"Does he not?"

"Of course not, sweetness. You are much too beautiful to let Father turn you into a drudge. Why do you suppose I am determined to see you betrothed before I wed? But I cannot leave Father miserable, so I must find him a wife as well."

"You have always been extremely efficient, Bel, even if you struggle at sums. Will you please choose me a man who is stupid with numbers, so perhaps he will let me help with his accounts?"

Isabel laughed, winning a suspicious look from Lord Stephen and, to the dismay of her suddenly tripping heart, a quick glance from Lucian's cornflower blue eyes.

A servant appeared with a tray of apple tarts baked in small, individual sh.e.l.ls for each guest. Isabel turned her gaze away from the side tables and reached out to take one.

"If it please you, my lady," the servant said, "Marjory Cook prepared you one with extra apples. She marked it there, with that little cross on the top."

Isabel plucked the indicated tart from the platter and set it on her trencher. "Pray, thank Marjory Cook for me."

The servant bowed and offered a tart to Agnes. Although she took one and cut it open with her little dining knife, Isabel knew she meant to do no more than spread the filling around a bit. Isabel's own mouth watered for the treat. She had given explicit instructions that it be baked with minced apples, rather than ground, and that the filling be firmed with crushed almonds. With her knife, she cut a small hole in the upper crust, as was her habit, and employed her spoon in fishing out the raisins. Isabel could rule everyone in the castle except Marjory Cook. Neither blandishments nor threats had ever convinced Marjory to leave raisins out of Isabel's apple tart. "They simply belong there, my lady," Marjory always said.

Agnes reached her own spoon over, scooped up a few raisins from Isabel's growing discard pile and slid them into her mouth. "Mmm."

Isabel's tongue recoiled from the tiny wrinkled fruit, but she was pleased to see that they tempted her sister into delving for the raisins in her own tart.

"Do you think they will suit better than you?" Agnes asked after she'd nibbled the raisins in silence for a few minutes.

"Who, sweetness?"

"Ronwen and Sir Lucian."

Isabel resisted the impulse to glance down at the sideboards again. Instead, she stole another look past Lord Stephen at their cousin. Ronwen had plaited her flaxen hair with red holly berries. Isabel could not deny that the sixteen-year-old girl was lovely, though her insistence on wearing pale shades, such as the honey-colored gown she had donned for tonight, washed some of the bloom out of her cheeks. Isabel had sense enough to select rich greens and reds for herself, knowing they set off her black braids to their best advantage. Men called Isabel elegant and graceful, and since her father's ultimatum-"Choose, or I'll choose for you!"-she had not wanted for eager suitors of her own.

She saw Ronwen smile like a satisfied cat and tilt her head coyly while gazing steadfastly at someone sitting below the dais. Isabel need not look to know who the recipient of her cousin's coquettish approval might be.

"I am sure they will suit each other splendidly," Isabel said to her sister's query.

She plunged her spoon more vigorously into her tart, seeking a raisin that threatened to swim away then heard a tiny clink. Alarm flickered through her. Oh, she hoped a careless scullery maid had not spilled some broken pottery into the filling. Why, one of their guests might break a tooth! She must be sure before she sprang to her feet and shouted an embarra.s.sing warning. She swished her spoon beneath the suspicious lump and lifted it free of the tart.

It took only two heartbeats to recognize the lump. It was no pottery shard. Quickly, she lowered the spoon nearly to her lap, bunched a wad of tablecloth into her free hand, and wiped the object clean of the rich apple-gold filling. A ring with a yellow topaz carved in the shape of a heart winked up at her, set in a band clearly cut small for a woman's finger.

She heard the hiss of Agnes's breath. "Is that from one of your suitors?"

Isabel detested the little flutter in her breast that drove her eyes first to Lucian. He had removed his cap and was showing it to the gray-bearded man on his left, no doubt explaining how he had come by the style in the East. Ignoring an emotion she refused to name-he had always said that if he had the means, he would drape her in rubies, anyway-she quickly surveyed the rest of the company. Sir Theo smiled up at her shyly. Sir Eustace grinned his rakish grin. Without doubt, one of them had sent the ring and waited to see what she would do.

A movement from the corner of her eye tricked her into turning her head. Sir Lucian redonned his hat, then smiled warmly at Ronwen.

Isabel drew a sharp breath and slid the ring onto her finger.

"Isabel, what are you doing?"

"Father bade me choose, but I have not been able to make up my mind. I shall let this ring choose for me."

