When Willow awoke the next morning, she had good reason to shiver. The temperature had plunged during the night, leaving sparkling diamonds of frost on the glazed window of her chamber. A sullen sky brooded over the castle, mirroring her mood.

Although she knew that Beatrix had rarely risen before noon at Bedlington, she still felt compelled to try to shake the girl out of her stupor. Beatrix simply mumbled a protest, snuggled deeper into the feather mattress, and drew the pelts over her head. Willow sighed, wishing she could do the same.

Instead, she donned a fur-lined gown cut from crimson wool and hastened downstairs to seek the warmth and cheer of the great hall. A fat yew log burned on the massive stone hearth. Bannor, Sir Hollis, and the children were gathered around the high table while various knights, squires, and men-at-arms broke their fasts at the long trestle tables scattered throughout the hall.

Bannor interrupted his conversation with Sir Hollis as she approached. “Good morning, my lady,” he murmured, his eyes narrowing as he studied her face. “I trust you had a satisfying night’s sleep?”

“ ‘Twas most fulfilling, my lord,” she replied, wondering if he’d been disappointed to find his bed cold and empty when he’d finally retired to his tower.

The chair beside him was empty, but she deliberately joined Hammish on one of the benches. Let Bannor think she was sulking because he’d failed to keep their midnight tryst. ‘Twas better than having him suspect the truth.

Garbed in brown hose and a crisp doublet of emerald green camlet, Bannor looked none the worse for having spent most of the night sleeping on the stones before the hearth. His jaw was freshly shaven, and his eyes possessed their usual sparkle. His children, however, didn’t seem to have fared as well. Mary poked at a sticky pomegranate with one finger, while Ennis sluggishly stirred his fig pudding. Kell and Edward slumped over the table, their eyes drooping and their chins propped on opposite hands. A dozing Mary Margaret was in imminent danger of falling face first into her bowl. Even Hammish seemed to be making only a perfunctory effort to lick his plate clean.

Desmond was the only one eating with grim ferocity, as if he intended to choke down every honeyed pomegranate and spoonful of fig pudding in the castle, even if it killed him.

The children’s attention sharpened when a squire emerged from the kitchens, staggering beneath the weight of a pewter platter laden with a succulent array of meats. Mary Margaret snapped out of her doze, her pert nose twitching like a rabbit’s.

As the squire lowered the platter to the table, Bannor rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation. Willow shot him a suspicious glance. She’d never seem him partake of anything before noon more hearty than brown bread washed down with ale.

As he stabbed a thick slab of bacon with his knife, popped it into his mouth, and began chewing with deliberate relish, the children followed his every move, their mouths hanging open. “Would you care for some bacon,” —their faces brightened, then fell again as Bannor gallantly added—”my lady?”

“No, thank you, my lord,” Willow replied, hiding a reluctant smile. “I’ll just have what the children are having.”

“You can have mine,” Ennis said, shoving his bowl and spoon at her. “If I never see another bowl of fig pudding, ‘twill be too soon for me.”

Willow twirled the spoon in the bowl with even less enthusiasm than he had. It seemed her unfortunate affliction had also robbed her of her appetite.

“I’d like some of that pheasant,” Sir Hollis said cheerfully, knife already in hand.

Bannor stretched halfway down the table to hand the platter to him. The children licked their lips as it passed only inches beneath their noses, then watched through glazed eyes as the knight helped himself to a slice of roast pheasant dripping with a piquant plum sauce. Desmond shoveled another heaping mouthful of fig pudding into his mouth, swallowing with an audible gulp.

While Bannor and Hollis savored their feast, pausing only long enough in their vigorous chewing and swallowing to swap effusive praise for the cook and all of his minions, Edward began to claw at his chest. “Might I have a bath today? I’m starting to itch.”

Scowling, Kell inched away from him. “You’re starting to smell, too.”

Bannor tucked a hearty bite of pork savory in his mouth. “I’m sorry, son, but according to the terms of our treaty, you’re not due for a bath for at least another fortnight.”

Kell pinched his nose shut and made a gagging noise.

Edward elbowed him in the ribs. “Don’t know what you’re going on about. You don’t exactly smell like the queen yourself.” He sniggered. “Or maybe you do.”

Plainly hoping to avoid a round of fisticuffs, Bannor dabbed at his mouth with a linen napkin and rose to his feet. Before his offspring’s hopes could rise with him, he gestured for the squire hovering behind the buttery screen to remove the platter from the table.

