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brushed her fingers clean of crumbs and slipped into the next chamber. Closing the door, she tried to dismiss thoughts that the wounded stranger downstairs might be Carrick. ’Twas a foolish notion, as she’d so recently told Sir Alexander. She glanced at her bed and remembered her vivid dream, the heat and lust, the wanting and desire, and then waking to the feeling that she’d been observed as she’d writhed on the bedclothes. Another silly thought. Aye, Castle Calon was an intricate keep, one with many sets of stairs and hallways, some of which she had yet to explore, but no one was lurking in the shadows, watching her from gloomy corners. ’Twas only her too-fertile imagination running away with her again.
    She slid on a warm mantle, pulled her gloves on with her teeth, then dashed down the curved staircase to the great hall, where soldiers were lifting the wounded man onto a stretcher.
    He let out a moan as his body was shifted and for a second she thought his swollen eyelids might flutter open, but he only groaned and didn’t waken as soldiers raised the stretcher from the table.
    “Will he survive?” she asked the physician.
    Nygyll shook his head and wiped his bloody, wet hands upon a towel. “ ’Tis doubtful. He is in a sorry state. Too many wounds. He appears strong, but it will take much fortitude for him to prevail. He will have to want to survive.”
    “ ’Tis in God’s hands now,” the priest added, making the sign of the cross over his own chest and shaking his head, as if in judgment of the poor soul lying before him.
    “Then I guess I have little to fear if he’s inside the keep,” Morwenna said. The priest turned to leave, but Morwenna placed her hand upon his arm. “Father, a minute, please,” she said, and the priest’s icy gaze met hers. Quickly she dropped her hand. “The man wears a ring with the crest of Wybren.” She noticed a barely perceptible tightening of the priest’s lips. “The crest of your brother Graydynn’s keep. The crest of the keep where your uncle Dafydd’s family died.”
    The priest said nothing.
    “There is . . . Some are concerned that the wounded man is Carrick. Your cousin.”
    “The traitor.”
    “So it’s said.”
    Father Daniel’s gaze followed the soldiers hauling the stranger upstairs. “Oh, it’s more than said. It’s the truth.”
    “Did you recognize him?”
    “No more than did you,” the priest said, and she could only catch her breath. “You knew him, did you not?”
    “Aye, but—”
    “It is impossible to tell who he is.”
    “Until he heals.”
    One of Father Daniel’s eyebrows lifted. “ If he heals. As I said, ’tis in God’s hands now.” He made the sign of the cross over his chest and then added, “But, of course, it would be prudent to notify my brother that his enemy, our cousin, may have been captured.”
    “When I’m certain that the man is truly Carrick,” she said, watching as the soldiers rounded the corner of the stairs. “Rumors may reach him at Wybren before morn but until we are certain who he is, they will just be that—rumors.”
    Who would beat the man so badly and then leave him for dead? Why? she wondered. Had it been robbery—the work of cruel thieves? Then why were some of his valuables not taken? Had the robbery been thwarted; had the would-be killers been scared off before they’d stolen all they wanted and killed their victim? Or had the harsh beating been for revenge? For what misdeed? What sin had this man committed to warrant such a brutal attack?
    And why is he wearing the ring with the crest of Wybren?
    Morwenna had no answers to any of her questions and was pacing when Alexander returned, Bryanna following him like an orphaned pup. “That man is staying in the keep?” she whispered, her eyes bright as she looked over her shoulder as if expecting the wounded man to appear like a specter behind her.
    “Aye.”
    “Is it not dangerous?” Bryanna asked with what seemed to be great