The Carole Sir Theo was the first to reach Isabel when the sideboards had been cleared from the floor and the first carole was announced. Isabel had been careful to don the ring behind the drapery of the tablecloth so that none, not even the man who sent it, would see it on her finger before she wished him to. She knew that by accepting the gift, she had as good as plighted her troth to the giver. Some women might be avaricious enough to encourage men to shower them with expensive trinkets, but Isabel was not one of them. She had seen such behavior raise expectations in men's minds, which often led to slanderous rumors, even if one remained as virtuous as a nun. No, once Isabel stopped hiding her hand in the flowing folds of her crimson skirt, there would be no turning away the man who claimed the prize on her finger.

"Shall you dance with me, my lady?" Sir Theo asked.

She wondered if the blush on his fair cheeks betokened his usual bashfulness or a hopeful antic.i.p.ation that she had found and accepted his ring and all that it implied. His sandy hair fell over his eyes as he bowed, and then he shook his head like a s.h.a.ggy hound to clear his sight when he straightened.

I shall clip his hair into order when I am his wife, she thought-a.s.suming, of course, that he had sent her the ring.

She swept him one of her graceful curtsies. "'Twill be my honor, Sir Theo."

She knew her words might carry a double meaning. Tension jittered through her in spite of her determination to surrender meekly to fate's decision. One man is very like another, she had told Agnes with a philosophical shrug when Agnes had protested Isabel's uncharacteristic rashness. Certainly none of them could be as obnoxious as Lucian de Warrene.

It could not possibly matter if none of them kissed as well as Lucian either.

She banished the thought and drew her right hand out of her skirt's folds. Her wide sleeve with its gold embroidered cuff belled out from her elbow, sweeping just short of the rushes on the floor. She disdained the extreme of fashion Ronwen followed, with sleeves so long they must be knotted to avoid treading on them. She extended her hand so that Sir Theo might kiss it and hence see the ring. She had placed it on her third finger... time enough to change hands once she had confirmed its owner... but he startled her by reaching his left hand across to catch her left fingers instead. He blushed, as though realizing some mistake, and shifted her hand into his right as he pulled her to the head of the circle.

She had forgotten that he was left-handed, and having never danced a carole before, he apparently expected the circle to turn to his left. Isabel had watched the serfs dance enough times on the village green to know his mistake. The other couples had seemed to instinctively reach the same conclusion as the serfs. The men had set their chosen partners to their left, but Isabel was the chatelaine of the castle, so if she chose to dance to the right of her partner, everyone else must follow. Several minutes of disorder ensued while all the men rearranged themselves around the women.

She glanced at Sir Theo. Perhaps he merely wished to wait for a moment of privacy to speak of the ring.

"We are to dance sinister, eh?"

Isabel stiffened at the voice. Amidst all the shuffling, she had not seen Lucian maneuver into position on her right. Or perhaps it was mere coincidence. Had they been dancing the other direction, he would have been on the opposite side of Ronwen. She certainly looked unhappy to see him take Isabel's free hand in his. Lucian lifted her fingers lightly and gazed for a moment at the pale yellow stone. Did he remember that she preferred the deeper hues of emeralds and rubies to set off her dark coloring?

"They begin the circle to the right in the East," he said, as he slipped her fingers into the strong grip that she remembered so well.

She felt herself recoiling ever so slightly from Sir Theo's weak clasp on her other side and silently chastised herself. She would teach him that he need not be so diffident, once he knew that she wished to marry him.

"I do not see that it matters which direction we circle, so long as we all move in unison." She tossed Lucian one of her haughty looks but felt a little hitch in her breath. He had recovered quite splendidly from their last encounter, when he had sported two black eyes and a swollen nose. The latter cast slightly sideways, a departure from the arrogantly straight nose she remembered in his youth and in the proud young crusader who had returned from the East. Judging from the dagger looks Ronwen threw at her, the flaw in his otherwise absurdly handsome face had not dampened her cousin's welcome of Lucian's courtship one whit. Then why did he not gaze at Ronwen, instead of holding Isabel's eyes with a weighing look, which she refused to break first?

The hollow thump thump thump of a drum finally broke the spell for them both. As the music started, Isabel saw confusion flooding the circle. They surely wondered which way Sir Theo would decide to step first. She would have leaned over to him, but felt the subtle pressure of Lucian's hand guiding her into a gentle bounce on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet in rhythm to the beat of the drums. She fought back waves of memories at his touch even as she watched Sir Theo's face flame when he realized himself the center of attention. All the watching eyes seemed to freeze him into place.

