I saw the dull tangle of his hair, the thick smear of mud along his side. I thought there might be a graze along his jaw. I heard the anger and weariness in his voice, and I was at his side before he could even loosen his belt. I tilted his chin so that I could confirm my fear then my hands were fisted in urgency in the cloth of his sleeves.

‘Tell me this was a plain market-day accident, Owen.’ I made no attempt to hide the trepidation that beat through my blood. ‘Tell me it was a just a parcel of drunken louts.’

‘It was a drunken brawl over false weights,’ he said briefly. ‘It got out of hand.’

‘As the attack on us last week was pure misfortune.’

He looked at me and I saw resignation grow in his eye, overlaying the glint of anger.

‘Tell me the truth, Owen. Is this ill luck? Or is it a campaign against you?’

He exhaled slowly, and for a moment rubbed his hands over his face, through his hair. ‘What can I say, that you do not already see?’

I released his sleeves, but framed his face with my hands.

‘Will you tell me?’

‘Yes. If you’ll let me get rid of some of this filth.’

He kissed me, pushed me gently away, before proceeding to loosen his belt and drag his tunic over his head, dropping it on the floor. Then he sat to pull off his mired boots, where I knelt beside him. His face was drawn, pinched with a simmering fury, his movements brisk with heavy control. He would not look at me, but I would not be gainsaid.

‘It was not ill luck, was it?’ I nudged his arm.

‘No.’ He dropped a boot on the floor with a thud.

‘Who is responsible? The robbers on the road wore no livery but someone paid them.’

‘I know not,’ Owen snapped, turning his anger on me.

‘I say you do!’

And Owen took the second boot and hurled it at the wall, where it bounced off the stitched forms of a pack of hounds and a realistically bloodied boar, and fell with a thump beside the hearth.

Which outburst of temperament I ignored. ‘You are in danger!’ I accused. ‘And you will not tell me!’

‘Because I can do nothing about it,’ he snarled with none of his usual grace. ‘I have to accept that I am a marked man.’ His words froze on his lips, his eyes lifted to mine for the first time for some minutes.

We stared at each other. My earlier fears leapt into life again, and bit hard.

‘I didn’t mean to say that.’ Owen sighed a little, but the tension was still strong in every muscle of his body.

‘A marked man? What do you mean by that?’ I gripped his good arm as all my anxieties returned fourfold. ‘What else have you not told me? And don’t say that I must not worry. Who says that you are a marked man?’

I had to withstand a difficult pause.

‘Tell me, Owen. You must. You cannot leave me in ignorance of something that affects you and me—and our children.’

And he did, in a flat tone and even flatter words, confirming all that I feared. ‘It’s Gloucester at the bottom of it. Our noble Plantagenet duke. His warning was vicious and intended as a threat. But probably with no real heat in it.’

Which, on present evidence, I did not believe for one minute. Neither, I warranted, did Owen. ‘When we left the Council.’ Now I recalled the incident. ‘He spoke with you, didn’t he? What did he say?’

‘Just that. That I am a marked man.’ Owen’s brow snapped into a black line. ‘No doubt to destroy any pleasure I might gain from successfully seducing the Queen Dowager to my own ends, and enjoying the fruits of her possessions. He said that he would have his revenge, despite the Council’s weak acquiescence. It’s a damnable thing, but there’s nothing can be done to undo it.’ The bitterness in his words increased, and with it the depths of my own grief. ‘I am a Welsh bastard, he observed, and do not know my place. It is Gloucester’s mission to teach me what that place is. With blood and fire if necessary.’

We sat in silence for a moment. The implications of Owen’s confession pressed down on me, until I could do nothing but accept the truth that stared me in the face. I considered it as I rose, collected Owen’s maligned boots and placed them neatly side by side. I stood before him.

‘Are you saying that by marrying me you have put your life in danger?’

Looking up at me, his forearms resting on his thighs, Owen’s brows drew down into an even straighter line. ‘I doubt it’s as extreme as that.’

‘Has our marriage put your life in danger?’ I demanded.

‘Yes. It is possible. But it may be that he intends to teach me a lesson rather than take my life.’

Fear dried my mouth. The child kicked as if it could sense my perturbation.

‘Is there nothing we can do?’

‘Against Gloucester?’ Owen’s brows winged upwards.

‘But the law should protect—’

‘I have no rights before the law,’ he replied gently. ‘You must know that. I am Welsh.’

