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least, Gloriana thought with despairing relief, she was to be spared a public introduction to her husband’s lover. The reprieve was temporary, of course, but she was grateful all the same. “I don’t suppose you’ve managed to find out her name,” she whispered back as they stepped together onto the dais.
    “She is called Mariette,” Edward answered.
    Eigg and the priest rose out of deference to Gloriana, and she offered a faltering smile and joined them on the bench.
    “You have forgotten your headdress, Lady Kenbrook,” Cradoc pointed out mildly, between spoonfuls of savory stew. The friar was a pleasant middle-aged man with silver in his tonsured hair and a long, crooked scar beneath his right eye.
    Gloriana lowered her head to murmur a quick prayer and, using the point of her knife, helped herself to a steaming turnip and a slice of venison. She seldom thought of the Time Before, in that place Edwenna said she had only imagined, but at odd moments she remembered things. Just then, she recalled a pronged implement, called a fork, and longed for one.
    “She didn’t forget,” Eigg commented wryly, tearing a hunk of brown bread from the loaf. He was younger than Cradoc by a decade, a handsome man with darkhair and eyes and a good head for figures. “Her ladyship, it would seem, is wont to defy religious convention.”
    Normally, Gloriana did not mind the steward’s teasing and even took a harmless pleasure in it. That evening, however, she was on the prickly side. “You’ll get me burned for a heretic if you keep up that kind of talk,” she said, in a stiff tone. “May I remind you, sir, that I attend mass every morning, as faithfully as anyone else?”
    “If it’s sin that intrigues you,” Edward put in, bending to look around Gloriana to Eigg, “look to the lady’s husband.”
    Eigg wiped his trencher methodically with his portion of bread, while Cradoc snatched a roast pigeon from a tray borne by a passing servant.
    “And now,” said the priest, chewing, “we shall suffer a discourse on virtue—from none other than Edward St. Gregory, who has done more penance than any lad between here and London.”
    Out of the corner of her eye, Gloriana saw Edward’s color rise, and she allowed herself a smile. It was true that Edward had an uncommon gift for mischief, and no one knew that better than the friar, who had tutored them both, in their turns.
    Before the youngest St. Gregory could offer a retort, there was a stir at the entrance to the hall, and Gloriana forgot her fleeting amusement.
    It seemed that Gareth had come to supper after all, and Dane was beside him.
    Gloriana started to rise, her first instinct being an unworthy desire to escape, but even as she changed her mind, Eigg grasped her wrist to prevent her from bolting.
    “Things will be too easy for his lordship if you go,”he said quietly, in a tone pitched to reach Gloriana’s ears and no other’s. “Stay, Lady Kenbrook, for it is your right to dine at this table.”
    Gloriana watched her husband stride through the hall, flushed with drink, a comradely arm around his elder brother’s shoulders. They were surrounded by members of Kenbrook’s seedy army, all of them bellowing a discordant version of some bawdy tavern song, and the men at the lower table joined the singing.
    Gareth’s hounds, waiting placidly beneath the trestle for table scraps, wriggled out from under and scattered, whining, in all directions. This phenomenon produced a swell of raucous laughter, for these were hunting dogs who had faced wild boars and dodged the spiked antlers of cornered stags.
    Gloriana sat stiffly, her chin raised and her shoulders straight, watching her husband’s approach. When Kenbrook drew closer, she saw that he was not so drunk as she had thought, but the knowledge was cold comfort. His eyes, blue as a stormy northern sea, were bright with merry defiance and a certain mockery.
    Her hand tightened around the wooden wine goblet she shared