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men, one of whom brought around the lady’s small gray palfrey. Cantia
continued to stare up into the night as if oblivious to all else. She was
struggling to put the tears aside, struggling to conduct herself as the wife of
Brac Penden would. She finally glanced down, noticing the horse.
    “If you do not
mind, my lord, I would rather walk,” she said.
    His eyebrows
lifted. “Walk?” he repeated. “If it would not be too taxing on you.”
    “Not at all. I
love to walk.”
    “My lord,” came
a stern voice from one of the knights. “’Tis not safe to walk these roads. We
must make haste back to…”
    Another flick of
the wrist from Tevin not only silenced the knight, but had the horse disappear.
It was blatantly clear who was in command. Without another word, his knights
spread out around them, staying to the edges of the road, in front and behind,
well out of earshot of the viscount and Lady Penden. They were silent
protection for the apprehensive walk back to the castle. During uncertain times
like this, the night could harbor all manner of threat and there wasn’t one man
who did not take this lightly. To walk out in the open, with enemy conflicts
all around them, bordered on the fool-hearty.
    But Tevin said
nothing to that effect. The lady had been through enough and if walking brought
her comfort, so be it. One of his men brought up his charger, a red beast with
flaming eyes, but he waved the horse away. He would walk, too.
    “Thank you for
your kindness in arranging my husband’s funeral,” she said as their steps fell
in unison along the dirt road. “I am most grateful.”
    “It was the very
least I could do, my lady,” he said. “Warring times are hard on us all, but not
too hard that we should forget our civility and manners.”
    She was silent
as they continued to walk. The three-quarters moon overhead cast an eerie glow
over the landscape, ghostly beams shimmering off the River Medway in the
distance. It was, in fact, a lovely night.
    “May I ask a
question, my lord?” she asked.
    “Of course.”
    She started to
speak but caught herself. He looked down at her to see what was causing her
such difficulty.
    “What is it?”
    She shrugged. “I
want to phrase this correctly so that you will not take offense.”
    “My lady,
nothing you can say would offend me. What is it?”
    She looked at
him, then, her lavender eyes haunting in the moonlight. “If I ask you this
question, will you promise me a completely truthful answer, my lord?”
    “I am always
truthful.”
    She cocked her
head slightly as if debating the validity of that statement. “Very well,” she
said. “This is something I must ask, for my own sake. I fear that I have been
lied to in order to spare my feelings.”
    “Why would you
think that?”
    “I want to know
of my husband’s last moments. And I do not want to be spared any detail. Were
you with him when he died?”
    Tevin hadn’t
expected that question, but he wasn’t surprised by it. “I was, my lady.”
    Her lovely
features tightened. “Then you spoke to him before… before he passed on?”
    “I did, my
lady.”
    Her jaw began to
tick and her expression turned to one of frustration, sorrow. “Perhaps I am
being foolish, my lord, but one of my biggest regrets is the fact that I did
not have a chance to say farewell to my husband before he died. Certainly, I
saw him off from the castle the day of the engagement, but I was not at his
side when he died and….” Her lower lip began to tremble and she wrestled for
her composure yet again. “You were there when he died. Perhaps you can tell me
how he looked, what he said. To hear it from you would be to have been there.”
    Tevin didn’t
dare look at her. He could feel himself folding like an idiot, succumbing to
both her tears and her wishes. Usually he was far more resolute, a paragon of
strength when all else around him crumbled. But there was something inanely
pathetic and touching about Lady Penden and he could