. But he is to dismiss his men-at-arms tomorrow, to wait for him beyond the castle’s boundary.”