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up at him,
feeling an odd warmth coarse through her as their eyes met.  "Not
particularly," she tried to sound uncaring. "It is a fact of life.
One cannot avoid it."
    Garren sensed she was
putting up a front but he let it go. "Many, many women survive it,"
he said. "True enough that some die, but the same pertains to any risks
you take in life. Some live, and some die, but it is better to have taken the
chance than to have had no chance to take."
    For the first time since
they met, he drew a smile from her, however reluctant. It was a beautiful
gesture. "You speak like someone who has taken many chances, and has
perhaps regretted the ones he never had."
    He met her smile,
feeling the same warmth that she was feeling.  "I think that can be said
for all of us, not just me," he said. "But there are things I wish I
could have done, and things I wish I hadn't done."
    She laughed softly, her
straight white teeth reflecting the fire. "This conversation is becoming
too philosophical for me. I am but a simple woman, after all."
    "You are indeed a
woman. But I doubt you are simple."
    "So I have been
told." She was again feeling those familiar feelings associated with him,
wildly curious to know more about him. "You never did answer my question
when we were up on the battlements."
    "About what?"
    "Whether or not you
planned to stay in one place after we wed, or whether you plan to continue your
wandering ways."
    The answer was obvious,
for his mission. He had to say, act, or do anything to convince her he was who
he said he was. But the answer that came forth was the honest truth, an
inherent response before he could think it through.
    "I will stay with
you."
    She lifted one of those
shapely eyebrows at him. "Is that a fact? You intend to stay here, with
me, at Framlingham?"
    He realized there was a
fantasy life here for him to play out, to make plans that would never come to
past and to tell her that the future would be as bright and wonderful as he
said it would be. He shouldn't have indulged the fantasy, but gazing into her
sweet face, he couldn't help his natural male instincts to give in to the role.
    "We will not stay
here," he shook his head. "Do you think I want your father, uncles
and brothers breathing down my neck at every turn, scrutinized like an ibis in
the midst of alligators?"
    Her eyebrows drew
together, though she was smiling.  "Ibis and alligators?"
    "Creatures in the
Holy Land. The latter always eats the former. Quite fascinating, really, but
also quite deadly."
    "I would like to
hear about them sometime."
    "We shall have
plenty of time to talk about things like that."
    "I am sure we will,
in this mysterious place you intend for us to live if we will not be here at
Framlingham in the midst of alligators."
    She was sharp of wit. He
liked that. Grinning, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees as if
somehow that would move him closer to her.
    "We shall not live
in a mysterious place, I assure you. My father's castle is to the north and
east of Oxford, a very old place. Parts of it are hundreds of years old, but it
is very comfortable."
    "Sounds intriguing.
Does this castle have a name?"
    "Two,
actually," Garren was warming to the conversation. "The origins of
the castle, as I said, are very old. Parts of it were built at least three
hundred years before the Normans came.  It was part of a village back then, the
house of the king, and was called Culthberg because Culth was the king who
built it. But when the Normans came, they called le chateau de le roi, or the
house of the king.  So Chateroy Castle it became."
    He had a deep, rich
voice. Derica liked listening to him. He was not at all like the arrogant,
aggressive man she had seen in her father's solar earlier that day.
    "A fascinating
story," she said. "How long has your family lived there?"
    "Culth was my
ancestor. When the Normans came, a king by the name of Ael ruled the province.
He surrendered to the Normans without a fight and gave his only child,