to find they had missed the lord marshal by a fortnight. He had gone, at the king’s behest, to meet with King Philip in Paris, ostensibly to negotiate terms for peace. But since the French king’s only term was the safe return of Arthur to France—which John already knew could not be complied with—William’s quest had been a useless waste of time and diplomacy.
Hoping to intercept him on his return (and not wanting to linger in Rouen where the king’s spies might apprise him of their presence) the De Glares had set off in pursuit of the marshal’s caravan.
Returning to his pavillion one night to find his niece and nephew appeared from nowhere … suffice it to say, it was one of the few times Ariel could recall her uncle threatening her with physical harm—and meaning it. Neither tears nor tempers nor pleas for understanding had any effect. He roared and shouted and went back two generations to draw upon a slack-witted ancestor who happened to have the same shade of red hair as Ariel, and whose adventures had seen her into an early grave at a similar age.
Henry had fared little better. He was railed from one end of the pavillion to the other for agreeing to bring Ariel to Normandy in the first place, then to setting out across the country without a proper, heavy escort. Moreover, when the earl heard of the pact they had made with the Welsh prince— to kidnap the king’s messenger and hold him to ransom— William’s wrath knew no bounds.
To Henry’s credit, he had remained rigidly silent during most of the earl’s tirade. The blame for everything could easily have been settled on Ariel’s shoulders, as indeed it should have been, but he bore the weight of the plottings with Rhys ap Iorwerth himself, with only a stoney glare directed at his sister now and then to warn her of the huge debt she would owe when the ashes had settled.
The third one to bear the brunt of the marshal’s anger was Sedrick of Grantham. He too let wrath descend unchecked, waiting until the earl had run dry of invectives and spittle. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the gruff and normally reserved knight corroborated Henry’s version of the events, assuring the earl they had not had the luxury of time or precedence to make any other decision. Enlisting the help of the Welshman in waylaying the courier seemed like a convenient means of buying a few weeks’ time—long enough to apprise the lord marshal of the situation so that he might take steps to act upon it. Bringing Lady Ariel to Normandy had, in all likelihood, forestalled her from doing something even more foolhardy (and here he too had casually added his own reservations concerning Ariel’s heritage) when there would have been no one around with the strength or wit to stop her.
The marshal had found logic in what he said; difficult to argue.
A final trump was played when the letter Lady Isabella had written was presented. It confirmed the loathsome prospects of the king’s proposed groom, the deplorable audacity of a sovereign who would abuse their loyalty in such a callous manner, and the unavoidable necessity of enlisting the service of renegades to protect their home and family in his, the lord marshal’s, continuing absence. Whether or not it was this veiled accusation, laying at least some of the blame on his own broad shoulders, that finally blew the tempest out of the marshal’s sails, none of the others could say for certain. Somewhat mollified, however, he had announced he would sleep on the matter but for none of them to be surprised to waken and find themselves turned back on the road to Fecamp.
That ominous announcement had been made over a week ago, and now here they all were, standing in the majestic great hall of Amboise Castle, with minstrels settling into the upper gallery and servants rushing to and fro. Lights glittered everywhere, but on the dais, at the table reserved for the lord and lady of the chateau and their guests of honour, the candles were backed by circlets of silver so that the flames glowed like small sunbursts.
Ariel had heard a great deal about the famed Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer, and was not disappointed in meeting the living flesh. He was equally as tall as her uncle, with a darkly savage handsomeness that had deservingly earned him the name Black Wolf. To his right was Alaric