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    “Let me see what I can do to tame this wild bird the king has so generously bestowed upon me. If the task proves an impossible one, my friends, then I shall cage her. She will be a challenge, but I think I can subdue the lady Isabelle.”

Chapter 2
    A lette De Manneville shoved her daughter into her chamber with an unaccustomed force. Shutting the door behind them, she barred it and then whirled about to face her daughter. “Have you lost your wits entirely, Isabelle?”
    The girl was astounded by her mother’s behavior. Alette was a meek, softspoken creature who had never before shown temper, or uttered a harsh word to her. Much of her own disdain for Alette stemmed from the fact that her mother never spoke up in defense of herself or her ideas. “I cannot imagine what you could possibly mean, madame,” she replied with as much hauteur as she could muster. “You cannot expect me to stand by while Langston and I are parceled off to that long-faced Saxon thief.”
    “ Isabelle! ” There was utter exasperation in Alette’s soft voice. “Whatever men may think of women, we have intelligence. You are not stupid. You are, in fact, a very clever girl. King Henry is well within his rights to confiscate Langston. Even I can see the lay of the land. Your father worried about it constantly, which is one reason he went on crusade; to escape being torn between England’s king and Normandy’s duke, as all the Norman barons’ families are. That is why he gave you Langston, and Richard, Manneville. Neither of you will be subjected to divided loyalties. You are English, your brother a Norman. Your choice is clear.
    “Because we did not answer the king’s call for fealty, he grew fearful that Langston meant to declare for Duke Robert.We are too strategically located to be allowed to do such a thing. That is why King Henry returned the estate to the heir of its original owner. He knows he can trust in his childhood friend. He even honors your father’s memory by giving you to Hugh Fauconier as a wife, thereby assuring us that we will not lose our home. It is a good arrangement all around.”
    Alette de Manneville pushed an errant lock of her golden hair from her forehead. “Do you know how fortunate we are, you little fool? A less thoughtful, a less Christian man than King Henry would have done nothing for Robert de Manneville’s widow and innocent daughter. And do not dare to prattle to me of your half brother, Richard. He will not have us! It is time you faced some truths, my daughter. Your father married me for two reasons: to care for the two sons his first wife, the lady Sibylle, bore him, and to get other children.
    “William was nine and Richard five when Robert and I wed. They were horrible little boys, always polite and obedient in your father’s presence; always rude and disobedient toward me, though defended by that wretched old dragon of a creature who had been their mother’s nurse. I might have won them over except that she encouraged them in their behavior. It was her way of keeping her mistress’s memory alive.
    “You think your brothers loved you, Belle? They did not! When you were but two months old they put you in a willow basket, carried you to the riverbank, and prepared to drop you into the water below. Had the watchman not seen them, I should not have you today, for surely you would have been killed. Their old nurse begged me on her hands and knees, tears streaming down her face when I had thought her incapable of tears, for witches do not cry, not to expose their horrendous misdeed to Robert. He would have beaten them senseless had he known. I did not expose them on the condition that they never come near you again while you were unable to defend yourself from them. The old nurse swore to keep them from you, and to give her credit, she did.”
    “Why did you have no more children?” Isabelle asked,curious suddenly, for her parents had been wed twelve years before her father had departed