Lioncel nodded gravely; even as a youngster the son of a knightly house did not hide from the facts of life and death. He had been raised with the knowledge that war was the nobility’s trade and avocation, and death by the sword their accepted fate. One that might come calling at any moment to exact the price of their privileges.

“If we did, your mother would take seisin of Barony Forest Grove by dower right until you came of age, in trust for you and your sister, and would have a third of the mesne tithes as widow’s portion for her lifetime after you came of age and took seisin in your own right; that’s settled law. But Diomede’s position would be . . . ambiguous, and so would Delia’s with regard to Ath and its revenues. Your lady mother would need your support because she has no formal right to Ath from me except through Diomede and that’s uncertain. Technically Diomede is my son, but of course I’m not married to her so she can’t claim seisin by dower right if I die or the widow’s portion of the revenues. Dower descends from the husband, it doesn’t rise from the child.”

Dammit, she thought. Norman and his obsessions! Not to mention the Thomas à Becket fixation a lot of the clergy have developed. Why on earth couldn’t Delia and I get married? We have been for all practical purposes for a decade and a half!

Aloud she continued: “It’s a nice point of law and some Chancellery clerk or worse still some Churchman might start a suit alleging Diomede was an orphan in need of wardship and that she had no standing to claim ward over him since a child can’t have two legal mothers. The thing could be tied up in the courts for years with the land going to ruin. A page is a child; being a squire doesn’t mean you’re of age but it does give you a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. It proves that you’re old enough to take a legally binding oath of vassalage, so you can’t be completely ignored. And as elder brother, you do then have certain rights where a minor sibling and the sibling’s inheritance is concerned, and your mother through you since you’d be automatically under her ward as a widowed mother of a minor heir. Understand?”

He frowned, pale brows knotting in his tanned young face. “Yes, my lady, I think so. God and your patron saints protect you and my lord my father, but if the worst should happen, I will be my mother’s strong right arm and my brother’s shield and prove their rights against any who deny them. I swear it before God and the Virgin and my patron saint, St. Michael of the Lance.”

He crossed himself and she nodded.