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seemed to be over so quickly and with so little damage done, Leah summoned up a smile, tremblingly. "Oh yes, I am content, and you are not cruel. My father often uses me much more hardly and never has said he was sorry for it."
    "Does he treat you ill?"
    "No indeed," Leah said, afraid that Lord Radnor would think she had the temerity to criticize her father, "but I am very foolish and do many things amiss. It would be wrong in him to overlook my errors, for how should I ever learn if he did?"
    She looked up at Lord Radnor to see the effect of this statement and noticed that he looked ravaged. This too was a revelation to Leah, for Pembroke always seemed to be refreshed by raging. All men were like that, Leah had assumed, having no other but her father for comparison, yet here was Lord Radnor, exhausted and ashamed. Leah could recognize the emotions because, sorely tried, she too could blaze into a rage. Her reaction, however, paralleled Lord Radnor's, and shame and fatigue followed temper.
    Although Leah's reading of her betrothed's emotion was correct, the reasons she assigned for it were wrong. It was not Radnor's burst of temper that exhausted him but his struggle with his private fear that he was something unclean. The fear went so deep and the struggle was waged so constantly that Cain suspected every emotion he felt and often considered the natural cruelty that exists in every human being as a sure sign of his damnation.
    "I pray you, sit down again."
    Leah pressed Cain gently towards the chair. Insensibly he was soothed and obeyed the urging, turning his face to look at the fire, and Leah, taking advantage of his apparent inattentiveness, rearranged the cushions on the chair more comfortably. Since this service caused no adverse reaction, Radnor continuing to stare at the flames and rub one hand with the other, Leah knelt and fumbled at his sword belt.
    She was pleased by the richness of the gold wire filigree snakes and birds that were riveted to the soft, strong leather. Her father was a veritable miser and locked away all the pretty things in strongboxes. Lord Radnor leaned back and sighed as the buckle gave and Leah lifted the weight of sword and belt from his hips. She folded the surcoat back away from his hauberk, and slipped the worn, rust-stained velvet over his shoulders.
    It was a source of great wonder to Leah that he would wear so rare and precious a fabric for such a purpose; velvet was still imported into England in very limited quantities and brought fantastic prices. But it was not her place to ask questions. He leaned forward to permit her to remove the surcoat completely and docilely raised first his hips and then his arms so that she could pull the mail shirt off over his head. The weight of the mail made her gasp with effort. Technically a squire should do the heavy disarming, but neither Lord Radnor nor his father had a squire.
    In spite of their prowess as warriors and their great position, not too many men wished to trust their sons to Gaunt's training. He had peculiar ideas about serfs and had infected his son with them. Beside that, they frequented the court only when summoned; they were not in favor with Stephen. Although the king listened with respect to anything they had to say, he knew they were rebels at heart and had supported Robert of Gloucester in the late civil wars to the limit of their ability without actually fighting for him. Those barons whose political opinions concurred with Gaunt's had other reasons for withholding their sons. For one thing Gaunt never offered a place to a young nobleman, preferring to fill his ranks with well paid mercenaries; for another, a boy entrusted to them could not come by the training in arts such as conversation, dressing, carving and so on, which were considered necessary for a noble.
    The woolen tunic and linen shirt beneath the mail were stained with rust and blood, and Leah shook her head over the marks. "My lord." She touched Cain's arm and he