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reducing them to a slower tempo which indicated either fear or anger.
    She knew when the man clad in chain mail stepped into the sunlight that it could only be anger that affected her so. She detested the attitude of superiority reflected in his face, nicked here and there with the scars his violence had wroug ht.
    Schooling her expression to impassivity, she rose and faced the Englishman who had appeared in her Justice Room as a beggar. Then she had judged Paxton of Wychchester of being her age. Almost as tall as Baldwyn and nearly as brawny, he had presented an imposing figure, much as he did now. “I was expecting you. What plans have you made for me and my household?”
    His exp erienced eye examined her dirt-crusted hands, her dusty work dress, and her unbound hair. The dark sweep of his brows met over the high bridge of his nose. "Expecting me?”
    "Are all the king ’s lieutenants so slow of thought?” she mimicked. The words had rolled off her tongue before she could halt their flow. Her natural instinct for command, whether by intimidation or by commendation, was a difficult one to subdue.
    He hooked his thumbs in the leather belt of his scabbard, a stance that was now becoming familiar to her. He looked disturbingly patient. "Are you planning to make trouble?”
    "I am surprised you did not summon me to you like a tenant .”
    He waved his hand indifferently, its sunburnt skin also notched with scars. "Your feminine games are inconsequential to me.”
    That pricked her pride. "Do you expect me to placidly accept my subjugation?”
    "I will expect you pay homage to me as my vassal a fortnight hence in the great hall.”
    She gasped.
    He continued calmly. "Heralds will be sent throughout the county of Montlimoux, summoning its inhabitants. A tourney, I think, will serve nicely as enticement. Aye, a tourney, guaranteeing safe conduct to knights and esquires alike. That should well set the stage for a ceremonial transition of authority.”
    So that was what lay behind this visitation. As a woman she might be of inconsequence to him, but not the power she wielded. "I cannot renounce my heritage! ”
    "Cannot or will not?”
    "Either. Both!”
    "Mistress, heed me. You cannot even care for your own people. I found here no protection for them, no mercenaries, no army to guard the gates.”
    "And you found here no violence! Non -action means simply refraining from activity contrary to nature.”
    He looked at her strangely. As if she were some unidentifiable species of plant life he had never encountered. "Mistress, do you not perceive —”
    "Chatelaine,” she corrected. Her gaze swept over the soldier-warrior with unmistakable disdain.
    "Mistress," he asserted with the patience of one speaking to the slow of wit. "Do you not perceive that your foolish pride and stubbornness will only beget sorrow for you and those for whom you care?”
    "I see that I am as I am. I cannot change." It was a cry from her heart, though her words were stony enough.
    “ You will learn change if you wish to remain here.” He paused, then added, “Of course, you could always become the wife of a yeoman. The marriage imposts I receive as Montlimoux’s Grand Seneschal would add something to its coffers. But I do not think you would adapt well to shouldering firewood like a pack mule, while your husband trods on ahead."
    He paused, and a glint appeared in his eyes. “ Then there is always the convent, is there not? I recall you advising a widow she would find the opportunity to wield broad authority within it walls, aye?”
    “ I would take the veil before I would submit my free will to a man.”
    “ Free will?” His smile was close to a smirk. “A woman's subjugation to man is the fruit of her sin.”
    “ Sin?”
    “ Are all Languedoc maidens slow of thought?”
    She had never felt more like committing violence.
    “Aye, sin,” he continued. “Did not woman succeed in seducing man where Satan had proved powerless in the Garden of