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They deserved one another, she told herself crossly, and she wished them joy of their lunch She only wished it was dinner they were having together and then she would not be forced to endure Slade’s silent scrutiny at the dinner table herself Her sto together; leaving together perhaps to return to the seclusion of Fiona’s room

‘You obviously enjoy your work’ The quiet co her into awareness that the gently s the way she atching Slade and Fiona

‘I do,’ she told him honestly ‘Very much’

‘You certainly know a good deal about your own faly to Slade ‘Who is this?’ she asked, pointing to the golden-haired figure Chelsea had been working on when they interrupted her

For so to have the fairy tale she had spun around the fair-haired girl broken by the cold hard facts of truth, and yet experiencing an unwilling interest to knoho she had been

‘That,’ Slade told theht back with hioes that at the time he was betrothed to the Lady Alys Percy but that he fell hopelessly in love with Da to marry her

‘She had told him that her parents had been killed by the infidels, and that she had been struggling to care for her infant brother and sister on her own Out of love for her Roland swore a vow of chastity towards her until he could make her his wife

‘When he told his elder brother that he wanted to hed in his face Damask was a whore, he told him, and her supposed “brother and sister” in reality her own bastards He hi more than a common harlot, he told Roland’

‘What happened to her?’ Chelsea deirl’s blue eyes reproached theion of her own heart

‘She threw herself from the battlements of the castle when Roland faced her with the truth,’ Slade told her unemotionally ‘As a penance for his sins Roland raised her bastards along with his own children, although they always maintained that she was their sister and not their mother She’d trained them from babyhood to lie, I suppose’

‘Why?’ Chelsea heard herself saying fiercely ‘Why couldn’t she have been telling the truth?’

‘Because Roland’s brother had indisputable proof that she wasn’t,’ Slade told her, watching her with narrowed eyes which seeirl who had lived and died over eight hundred years before

‘He ,’ Chelsea retorted stubbornly ‘It was only his word against hers’

‘Possible, but hardly likely,’ Slade argued sain?’

‘Perhaps Miss Evans is trying to suggest that he wanted the girl for hi Chelsea an acid little smile, plainly annoyed that Slade’s attention had been diverted away frorown bored with the subject of the girl ‘I want to see the rest of the house,’ she co her back on Chelsea

Geoff ith thelad to be alone

I believe you, she found herself wanting to coination, but instead she forced herself to concentrate on her work, instead of daydrea about events so deeply buried in the past that they would never know the truth

Of the trio only Geoff returned to say goodbye to her He was s when he told her that he had to return to York instead of joining the others for lunch ‘I’h Ius’