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main player in this present drama as if her affairs were of no further concern, the child trailed disconsolately back to the women’s wing, where she was pounced upon by her aunt and obliged to participate in the preparations for departure.
    The hunting party returned with much revelry and elation, bugles blowing, two stags slung across poles borne in the rear by four huntsmen apiece. The great hall resounded with their feasting, with the music of pipe and lyre, but Lord Bellair had decreed that today the women should dine apart, and Magdalen ate in her aunt’s company in the parlor, silently lamenting the unjust lot of women.
    Nor did she have private speech with Lord de Gervais before their departure, three days later, by which time she had decided that being betrothed was a sad and sorry condition, according none of the expected advantages. But not even this disgruntlement could spoil her excitement at the sight of the cavalcade drawn up in the
place d’armes
at dawn on the day of departure. A small troop of Lord Bellair’s men were to accompany them to the border of Bellair territory, as a matter of courtesy. The knights’ own force, refreshed after the generous hospitality they had been accorded, sat alert and ready, and the train of pack mules loaded with the baggage stood in resigned patience.
    Magdalen looked in vain for her own horse. Lord de Gervais was standing talking to her father when she hurried over. “I beg pardon for interrupting, sir, but where is my mount? I cannot see Malapert anywhere.”
    “You are to ride with me, Magdalen,” de Gervais informed her. “Your aunt and her women will ride pillion with the grooms.”
    “But I would ride by myself,” Magdalen blurted without thought for discourtesy. “I will not be carried like a baby.”
    Lord Bellair’s reaction to this insolence was entirely predictable. De Gervais interrupted the threats ofsummary punishment with a raised hand. “Nay, we will excuse the impertinence. If the child wishes to ride, then she may do so until she is fatigued.”
    “I will not become fatigued,” Magdalen declared stoutly, emboldened by this championship.
    “I will give you four hours at the outside,” he challenged, laughing. “Go and tell a groom to have your mount readied.”
    In her pleasure and relief, Magdalen failed to remark the subtle shift in authority revealed by that exchange. In any other circumstances, she would have been mightily puzzled that her father would have permitted the intercession of a stranger in such an instance. The intercession itself would ordinarily have been an unthinkable act. But Lord de Gervais was rapidly assuming godlike qualities in the child’s vivid imagination, and whatever he did was becoming invested with a magic that set his actions outside the normal run of things.
    Then came the flurry and excitement of departure. Lord Bellair promised that he would be in London within the year, and she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him with a fierceness that surprised him. She made a decorous farewell to the pages and then spoiled the effect with a broad grin and a mischievous wink. The servitors who had known her through her growing were there to call their good wishes, and she rode through the great gate and across the drawbridge, waving frantically over her shoulder at her home and wondering why she felt suddenly melancholy.
    Then the bugle sounded, and the thrilling prospect of what lay ahead drove all from her mind but the need to meet the Lord de Gervais’s challenge. She rode proudly upright at his side as the sun rose, and it was near midmorning before her aching back caused her shoulders to slump slightly. The third time she put her hand behind her in an unconscious gesture, rubbing the small of her back to ease the stiffness, Guy leaned downfrom his palfrey, caught her under the arms, and lifted her onto the saddle in front of him.
    “If you exhaust yourself this day, you will be fit for nothing on the