When it was gone, his cheerful gaze traveled the circle of glum little faces that ringed him. “So what are we to play today? Is it to be hoops and tops? Or perhaps a few rousing games of hot cockles and hoodman blind?”

Desmond glared into his bowl, while the rest of them simply blinked at him, their eyes drooping at half-mast. Mary Margaret hid a yawn behind her hand.

Bannor shrugged and sighed, managing to look nearly as crestfallen as Hammish. “Well, if no one wishes to play with me this morning, I suppose I’ll just wander out to the list and see if perhaps I’m needed there.” Shooting Willow a wink that made her heart do a somersault in her chest, he turned away from the table.

“Perhaps you should go to Windsor. The king might need his arse wiped.”

Although Desmond’s head was inclined, his voice still carried throughout the hall. All talking and chewing seemed to cease at the same moment. Some of Bannor’s men gaped openly at the high table while others took a sudden and profound interest in the red-and-gold banners strung from the rafters.

Bannor slowly pivoted on his heel, his hands curling into fists. “What was that, son?”

Willow held her breath, waiting for Desmond to mutter some falsehood or denial, but he shocked them all by surging to his feet. She realized then that the crimson creeping into his rigid jaw was not a stain of embarrassment, but anger.

He faced his father squarely, his own hands clenched into fists. “Please don’t let me detain you, Father. You’d best hasten to the lists and whip out your mighty sword because you never know when the French might declare war on us again. And you know what? I pray they do! Then you’ll have to rush to the king’s side, won’t you? Only this time, I hope you never return. Unless it’s draped belly-down over your horse’s back!”

Bannor loomed over his son, his face so still and fraught with menace it might have already been a granite effigy carved on a tomb. Willow clutched Hammish’s trembling hand beneath the table, waiting for Bannor to backhand his eldest son. In truth, she could not say the boy didn’t deserve it.

When Bannor finally spoke, his voice was so dangerously silky they all had to strain to hear it. “If the king requires me to fight at his side, lad, I will most certainly heed his command. But I’ve no intention of dying beneath a French blade. Not even to please you.”

Leaving the echo of his words hanging behind him, Bannor turned and strode from the hall, shouldering his way through a cluster of gawking squires.

———

“Bannor!” The quavering cry pursued him across the meadow, more relentless than the icy flecks of snow stinging his face.

Bannor doubled the pace of his long strides, crunching the frozen grasses beneath his boots. He had spent most of his life making war, but now all he desired was a moment of peace. The sluggish ripple of the river drifted to his ears, promising just that.

“My lord!” This time the cry was more urgent. And more breathless.

“Leave me be, Willow,” he called over his shoulder without slowing. “I’ve no wound for you to tend today.”

“Not even the one inflicted by your son?”

Bannor halted at the rim of the riverbank, swearing beneath his breath.

He refused to turn around, even when he heard a desperate panting behind him. Willow came stumbling into his line of vision, her hair dusted with snow and her skirt stained with mud, as if she’d fallen more than once in her stubborn pursuit of him. She would have probably gone rolling right into the river if he hadn’t reached out a hand and snagged her.

As soon as he had her steadied, he took his hands off of her and started down the bank. “You may accompany me if you insist, but I’ll thank you to speak no more of my son.”

She scrambled after him. “How can I speak of anything else? Didn’t you see his face? He was deliberately trying to provoke you.”

“Just as you are?”

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “The poor lad was all but begging you to snatch him up by the scruff of his neck and give him the shaking he deserved. When you turned your back and walked away, I thought he was going to burst into tears right there in front of God and everybody. And if he had, I don’t think he would have ever forgiven you.”

Bannor kept walking.

“I don’t understand why you let the boy run wild when he ought to be training in the list with you and your men.” Willow’s voice rose. “And I don’t understand how Lord Bannor the Bold, Pride of the English and Terror of the French, can be afraid of one scrawny thirteen-year-old lad!”

Bannor whirled around on the edge of the river, his eyes blazing, and roared, “I’m not afraid of him! I’m afraid of me!”

Willow stumbled to a halt.

Bannor raked a hand through his hair. “When other men lose their tempers, they shout and bluster and stomp their feet. When I lose my temper, heads roll and blood spills. Men die.” He strode back toward her, holding up his hands. “Look at these hands, Willow. Look at the size of them.” He flexed both of them into mighty fists. “Feel the strength in them. Suppose I should lift one of them in anger against Desmond? Or even Mary Margaret? Why, I could snap one of his bones or crush her wee skull to powder with no more than a clumsy squeeze of my fingers!”