‘Ah! I had forgotten.’ I lifted my hands in helplessness. ‘I am so sorry.’

Owen stood. As his arms closed around me, as he raised my face so that I must look up, I felt some of the tension in his body leach away at last. And because of that I spoke the one pertinent thought in my mind.

‘When you married me, you opened yourself to danger. And I did not know it. But you knew, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And still you made me your wife.’

‘I would do the same tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.’ Releasing me, he moved to enmesh his fingers with mine. ‘Would you have refused to make your vows, if you had seen the future?’

‘I should have done.’ I felt disturbed by the depth of my selfishness. When I had stood before the altar afraid of every creak and shuffle that someone would appear to put a halt to it all, I had not once considered that Owen might have a price to pay. Now I was rigid with inner fears.

‘I would not have allowed you to run away from me. Once you did, when I frightened you. I would not let it happen again. But we must not forget.’ Owen’s kiss on my lips might be sweet with understanding, yet it held an underlying warning as firm as the imprint of his mouth. ‘We must always be aware and take every precaution. We cannot afford to be careless with our safety. But we will not let Gloucester destroy our happiness. We won’t allow it, will we?’

‘No, we will not,’ I agreed softly, for once mistress of the art of deception. ‘We will take care.’ But as I smoothed the tangles from his hair with my fingers, my heart leapt and bounded in sheer fright.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Danger! Danger ripe with blood and terror. Bright as sunlight on a frozen pond, sharp as the taste of too-early pippins. I had not expected it. How would I, taken up as I was with my own concerns?

We were travelling back from France, in the depths of a frozen February, after the momentous occasion when the crown of France, my father’s crown, had been lowered onto Young Henry’s brow. The culmination of all Henry of Agincourt’s ambitions. What power did the old prophecy have now on the life of my son?

Henry born at Windsor shall long reign and all lose.

None, I decided, even though Lord John was ill with the strain of war, and my brother Charles had claimed the French Crown for himself in Rheims Cathedral the previous year. My son’s inheritance was secure. I knew I would never return to France, and Young Henry’s future had passed into stronger hands than mine. My future was with Owen. I knew I carried another child for Owen.

And so I drowsed as we pushed on with a small escort to Hertford—for this was now where Owen and I had established our home—where Edmund and Jasper waited in Alice’s care. It was cold enough to turn our breath to clouds of white and the ground was rock hard with frost. I travelled in a litter against the icy wind, the leather curtains drawn, with every frozen rut and puddle jarring my body. I longed to be home, and as if reading my mind, the curtain was twitched back, and Owen leaned down from his mount to peer in.

‘Are you surviving?’ His words were snatched away by the wind.

‘Just about.’ I grimaced, weary to my bones. ‘The bits of me that are not frozen are battered into submission. How long?’

‘Not long now.’

He reached out to grip my hand and was about to drop the curtain back into place when his head whipped round. And I too heard it. Approaching hooves from ahead and behind, shouts that seemed to come from the undergrowth beside the road to our right and a cry of warning from one of our escort.

‘Footpads, by God!’ Owen snarled. ‘Sit tight!’

As my litter came to a juddering halt, he hauled on his reins, shouting orders to our escort—a little band of half a dozen men well armed with sword and bow. I pushed the curtain aside again to see a motley collection of riff-raff leap from their hiding places in the undergrowth, daggers and swords to hand, at the same time as armed assailants descended from front and rear. And then all was full-scale battle.

In the midst of it, I was aware of Owen. For a moment he sat motionless on his horse then spurred it forward towards a thief who, dagger drawn, was grappling with one of our men. And I realised. Owen had no weapon, neither sword nor dagger. He was helpless. Insanely, recklessly, he spurred his horse back into the fray.

‘Owen!’ My voice croaked soundlessly in my throat as Owen swung round, ducking to avoid a blow, yet still he caught a glance of a sword on his arm that made his breath hiss between his teeth. And I heard him call out above the mêlée…

‘A sword. Give me a sword, man!’

Immediately one of our escort hefted his weapon in Owen’s direction. Owen caught it and wielded it as if he had been born with a sword in his hand, so that his attacker was beaten back. And I forced myself to watch as, cutting to left and right, managing his horse with skill, he lunged and parried even as his sleeve darkened with blood. With every clash and scrape of metal, every grunt and groan, I held my breath and dug my fingers into the litter supports until my nails cracked and splintered.