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you.”
    “I’m not sure the king will. His commanders are quarrelling, and his advisors are idiots.”
    “You sound more like a Parliamentarian than a Royalist,” Richard said. His look seemed to measure the effect of his words.
    “You are not the first to have made that pronouncement.”
    “Then why fight on the side of the king?”
    “I am the Earl of Langlinais,” he said simply. “My home is six hundred years old. A kingdom at least as venerable as the king’s, if not divinely acquired. I can understand his wish to keep his intact.”
    “So it is empathy that makes you fight?” Richard’s look was one of skepticism.
    “Perhaps,” Stephen said.
    “I’ve not your compassion,” Richard said. “But I can admire your loyalty, even though I think it misplaced.”
    “A great many Englishmen feel as you do.”
    “Why do I think you are one of them?”
    Stephen said nothing. There was, after all, nothing he could say.
    Richard studied him intently. “Have you grown that cautious in the past years?”
    “It is better to remain silent at court, Richard. Words are often twisted, while silence can never be misinterpreted.”
    “Then I do not envy the role you’ve chosen,” Richard said. An expression of emotion that surprised Stephen. “If you cannot put faith in your companions,” Richard said, “perhaps it is time to trust your enemies.”
    He left the room before Stephen could answer. Another dilemma. What could he have said? There was too much truth to Richard’s words.
    Stephen walked to the window, stood staring out at the panorama.
    This morning an encroaching storm cast dismal colors over the landscape. The lowering clouds, were dark, almost black, swept across the sky by winds that bowed the branches of tall trees and fluttered through the thick grass. A monochromatic array of black and gray tinted the hills.
    He loved his home. Loved it almost as much as he hated war. Yet its very existence would be threatened if he did not leave to fight for the king. A paradox he accepted even as he wished it were different.
    The house echoed with life around him. Six men of his regiment were at Harrington Court. They were soldiers who had not come from Lange on Terne or the neighboring villages, or they had no place to stay with relatives.
    It was an odd billet, his ancestral home. The floorboards creaked overhead, boots tapped against wooden floors in a strange tattoo. Water gurgled in the pipes from the cistern on the roof.
    He’d learned from Betty that the supply of ale had been replenished twice. Plus two of the maids fancied themselves in love. He only hoped that the sentiments were returned and his men had not taken advantage of the young women employed at Harrington Court.
    A motion caught his eye. He glanced below. Anne Sinclair sat in the garden, her head bent over her task, her cape fluttering in the breeze. What did she labor on so diligently? Why was she here? Where had she been going when the soldiers had waylaid her?
    Who are you?
    Questions he should have asked her, instead of simply pondering the nature of them alone.

 
    Chapter 6
     
    S he was capable of sitting for hours focused upon a drawing and did so on this occasion. She found herself distracted, however, by the increasingly brisk wind. Finally, she surrendered. The sketch she was working on did not interest her as much as a playful breeze. It tossed her hair about and furled the edges of the paper. As if it dared her to follow where it led.
    Standing, she placed the board carefully atop her sketches and pulled her cape around her shoulders. She walked through the garden gate and let the wind take her where it would.
    The breeze caught her cape and whirled it around her ankles. A last breath of winter or a puff of spring come to tantalize and tease. Above, the sky boiled with gray clouds, lending a somberness to the scene.
    Anne frowned as she caught a glimpse of something in the distance. A spire, perhaps, or an outcropping of