Willow did not know how it was possible for Bannor to look so powerful and so helpless all at the same time. She only knew that if she hadn’t already discovered that she loved him, she would have done so in that moment.

She closed the remaining distance between them and gently enfolded one of his rigid fists in her hand. “I only know that these hands are capable of great tenderness as well as great strength. That they’re more likely to give pleasure than pain.”

His expression remained grim. “They’ve also dealt more death than you can imagine.”

She stroked her thumb over his battle-scarred knuckles. “So you’ve avoided punishing your children for their wretched behavior all these long months for fear you might lose your temper? You’re afraid you might lapse into one of the battle frenzies that served you so well in war, and send one of their impertinent little heads rolling across the floor of the great hall?”

He eyed her warily. “I might. How am I to know I won’t?”

“You’re angry at me right now, aren’t you?”

“Furious,” he admitted.

She continued to stroke his knuckles until his hand slowly unfolded. She inclined her head to press a kiss to his callused palm, casting him a glance from beneath her lashes. “And am I in danger at this moment?”

“More than you know,” he breathed, lifting his other hand to brush a snowflake from her hair.

“I’m not the least bit afraid,” she lied, hoping her tender smile would hide the true extent of her fear. “You are a kind and honorable man, Bannor of Elsinore. A man who would never hurt anyone weaker and more helpless than himself.”

“Ah, but you’re not helpless, my lady.” He stroked his thumb over the softness of her bottom lip, deliberately reminding them both of the tender boon she had lavished upon him the day before. “On the contrary. I’ve never faced an enemy who posed more of a risk to my heart.”

———

When Bannor came marching through the list a short time later with Willow trailing casually behind him, his face was etched with an unyielding determination his men had previously seen only on the battlefield. They exchanged perplexed glances, wondering if perhaps France had broken the treaty, just as his son had predicted, and declared war upon them all.

Several of his more dedicated knights and men-at-arms scooped up their weapons and fell into step behind him, as much out of habit as curiosity. Their stern procession led them into the bailey, where a smirking Desmond had engaged some of the younger pages in a game of hazard they could never hope to win.

“When I’m lord of Elsinore,” he was saying, shaking the weighted dice in his cupped palm, “the priest won’t waste our time with reading and writing lessons. And I’ll see to it that them arrogant squires polish their own boots, so you won’t have to do it. If anyone refuses to do my bidding, I’ll have them tossed in the dungeon ‘til they come crawling to me, begging for mercy.”

Desmond rattled on and on to his captive audience, completely oblivious to the fact that their little eyes kept growing bigger and bigger until a forbidding shadow fell over him. He swiveled around to find his father standing behind him, backed by a dozen grim-faced warriors. As the pages scattered, the weighted dice tumbled from his limp fingers. The dots carved on their faces might declare him a winner, but Desmond knew better.

His father’s fist closed in the scruff of his tunic. As Bannor lifted him to his eye level, Desmond’s feet dangled several inches above the ground.

Bannor’s granite visage cracked into a smile so ripe with paternal affection it made Desmond’s teeth begin to chatter. “I hate to spoil all of your grand plans, lad, but you’re not lord of this castle yet. I am.”

When Desmond started to squirm, Bannor simply heaved the boy over his shoulder and began to march back toward the list. Desmond twisted his head this way and that, frantically seeking an ally among the gathering crowd of gawkers. That was when he spotted Willow.

“Willow!” he shouted, his booted feet scissoring at the air. “Save me, Willow! Father’s lost his wits. He’s in some kind of berserker rage! Please don’t let him tear my head off!”

Willow couldn’t quite suppress her mocking smile as she called out, “ ‘Twasn’t so very long ago that you were begging him to protect you from me. It appears you’ve learned naught since then.”

As the scaffold came into sight, Desmond’s whining soared to a full-blown wail. “Not the finger pillory again! I won’t swear anymore, Father! I swear I won’t!”

As Bannor carried him past the scaffold, Desmond cast the gallows a wistful look. Surely even hanging would be preferable to whatever grim fate his father had in store for him.

Bannor bore him through the bailey, through the list, and through the yawning doors of the stable. As the two of them disappeared inside, a dozen squires and grooms came running out as if they’d been evicted by the devil himself.

The doors slammed shut with a resounding thud, making everyone within hearing distance flinch.

Kell came running up, his eyes shining with excitement, and gave Willow’s skirt a sharp tug. “Did you see that? He’s done for now, isn’t he?”

She put an arm around the boy’s shoulder and hugged him close, suffering her first twinge of doubt. “Aye, lad, I’m afraid so.”