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kitten in her arms, scratching her. She still carried a white mark on her wrist from it. She remembered the image of a bird as she had stared out the narrow window. Yet the most vivid memory, the one that turned her to stone and made every awful moment of that day real once more, was the silence. After only a brief murmur—words that Joanna did not clearly remember—her gentle, beautiful mother had gone to her death without a sound. No cries. No prayers. No words for a child left behind. There had just been silence.
    Only later had Joanna’s anger come, and not directed solely at her father. Her beloved mother had abandoned her and left her all alone to roam the cold empty halls of Oxwich. She had struggled for years with feelings of both desperate longing and helpless fury at her absent mother.
    A violent tremor suddenly shook Joanna, and with a choking sound she bowed her head. At once an arm came around her shoulder and she was gently pulled against a solid chest. She had forgotten the man entirely, yet for a moment, at least, she was glad he was there. She was glad for some human comfort. More than anything she longed to surrender herself to another’s care, to put herself for once into someone else’s safekeeping.
    “I’m sorry, Joanna,” he murmured, rubbing her arm a little awkwardly. “I’m sorry to bear this sad news to you.”
    At once she stiffened. Her father’s death was not sad news to her. She felt nothing for him at all. It was her mother she mourned, she told herself. Though she shuddered yet with her sobs, she pulled away from the man. She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand as she tried to steady her breathing.
    “You need not apologize, Lord Blaecston. ’Twould have reached me by another, if not yourself,” she managed to say. “Please—” Her voice caught in her throat. “Please accept my thanks for coming so far out of your way to relay this news to me.”
    “As your father’s neighbor—albeit a somewhat distant one—I did only my duty. ’Twas no trouble at all.”
    Joanna stood up. She was uncomfortable sitting so near him and felt awkward now to have accepted this stranger’s comfort.
    “You will want to be on your way, of course. Please do not linger on my account. I would remain here awhile longer to pray.” She moved toward the pale marble figure of St. Theresa, wondering how she might in good conscience pray when her soul struggled so with feelings of anger, vengeance, and resentment.
    “There is more, milady.”
    She stopped at his quiet words. “I am not ‘milady.’”
    It was an automatic response, almost absentminded, for his serious tone sent new tremors of fear through her. How could there be anything more?
    This time he came to her, turning her to face him with a hand on each of her shoulders. “Your father fell ill to a fever that spread throughout Oxwich. Serfs, nobles, and servants—none were entirely spared. Your father died. So did his wife who was with child, and his young son.”
    “Little Eldon as well?” Despite the fact that she’d last seen her half brother as a babe in arms, Joanna was horrified to think that he was dead. And Lady Mertice, big with child taken also. She shook her head in disbelief.
    “Your entire family was lost,” he quietly confirmed. “Word has been slow to spread because the village priest placed an order of closure on the castle.”
    He lowered his face until it was level with hers and stared intently at her tear-streaked face. “The dead are buried. The rest are recovered. But Oxwich is without either lord or lady, and you are now its rightful heir.”
    Joanna heard his words but after the shock of his other revelations, this last one was too much. She could not respond as she stared into his shadowed face. She? Heiress to Oxwich? It was ludicrous! It was beyond belief!
    Without warning she began to laugh at such an impossibly ironic situation.
    Lord Blaecston’s brow lowered at her unseemly mirth, and she felt