'A few hours only, Rhys,' Guyon answered the boy. 'I have dared to pull the devil's tail and I must be in my own bed before dawn lest he scorch me with his pitchfork.' He smiled at Eluned and took the mead she offered him. It was strong and sweet and as honey-golden as the fragrant harvest evening on which the unborn child had been conceived.

Rhys looked blank for a moment and then his quick mind took in the implications of the rough Welsh garb and coupled it with his knowledge that Guyon had skill s most Normans did not.

Something clandestine had been afoot and Lord Guyon did not intend the blame to lie lying at his door. Eluned, younger and impressionable when it came to tales, took his words at face value and regarded him wide-eyed.

'And precisely where is your own bed?' Rhosyn asked, setting a platter of bread and cheese before him and thinking with a hint of bitterness that they were like courtiers, feting him with adulation.

Guyon gave her one of his quicksilver glances.

'Ledworth,' he answered and did not elaborate.

Instead, he tossed something to Rhys.

The boy caught the item deftly and transferred it to his lap. It was a leather sheath, lined with raw wool to hold in place the knife it contained and keep it naturally oiled. The knife itself was almost a weapon. Eight inches long with a blade gleaming as bright as fish scales against the blue herringbone pattern that fanned from its centre.

The hilt was carved from a narwhall tooth.

'I know it is a month after Candlemas, but I had not forgotten your year day,' Guyon said as Rhys examined the knife with speechless delight.

Rhosyn eyed the gift with mixed feelings.

Childhood was almost behind the boy and the knife was a symbol of the man too soon to emerge. 'You should not,' she said to Guyon with a frown.

'Grant us both the indulgence,' he answered, his voice light, but his gaze eloquent as he drew Eluned into the circle of his arms. 'And I had not forgotten that it is your own year day come Easter and, since I am unlikely to be here, I have brought your gift early. Guess which hand.'

Delighted, Eluned played the game with him and he teased her, knuckles clenched, his sleight of hand eluding her. At length she pounced on him, giggling and he conceded defeat, begging abjectly for mercy and presenting her with a small cloth pouch containing a string of amber beads.

Eluned flung her arms around Guyon's neck and delivered him a smacking kiss. 'The surest way to a woman's heart,' he chuckled as he fastened the beads around Eluned's slender throat.

'You buy us all ,' Rhosyn agreed and, blinking, turned away to mend the fire. Guyon watched her over the child's tumbled black hair.

'That is not true, cariad,' he said softly. 'I have never had the price of you and I doubt I ever will .'

Rhosyn savagely poked the logs. 'You have always had the pretty words to cozen what you cannot buy!' she snapped. 'Rhys, Eluned, it is long past time you were asleep. Go on, get to your beds now!'

'But Mam ... !'

Her eyes kindled with wrath. 'Do as you are told!'

Guyon lifted his brow at her tone, shot her a speculative look and squeezed his warm, rebellious armful. 'Obey your mother, anwylyd,' he said gently. 'It is time she and I had a private word. Go now.'

Eluned pouted, unconvinced. Rhys stood up, the knife in his hand, his expression a mingling of childhood and maturity as selfishness warred with duty. After a hesitation, the latter dominated. He thanked Guyon most properly for the knife, kissed his mother on the cheek and crossed the hall to withdraw behind the bed curtain.

'It's not fair!' Eluned complained.

'Life never is, my love,' said Rhosyn bending to hug her daughter. 'You'll discover it time and again as you grow older. Now say good-night and be off with you.'

The child sighed heavily but did as she was bid.

Her grip around Guyon's neck almost throttled him. 'I wish you could stay,' she said, her lips warm on his cheek.

'So do I, anwylyd,' Guyon replied and meant it.

When they were alone, Rhosyn again mended the fire even though it was unnecessary. The silence stretched out and the old dog whined.

When she could bear it no longer, she threw down the poker and spun round to face him, her words almost a cry. 'Why have you come?'

'I thought you would be pleased to see me . '

Rhosyn drew breath to snap that he thought wrong, but changed her mind before the words were spoken. 'I am too pleased. You disrupt our lives. You come with your gifts and your ensorcelments, you beguile us into adoration and then you leave. I cannot bear it!'

'You have it in your power to change that,' he answered gently. 'You are welcome to make your home at one of my manors.'

'A pretty caged bird to sing at your pleasure!' she flung, turning back to the fire.

'I did not come here to quarrel, cariad. Nor do I intend to leave upon one. We know each other better than that. If I have rubbed salt into a wound then I am sorry. You never gave me cause to believe that it ran any deeper than a mutual pleasuring.'

Rhosyn bit her lip and dug her nails into her palms, striving for the control to smile lightly and say that yes, he was right, it had not run any deeper. She felt his hand lightly on her shoulder turning her to face him. 'I needed to know how you fared.'

'Well , now you do,' Rhosyn would have drawn away except that he held her fast and kissed her averted temple, the corner of her eye, her cheek and her mouth, refusing to release her and, indeed, her struggles were only half-hearted and soon ceased.

'I am foolish, Guy,' she murmured, setting her arms around his neck. 'I see the moon in a pool and I am disappointed when my hand despoils the illusion instead of grasping the reality. Be welcome for whatever time you choose to stay.'

