Alice sat down again, and the duke pulled a chair nearer the window. In spite of the sunshine, and the warmth dealt out by a brazier, the room was chilly. He rubbed his hands together and cleared his throat, but before he could speak she said, demurely: “Yes, Father.”

“What do you mean, yes Father? I’ve said nothing yet.”

“No, but the wind is in the north, and the New Year is passing, and you are feeling the cold.”

Her father knitted his brows and ducked his head forward, peering at her. With age he was getting short-sighted. “Well? And so?”

“So, with the castle as cold as a tomb and the draughts everywhere, it’s time to go on pilgrimage again?”

He gave his dry chuckle. “Don’t let Father Anselm hear you talking like that, my child! But you’re right, of course. I do find myself thinking about the spring sunshine in the south, when I know I ought to think of nothing but my sins, and the hardships of the journey, and the prayers we shall offer at the other end.”

“What sins?” asked his daughter affectionately. “I’m the one who does the sinning, and my thoughts just now are sin enough! I was just talking with Mariamne about the Holy Land, and how this might be the year we went again, and how I would enjoy visiting Rome again – that lovely comfortable house with the heated floors! – and the Damascus silks I’d be able to buy from that souk in Jerusalem. There’s sin for you!”

“Don’t jest about it, love.”

He spoke gently, but she flushed and said quickly:

“Forgive me. But Father, it’s true. You’re a saint, and God knows you’ve given me every chance to be one, too, but I’m still only a sinful girl who thinks more of – well, of this world and all the lovely things in it, than of the one to come.”

“And of such things as marriage?” At her quick look he nodded, gravely. “Yes, child, that is what I came to talk about, not about journeyings and visitings and prayers.”

She drew her breath in sharply, then sat back, waiting, folding her hands together in her lap, a meek gesture that did not deceive her father for a moment.

He said, carefully, as if testing her reactions: “You have passed your sixteenth birthday, Alice. It’s an age when most girls are safely wedded, and looking to their own households and their families.”

She said nothing, and he nodded again. “I know, my dear. We have spoken of this before, and you have been dutiful, but always begging me to wait, to wait another year … and then another. Now you must tell me why. You have no mother to advise you, but I will listen. Would you avoid marriage, child? Is it possible that you have begun to think about a convent?”

“No!” She spoke so sharply that he put his brows up in surprise, and she went on more gently: “No, Father, it’s not that. You know I could never be – I could never accept the holy life. And as for marriage, I’ve always known that some day I’ll have to think of it, but – well, I have a household here, and a care, which is for you! May we not wait? Perhaps till I am turned seventeen? Then I promise I will obey you and let you settle my future –” she flashed him a smile, part affection, part mischief – “always providing that this young man you’ve chosen is handsome and brave – and landless, so he won’t take me away, but will come here to live at Castle Rose!”