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stood upright once more, completely perplexed. “As I understood the situation, you were cross with me for trespassing on your family’s lands and nearly getting my fingers bitten off by your ridiculous animal.”
    “I was waiting for you, Piers,” Alys said, her face softening in a manner that caused an uncomfortable sensation in Piers’s gut. “Only I didn’t know ‘twas you, of course. It could have been anyone, any man in the whole of theland, but”—she took a deep breath and let it out happily around her bright smile—“it’s
you
.”
    Then Piers felt his eyes narrow. Surely this could not be a trap laid by Bevan and Judith Angwedd. Regardless, he would not take any chances.
    “You obviously have me confused with someone else,” he said to the still-smiling girl. “Good … er, night, Lady Alys.”
    “Wait!” she called to him again, but this time, Piers kept walking, out of the ring and down the opposite side of the hill to the south east. He had no time to decipher the riddles of a female just out of the nursery. She was obviously anathema to her family, having been sent off to the old ruin in the middle of the night alone. Perhaps they
wanted
someone to abscond with her, and take the brat off their hands. Well, it would not be Piers.
    Christ! He was exhausted enough to drop, but now it looked as if his rest was yet miles away. He was not relishing sleeping in an open forest again.
    “Would you
wait?”
    He glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see the girl running to catch up with him, dragging her sack behind her with one hand and holding on to her monkey with the other. Her fine, long cloak flapped around her legs. Clearly, she was not dressed for foot travel.
    “Go back to the ruin and wait for morning, Lady Alys,” he commanded, never slowing his pace. “I’ll not wait for you, and should you become disoriented and lose your way, you’ll die in the open alone.”
    “Won’t you at least accompany me back to Fallstowe?” she gasped exasperatedly.
    “No.” Absolutely not. As he had already told the girl, he had heard tales of the powerful Sybilla Foxe. And he also knew of her cat and mouse with King Edward. Thelady would demand his name and then likely imprison him as a kidnapper and defiler of women. Or mayhap she would listen to his tale and then turn him over to Judith Angwedd. Any matter, Piers doubted Sybilla Foxe would want the slightest connection with a man who had serious business with the monarch sniffing around Fallstowe’s walls, looking for a chink in which to topple the woman’s hold on her family’s demesne.
    Piers had enough problems of his own to deal with. He only needed to get to London, as quickly as he could, and alone.
    “I’ll not go back!” she called the warning to him while still struggling to keep pace. “You can’t leave me—I’m your
wife!”
    Piers didn’t answer her, only kept walking. His head started to pound again. She was clearly unstable. If she continued to follow him, she would be parallel to Fallstowe again within the hour. Having likely fallen far enough behind as to become frightened by that time—not to mention cold and tired—she would see her family home and give up.
    Good-bye, Alys Foxe. And good riddance.
    The forest was dangerously bright when Piers found a suitable den in which to sleep the majority of the daylight away. In the juncture of two massive, fallen trees, a dam of old pine branches and dead leaves had made a natural lean-to and Piers threw his pack into the fortuitous shelter with a sigh. He would not risk even a small fire now.
    He stretched his arms above his head, hearing every muscle in his body moan. He would climb into the den that looked just big enough to accommodate his body, eat some of the old bread and the last bit of the cold,salted fish from his pack, and then gratefully fall into unconsciousness.
    At least he had shaken silly little Alys Foxe. She had disappeared from Piers’s rear horizon