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hand.
    She sank into a fine curtsy, with her head deeply bowed. Then she rose and looked up at him. “What brings you to Camrose, my lord?” When he did not answer her, she offered her own. “Shelter?”
    He gave a sharp nod.
    “I see.” She paused, but he was silent. “Provisions?” she added.
    Another nod.
    She did not know if she wished him to speak or to just leave. “I have only been at Camrose for a few days, my lord. I know not what we have stocked and ready.” She started to take a step, but he reached out and clasped her arm.
    He stared down at her. “There is no hurry. We will be here for a long while.”
    She glanced down at his hand on her arm and looked back up at him from narrowed eyes. She raised her chin but did not pull away. “What makes you think you are welcome, my lord?”
    He released her and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked from her to Sir Roger, then back to her. “This castle is mine.”
    “This castle belongs to the lord of Camrose and my betrothed. I believe that neither Sir Merrick nor the king will allow you to take Camrose, my lord.”
    There was glint in his eye that she could not identify. For all she knew, he could draw his sword and chop off her head at any moment.
    “I am Merrick de Beaucourt.”
    Thud’s eyes grew even bigger. “The Red Lion? Himself ?”
    “Aye.” He turned from Thud and pinned Clio with a dark look. “The Red Lion with the ‘fat head.’”
    She wanted the stone floor to split open like the bowels of hell and swallow her.
    He took a step toward her.
    Sheer instinct made her take two steps backward.
    He followed her.
    She took two more and more, and he moved with her as if stalking his prey.
    She took one more step and backed against the cold wall next to the window. She flattened her hands against the stone and braced herself as she looked up at him.
    He raised his hand toward her face.
    “Do not strike me.”
    She heard Sir Roger swallow a laugh and her gaze flashed toward him. His look was kind, not cruel, and he shook his head slightly, saying with a gesture that Merrick wouldn’t harm her.
    Her betrothed stared down at her, silently, his hand near her cheek. “I do not strike defenseless females.”
    Instead of reassuring her, his words annoyed her, made her sound weak and stupid and capable of doing little without his help. For the briefest moment she almost wished he had slapped her instead. A whack didn’t seem so bad compared to the condescending words he spoke.
    He used his knuckle to raise her chin, so she had no choice but to look into his face. He was not a beautiful man. He was a warrior. A man whose life was armor and war and weapons. And one look at him left no doubt that his manhood had been molded on the battlefield.
    His hair was as black as one of Old Gladdys’ prophetic ravens, and his brows looked like angry slashes across his broad and weathered brow. His nose was long and straight; his jawline and cheeks appeared as if they were sheared from the hardest flint. A thin scar sliced downward from his brow to his earlobe and was shades lighter than his skin, which had been baked brown by the desert sun of the eastern lands.
    He was dark. Everything about him. From his coloring to his black expression. Except for his eyes. They were blue. Not the deep blue of a summer sky. Not the blue-gray of the sea at dusk. But light blue, and clear, like the icicles that hung from the stable roof on the coldest winter mornings.
    Once when she was small, she had peered through a long, sharp icicle that poked down from the eaves of the buttery. What she saw through the ice was a twisted view of what lay beyond. Blurred images that showed things misshapen.
    So who or what was this man in whose hands she must place her life and lands? It was obvious he was a man to be feared. She had seen a few warriors like him before, but she knew them little. He appeared to be nothing but a warrior, all cold mail and sharp as the edge of a battle ax,