“You took Papa’s box.”
He looked truly confused. “What box?”
“Oh, please, Marcus. My heirloom box. The one you took from Griffyn when your men captured him outside of London.”
“Ah.”
His complacency sent her tripping into a sudden fit of anger. “Does it please you to read the letters between my parents?” she snapped. “To read their private thoughts?”
He drew back slightly. “We’re all very upset about our parents today, aren’t we?” He brushed his hands together, wiping off crumbs. “I’ll not pledge to Sauvage.”
“Then you’ll lose your lands.”
He rested his hand on the rim of his mug and glanced at the crimson Endshire tapestry hanging on the wall behind the dais. “Let us not be fools, Gwyn. Stephen will fold by Yuletide. There’s news of a treaty to come in just a few weeks. Stephen has no choice, now that Eustace is dead.”
She closed her eyes. “Eustace is not dead. He’s with me.”
Marcus’s expression did not change for a moment, but he did straighten his fingers and deliberately edge his mug off the table. It smashed to the ground, spilling ale all over the floor.
“Like that, Gwyn,” he said in a calm, explanatory tone. “That is how quickly things change. What was, is no longer. Which is why I do not commit myself without cause. And considerable gain.” He smiled. “Tell me about Eustace.”
“He was brought to the Nest mid-August, and has been lying in illness ever since.”
He looked at her sharply. “Ill? How bad?”
“Bad enough,” she admitted. “He’s been sweating out a fever for weeks now, and it doesn’t break.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “I would speak with him.”
“So would I. He is beyond talk, sweating and pitching his head about is all he can manage, that with effort.”
Marcus rose and began pacing, his boots marking a tight circuit around the table. Then he stopped and looked at her. “Why are you here, Gwyn?” he asked, each word like a taste he was rolling over his tongue.
There it was again, that incisive mind, turned now towards her as the sudden object of his ambition. Gwyn took a deep breath. “I need help.”
He let her words settle back into silence. “From me?”
She nodded.
“Say that again, Gwyn.”
She swallowed thickly. It tasted bad. “I need your help.”
A smile inched up his mouth. “I would be honoured.”
She looked away. “I have to get Eustace out of the Nest.”
He plucked at his lower lip thoughtfully. “Have you a plan?”
She offered the only one she’d been able to come up with. Its value was in its simplicity, which might also be its downfall. “When the other barons come to pledge fealty, you come as well. You’re in the castle, you pledge fealty, you leave the next morning. With Eustace.”
His smile kept getting bigger. “When is the ceremony of homage?”
“The fair begins the day before the wedding. The ceremony is the night after.”
He sat down and seemed to consider this longer than was necessary. He had to agree. If he didn’t…
She leaned forward and hissed, “Just get him out of the Nest.”