|
|
|
|
|
|
ient. Then, secure in being a wife rather than a prize any man could snatch, she left for Kingsclere with only a few men-at-arms. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
She was greeted with voluble expressions of gratitude and welcome, but the atmosphere in the keep was very strange. Alinor told herself not to be a fool. Of course, the body would not be normal once the head was gone. Even at Roselynde the servants had become a little careless during her absence. How much more would her death and the uncertainty of what would come next have affected them. And Lady Grisel clung to her so close, weeping and moaning, that it was two days before she could pin down the real cause of her uneasiness. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There was scarcely a face she knew, aside from Lady Grisel and her children, in Kingsclere Keep. Most of the servants and all the men-at-arms were new. Even the master-at-arms was a stranger. Alinor only discovered this fact on the third day when she insisted she would dine in the Great Hall. Until then Lady Grisel had begged Alinor to eat with her in the women's quarters, vowing that she could not in her grief face the noise and crowd below. Finally, however, Alinor had enough of what she knew to be self-indulgence. Sooner or later, whatever the pain of one's grief, one must begin to live again. And the sooner one began the better. Moreover, Alinor was beginning to doubt the sincerity of Lady Grisel's grief. Here and there a false note sounded. There might be an innocent explanation for this, but coupled with all the new faces it was a dangerous sign. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thus, when Alinor seated herself at the center of the High Table, she was already uneasy. Her eyes ran up and down the lower tables, then made another circuit. It was not possible, yet it was so. Her men, those who had come with her from Roselynde, even Beorn, were not present. She lowered her eyes to her plate. If they were not there, they had been kept away by guile |
|
|
|
|
|