If she said more, Alexander did not hear it. Armed now equally with his opponent, and sensing the doubt overtaking the man’s rage, he felt nothing but a kind of exhilaration. His cut arm he felt not at all. He laughed, brought the dagger round into play alongside his sword, and leaped forward as if this were the first attack, rather than a desperate saving from defeat.

Twelve seconds later he killed Madoc with a blow from the murderer’s own dagger. Standing over the body, his breathing ragged, his tunic splashed with the count’s blood, and a trickle of his own dripping down from one hand, he dropped both weapons to the floor, and turned to hold out his arms to Alice. She flew into them, and he took her in an embrace as close as any other of that stormy wedding night.

“Alice. Alice.”

“I thought he was going to kill you.”

“He would have done, I think, but for you.”

“No, no. My brave lord, my love.”

She reached up, and his head went down in a kiss that seemed to be given by his whole body. “Alice, Alice –” It was all he could say.

“Alice?”

The voice from the bed brought them both back to earth and to the present. The duke, still dazed with sleep, and the fading fumes of the drug, was trying to push himself up on the pillows.

“What is it? What do you do here, child? Alexander?”

She pulled herself from her husband’s arms and ran to him. “Nothing, nothing, father. All’s well, truly. It’s over. And Madoc is dead.”

So few minutes had passed, though to Alexander, busy twisting Alice’s kerchief round the shallow cut in his forearm, the fight had seemed to take an eternity of time. The guards, sent by Jeshua, came running, and hard behind them the castle servants, sobered now and eager to rid their master’s home of the threat that all had feared, but been powerless to prevent.

Now by the count’s own action that threat was removed. It emerged that when he and Ansirus had been closeted together for a private talk after the wedding feast Madoc had spoken frankly of his disappointment, but had agreed that no binding contract had been made. He had even laughed, accepting the inevitable change of his plans with a kind of wry humour (“When children fall in love, what are grown men to say to it? Well, what’s done is done, so let us pledge them once more, cousin, and then get to our beds.”). If the duke had been less exhausted by the events of that long day, he might, even in his relief at the outcome of the talk, have been wary of accepting wine poured by his kinsman. But courtesy and trust demanded it, so he had taken the cup, and in a short while succumbed to that heavily drugged slumber.

Jeshua had been right about the count’s desperation. It had forced him in haste into a rash and very risky plan. By smothering Ansirus in his sleep he must have hoped that the duke’s death would be attributed to another seizure. What he planned after that could only be guessed at. The discovery of the body would of course have thrown the castle into an uproar, in which it might have been easy for the count – the duke’s nearest kinsman, who had already established some sort of right there – to assert his authority above that of the two he had called “children”; the authority of a regent, perhaps, for which he could quote Ansirus’ own sanction, claiming that it had been given last night in that private talk, a statement that no one could contradict.