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started and looked at her with blank eyes. "You must have a fresh shirt, and a robe, and—"
    "Yes, well?"
    "Have I your leave to fetch these things?"
    "Yes, certainly."
    "But my mother has the keys to the storeroom. I must go to her to get the keys. You bade me—"
    "Do not be so silly. Could you think I meant you to avoid your mother forever?"
    "It is not my business to think what you mean," Leah answered simply, "only to obey you."
    "Yes, very proper, but you must have a little sense too. If you do not leave the room and it should happen that no one came in, we might starve to death finally, and I should never get the bath I am very desirous of having."
    It took a moment or two for the puzzled girl to realize that he was laughing at her, so grave was his expression, but she did understand finally and smiled. "You are teasing me," she said.
    Her betrothed started to answer, but shivered suddenly, hunching his massive shoulders, for the room was dank and chill in spite of the fire. Leah ran at once for a woolen bed covering from a chest near the wall and draped it over his back. As she knelt before him to fold it around his body, she stroked his passive hand, hard as steel and scarred across the knuckles. She was remembering how kindly he had answered her questions and how tired he looked.
    Lord Radnor held his breath, hardly daring to move his eyes to look at her. She reminded him just then of nothing so much as the wild birds that perched near him as he lay in the woods of his home and, as he had held his breath then not to alarm them, so he held it now for this shy bird.
    How long they would have remained thus lulled by the hiss of the flames and their own quiescence was doubtful, but the idyll was broken when a log snapped in the fire, causing Leah to jump out of the way of the sparks. Lord Radnor did not move; his hand, like a lure to a bird, lay quiet on his knee and the quiet was indeed a lure to Leah. Daring greatly because he had been kind, because her comfort and possibly her life depended upon her pleasing him, Leah dropped a kiss on that quiet, scarred hand and ran lightly away on her errands.
     
     
     

Chapter 2
     
    Leah ran hastily down the dark turret stairs. At the foot she met a maidservant whom she ordered to bring a bath to the east tower room and to ask her mother for the keys of the storeroom. "I will be here on the battlements," she said breathlessly. "Give me your cloak."
    Away from Lord Radnor's presence, her excitement threatened again to overwhelm her and she felt that she had to breathe. She needed, too, peace to consider her fate, and the noisy, bustling hall where she might come upon her father or mother and be told to do something was not the place for thinking. Actually she knew more about her future husband than her mother suspected.
    As closely as she was watched, because highborn girls were guarded well to ensure their marriage value and Pembroke's household was rough and ill-regulated outside of the women's quarters, she listened often to the maidservants' talk. Many of these girls had lovers among the men-at-arms, for Pembroke laughed at such matters and in the face of his indulgence Edwina's prohibitions had little force. They told tales of the warriors who held back the Welsh, who fought in civil war, and who were embroiled in the current upheavals. The Earl of Gaunt and his son were high on the list of heroes.
    Tales of their prowess were many and varied and, even the simple Leah suspected, sometimes exaggerated, but one thing was sure. Father and son were a strange pair and were held together by a strange and reputedly unholy bond. The father was well known to hate the son who obeyed him much as a dancing bear obeys his keeper; sometimes docile, sometimes snarling on the border of rebellion, Lord Radnor, like a bear, was always dangerous. Still, Gaunt was said to repose absolute confidence in his son and sent him alone to the councils of state, and the confidence, so stated rumour,