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as if he had never laughed a day in his life.
    She stood there, her feet suddenly feeling like boulders. She looked from one man to the other, finally choosing to keep her eyes on the handsome man with the reddish hair who was laughing and walking toward her.
    He took her hand, then bowed gallantly. “Sir Roger FitzAlan of Wells, my lady.” He straightened and gave her a wicked wink. “And my companion …”—he nodded at the other man—”the Earl of Glamorgan.”
    Later when she thought about this moment, she supposed when she heard the title “earl,” she had made some sort of a small courtesy dip, but she could not be certain. For it was a horridly embarrassing moment she would have liked to have forgotten. So she had kept her gaze on the handsome red-haired knight.
    Still smiling, he turned to the other man and said, “She won’t need your razor.” He kept grinning.
    The other knight was not amused.
    She tried to hide her apprehension. She did not know who these men were nor why they were here. Unable to look away, she stared into the hard, ridged face and the icy blue eyes of the tall black-haired man, looking for answers, for something.
    “You are the Earl of Glamorgan?” she asked, almost wincing when her voice caught a little. She thought she sounded frightened and so she raised her chin and tried to look regal and fearless.
    “I received the earldom this past year.”
    Now that he finally spoke, it was in a deep, clipped voice that was as icy as the look in his eyes. He slowly walked toward her, looking taller and bigger with each step he took. She refused to move, even though instinct told her to run as fast as she could.
    He stopped when they were barely a foot apart.
    Everyone and everything seemed to melt away. The room grew suddenly thick and stuffy, as if the shutters had been closed and all the air sucked outside.
    A second later there was movement at the door. The earl spun around so quickly she almost fainted. His hand was on the hilt of his sword and he had drawn a dagger in his other hand.
    Thud, in all his clumsy glory, scrambled into the room, clad in a woolen nightshirt. His thin legs and knobby knees stuck out like a chicken’s, and his oversized bare feet looked like long loaves of shepherd’s bread.
    He stopped, standing stiffly with his bony chest stuck out. “I shall protect you, my lady.” He waved a wall torch as if it were a sword.
    Sir Roger raised a hand. “There is no need to make bonfires of us, lad. No one will be harmed.”
    For a second she thought she heard the earl grunt something under his breath, and she stared up at him. His eyes were still on Thud, but he had sheathed his dagger.
    Thud looked at both men skeptically. “Why should I believe you?”
    “The Earl of Glamorgan does not lie.” He spoke for only the second time.
    “An earl?” Thud had only seen one knight in his life, an event about which he spoke constantly. He stared up at the earl with the same expression a pilgrim would have had looking at his first holy relic.
    “Aye,” Sir Roger said. “But ’tis a new title, lad.”
    Thud was still staring at the dark knight. “Did you receive the title for valor, my lord?”
    Roger reached out and tousled Thud’s brown hair. “He did. The king seldom bestows earldoms on cowards, lad.”
    The earl said nothing this time, just turned those icy eyes down at Thud with an unreadable look.
    The moment seemed to stretch out for an eternity.
    If he hit the boy, she’d kick him, then dart behind the kind-looking Sir Roger for protection. She doubted he would kill them. He wouldn’t be here unless he wanted something. He looked like a man who would easily take whatever it was he wanted.
    There was no doubt in her mind that this tall, dark knight could earn ten earldoms on the battlefield. When she looked at him, she wanted to disappear. She could well imagine what it would be like to face him when he was astride a huge warhorse and had a weapon in his