Their embrace deepened, warm, sweet and poignant, desire sweeping but hard-held by the presence of the children a thin curtain away and, in Guyon, by a reluctance to cause Rhosyn a deeper wound than she had already suffered. He broke away first, his breathing ragged, and prowled to sit at the fire. His body protested. It had been a long time since he had lain with a woman and his hunger was keen. Keen, but not desperate. Whatever his detractors said, sexual liaisons were not to Guyon an immediate necessity of life. Given the leisure, the right circumstances and a willing partner, he enjoyed indulging his senses. But as now he possessed only the latter, he drew several deep, slow breaths and made his mind busy with other thoughts.

'Where is your father?'

Rhosyn sat down beside him, just out of touching distance and picked up her distaff. Her fingers were trembling. She concentrated on the raw wool until the hot weakness left her limbs.

'Gone to Bristol. We expect him home tomorrow or the day after. I worry about him, Guy. He is not well . He gets pains in his chest and Rhys is too young to take more than an apprentice's responsibility.'

Guyon turned his head, eyes sharpening. 'The pack routes are no place for a woman,' he warned.

She did not answer, but the line of her mouth grew mulish and she gave all her attention diligently to the distaff.

'Rhosyn, so help me, if I hear you have stirred from your hearth to go tramping about the borders in a drover's cart, I will carry you off to Oxley myself and lock you up like a caged bird, in truth!'

'You have not the right!'

'I have every right. You carry my child. I will not see you dead in a ditch like Huw ap Sior!'

'I won't ... What did you say?' Her fingers ceased their nimble twirling. Her eyes opened upon him, wide with shock. 'Huw, dead?'

'At the hand of Robert de Belleme and his gutter sweepings. Huw's pack-load of sables was brought to myself and Judith as a blood-smirched wedding gift.' Sparing her nothing, he gave her the details.

'He was my father's best friend,' she whispered jerkily when he had done. 'They were boys together ... Oh sweet Virgin!'

Their bodies closed again of necessity as Guyon grabbed hold of her, afraid that she was going to faint. She leaned her cheek against his jerkin, shivering, sick to the soul with grief and fear and shock.

'Promise me, cariad, ' he murmured, stroking her hair.

She made a little movement against his chest.

Her fingers gripped his arms.

'Promise me.'

'What good is an oath given under duress?'

Rhosyn replied shakily. 'I could give you my word and it would be worthless.' She uttered a desolate laugh. 'Welsh oaths always are.'

'Rhosyn ...'

She pushed gently away from him and, having wiped her eyes, poured herself a cup of mead. 'I might be fickle, Guy, but I am not about to step deliberately within de Belleme's ring of fire. I will swear you this much honestly: that I will not stir from here until after the child is born and only then by necessity. And I will send to you for an escort.'

Guyon studied her through half-closed eyes but did not seek to persuade her further. He had her concessions in his grasp and was not going to jeopardise them with bitterness and anger.

'Very well , cariad,' he said quietly. 'I do not suppose I would care so much were you not so cursedly independent.' He sat down beside the fire and picked up the mead that Eluned had poured for him earlier.

Rhosyn stared at him in the firelight. With his Welsh clothing and dark complexion he might have been of her own race and class - no barrier but the fire's glow between them. It was a bittersweet illusion. Merchant's daughter and marcher lord, already married for the sake of convenience and dynasty. He looked tired, she thought. The shadows beneath his eyes were not all the result of the dull light.

'Does your wife know your whereabouts, Guy?'

He took a swallow of mead, swirled its golden surface and looked at her with rueful amusement.

'She may have a suspicion,' he admitted. 'For sure, if I am not over the drawbridge come dawn, I'll have to deal with a hell cat ... and not for the reason I can see on your face.' The amusement became a wry chuckle. He drank the remainder of the mead and did not offer to elucidate.

Rhosyn swallowed the temptation to ask. If Guyon was on this side of the border after dark, dressed in native garments and murmuring about scorching the devil's tail, then it was best to know nothing. 'What is she like?'

'I think she would surprise you.' He put down the cup to fondle the cold thrust of Gelert's nose at his thigh. 'God knows, she certainly surprised me ... and continues to do so.'

'Is she pretty?'

A curious, casually spoken woman's question with tension lurking beneath the surface.

'Not as you are pretty, cariad, but striking in her way, I suppose, or she will be when she grows into her bones. She's a child Rhos, man-shy and half wild.'

Rhosyn knelt at the hearth and felt the heat glow on her face. She had thought about him at the time of his marriage, imagined him abed with his unwanted young Norman bride and wondered if the skill s of the bedchamber and sweet grass meadow had stood him in good stead then.

'I have not bedded her,' he said into the small silence of her thoughts. 'She has the frightened eyes of a lass half her age. She knows nothing of men except what her father was and her uncle is.'

Rhosyn turned her head in surprise.

'Even if she opened to me for the sake of duty, it would be little less than rape. She is as flat as a kipper before and behind and the crown of her head scarce reaches to my armpit.'

'Jesu, Guy!'

'Wishing you had not asked?' He gave a mocking smile, then shook his head. 'The match is not entirely a disaster. Judith has abilities beyond most young women of her station.'

Rhosyn lifted her brows. Guyon laughed, this time with genuine mirth. 'It is not given to every wench to be able to handle a dagger, or hone it to perfection on a whetstone. She has a wicked sense of humour, too. I would not put it past her to grease a slope for the joy of seeing someone slide down it - probably me. I do not believe I shall grow bored - if I live. Walter de Lacey would dearly love to dance on my grave and rule in my stead and Robert de Belleme merely bides his time. Fool that I am, it offends my sensibilities to murder the pair of them in stealth as they would do to me without a qualm of conscience.'