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she is the master of it all.”
    “Yes,” she agreed, moving a little closer to him. “I would think that would be verra nice to hear. But how do ye know the secret of what women want when so many others do not?”
    “Sir Gawain,” he replied, happy that he had remembered the tale last night. “He gave his word to marry theold crone, Dame Ragnell, after she provided King Arthur with the answer to that eternal question and saved his life.”
    “Did he keep his word?”
    “Of course he did,” Tristan told her. “He was…” He paused, feeling oddly shaken by what he was about to say and the old sentiments it dragged to the surface. “He was a man of honor.” Quickly, he changed the path of their conversation.
    “D’ye have a man waitin’ fer ye at home, fair Iseult? A husband, mayhap?” This time, he would ask first.
    “No.” She laughed softly. “There is no one who would grant me mastery over his heart.”
    “Fools then.”
    They looked at each other and smiled. She, seeming to see beyond his flippant resolve and touching a place he’d guarded for ten years. He, seeing a woman, mayhap the only woman capable of tearing away his defenses. He looked away, needing them to survive happily in the world he was born to.
    “I saw him last eve in the Banqueting House.”
    “Who?” he asked, turning to her once again. He wanted to kiss her—to prove to himself that he could and still remain untouched.
    “The devil who killed my father. I have never forgotten his face. When I saw him, I could not stand to look at him overlong.”
    “Ye saw him commit the deed then?” Tristan asked, his heart breaking a little for her. He had seen the man he loved lying dead on the ground. It was not a thing one was likely to ever forget.
    “I watched from my window as he stabbed my father through the heart with his blade.”
    Hell. He stopped walking and reached his fingers to her cheek as if to wipe away the tears he imagined she had shed that terrible day. “Ye didna’ tell me why this beast murdered yer father.”
    Her eyes closed for an instant at his tender touch. “He believed my father killed the Earl of Argyll during a raid.”
    Tristan’s hand froze, along with his heart.
    “The earl was their kin,” she went on mercilessly. “The Devil MacGregor’s brother-in-law, I was told. If he was anything like his barbaric relatives, he deserved his death.”
    Nae! Tristan’s mind fought to reject what he was hearing. This lovely, spirited lass who had made him think on things he had forced himself to forget could not be Archibald Fergusson’s daughter! She had not just told him that his uncle deserved his death! Dropping his hand to his side, he backed away from her. He wanted to damn her kin to Hades, but how could he when his uncle’s death was his fault? She was wrong about Robert Campbell, but he was too angry about her accusation to tell her, too stunned to do anything but stare at her.
    “I must go.”
    “What?” She looked surprised and reached out for him. He moved away from her hand. “What is the matter?”
    He should tell her who he was, that everything terrible in her life was his doing. But he didn’t have the heart, or the courage, to do so. “I just recalled that I promised my sister I would show her the king’s theater. Good day to ye.” He left without another word and without looking back. She was a Fergusson, and for her own safety, he would forget he had ever met her.



Chapter Three

    A nd to the right just a bit, you will see the Apotheosis of Charles I.”
    Tristan glanced up at the Banqueting House’s painted ceiling where Henry de Vere, son of the Earl of Oxford, directed Mairi’s view. Tristan felt a wee bit sorry for his sister, forced by seating arrangement to give the English nobleman her attention throughout eight courses. Tristan didn’t care a whit about the aggrandizement of dead kings—or live ones, for that matter. But listening to the man’s mindless drivel took his