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family members?”
    “No.”
    “You lost your husband.”
    She looked away. At mention of Canute and husbandly associations, she felt her courage drain away. “Yes, of course, I lost him.”
    “You had no children?”
    “No.”
    “Are you carrying your husband’s child?”
    Her eyes flew back to his. The man was
worse
than a brute. She felt as if she had stumbled painfully, against rock and some other force, less solid, more dangerous. “No.”
    “Are you certain?”
    She said coldly, “Certain as a woman may be.”
    He nodded, apparently satisfied.
    The topic caused anger to flare within her again. She had longed for children, it was true, and grieved for the ones she thought she would never have. Yet she was happy to have never borne a child of Canute’s, for he had regarded the act of conceiving a child either with dismal disinterest or as an occasion for brutality. But none of this—her lack of children, her current barren state, her feelings about her late husband or anything else—was the business of this man—this outrageous man, this Simon of Beresford, this
Norman—
next to her. She had suffered enough indignities in the past days and weeks and years. Enough was enough!
    With the return of her anger came her courage and all her well-learned skills of turning disadvantage to advantage. She quickly composed her features, relying on her long experience of masking anger with complaisance.
    Hardly missing a beat, she said, “Well, sire, you have heard what is most important about me and my life. Now I should like to learn what is most important about you and your life.”
    He frowned forbiddingly. “What do you want to know?” he asked in a far-from-encouraging manner.
    “Whatever you think is important for me to know about you.” Her voice held the sweet calm she had cultivated over the years.
    She imagined that he would mention his sons or his late wife, although she did not know why, in retrospect, she should have made such a conventional assumption. He said instead, looking directly down at her, his voice deep and rough, “You should know that I have just come from an important training exercise on the field and arrived at the castle unsuspecting, I assure you, of what was to be required of me.”
    Gwyneth’s mouth nearly dropped open. She did not make the mistake of interpreting this statement as an apology for the disreputable state of his dress. Rather, she thought it ranked as the rudest of his rude comments thus far. First he insulted her intelligence outright, next he asked directly if she was pregnant. Then he had the gall to make no pretense of the fact that he did not want the marriage. This was plain speaking with a vengeance!
    Neither did she want the marriage, but she was not so foolish as to say so. Nor was she so foolish as to wear her thoughts on her face, especially given the public nature of this first meeting with her husband-to-be. Ever alert to her surroundings, she was acutely aware that the courtiers in their midst were doing everything possible not to betray their avid interest in what was transpiring between the most conspicuous couple in the hall.
    She formed her lips into a smile, as if greatly interested in this news. “And what was the particular training exercise you were engaged in?”
    “Broadsword.”
    “I see,” she said. “Do I infer correctly that you are devoted to training in various forms of combat?”
    “Yes.”
    “And spend much time at the practice?”
    “Yes.”
    She read in his face the impatient question,
Is there anything else you want to know?
Although naturally offended, she had never intended to probe into his personal life, and now turned the conversation to more neutral matters.
    “Well, then, since I am new here, you could perhaps help me in identifying some of the people I am to live among. We should be as interested in them as they apparently are in us.”
    Beresford seemed surprised. “They are?”
    “And making such worthy attempts