Isabel's bounce grew more impatient until at last she tugged on Sir Theo's hand, trying to signal him to begin. Sir Theo gave a visible start, and, apparently thinking she wished him to move her direction, lurched so suddenly to his right that he crashed into Isabel's shoulder and sent her stumbling into Lucian.

Lucian's fingers fluttered around hers, as though instinct commanded he release her hand and steady her with his strong arm around her waist. Or so rose the unbidden vision to her mind, a vision which the crack of his chin against the top of her head obliterated. She heard the clack of his teeth as his chin snapped up. The blow reverberated through her skull and left her leaning against his chest, momentarily stunned. The decorative band of embroidery running around the breast of his deep blue tunic swam before her watering eyes.

His hand tightened on hers, and he nudged her upright with his shoulder-but not before he lowered his head and murmured into her ear on a soft note of mockery. "The same old Isabel."

"My apologies, Sir Lucian," she said coldly, ignoring the way the top of her head throbbed. "I am not normally so clumsy." She hoped she had left him with a bruise on his chin. She turned pointedly towards Sir Theo and saw his eyes fill with mortification when several in the circle snickered at his blunder. She pressed his limp fingers. "Do not mind them, Sir Theo. They will soon appreciate how thoughtful you were to think of their comfort before your own when you decided we should begin to the right."

He gave her a wobbly smile of grat.i.tude, but at the back of his eyes she saw the horror of another error strike him once more into inaction. Isabel drew a deep breath, bracing herself for a fresh quip from the man on her right, then shifted herself, deliberately this time, into Lucian. She prodded him firmly sideways as she pulled Sir Theo to follow. Lucian took her hint and helped draw the circle into a rightward motion. He squeezed her hand. She slid him a sideways glance, ready to parry whatever impudent remark he let fall. The wistful little smile on his lips caught her by surprise.

"The same old Isabel," he repeated softly, this time without the jeer. "You will lead him through marriage with honeyed words that soothe his pride, as you lead him through this dance. I will give you this much, Bel, you were headstrong and stubborn, but you were never unkind."

She focused her gaze straight ahead. "I am not leading him through anything," she insisted, refusing to be stirred by the unexpected warmth in his voice.

"I saw you pull on his hand so that he would follow us to the right. You led me blissfully about by the nose as well before I caught on to your tricks."

She squirmed a little at the word "nose," but responded with a scornful huff. "No one ever led you anywhere, least of all I. You were a domineering bully."

"It is not bullying to offer a common-sense warning to a woman who cannot see past her own reckless conceit. I never doubted your courage and intelligence, Bel, but you never could admit that, however rarely, someone else might know better than you."

"I did not need you to take care of me. I have governed my father's household as capably as any man."

"As I've no doubt you will govern Sir Theo when you are his wife."

"What makes you think I mean to wed him?"

"I can feel his ring pressed against my palm. You were never partial to pale colors, so I doubt you purchased such a stone for yourself. Nor were you one to lead a man on with false hopes. You would not have accepted Sir Theo's hand for the carole if you did not believe..."

She slid him a glance as he paused and caught him smiling down into Ronwen's cross face. Isabel felt a bristling sensation along the back of her neck. "If I did not believe?" she queried, wishing unaccountably to shake his attention away from her cousin.

"-that he had sent you the ring and wished to marry you," he finished as a man distracted, as he no doubt was by the sudden pelt of Ronwen's questions. "Yes, my dear, this is how we danced it in the East. No, I meant that we circled to the right. Of course we did not simply go round and round in a circle. Yes, we sang as we danced. No, I have not danced to this song before, but-Yes, I think I could find a pattern for it, if I-"

The watchful corner of Isabel's mind that ever carried a protective awareness of her sister recognized the tones of Agnes's voice where she moved in the circle between Sir Gavin and Sir Eustace.

"Oh, show us, Sir Lucian! Pray show us!"

Isabel had studied carefully the way the serfs danced on the green and had made up her own steps for this tune, which she would have inconspicuously whispered into Sir Theo's ear for him to repeat to the others had Lucian's unexpected appearance at her side not so disrupted her thoughts that she had forgotten her plan.

The other dancers joined Agnes in chorus. The movement of the circle stalled while they awaited Lucian's instructions. Lucian hesitated, then released Ronwen's hand. To Isabel's shock, he did not release hers.

"Forgive me, Lady Ronwen, but in the East, the man always dances with the woman on his left. If you will indulge me, Lady Isabel?"

Isabel chided herself for not realizing what she had done. She knew her father's serfs danced the same. When she had urged the direction of the circle to the right, she had turned herself into Lucian's partner rather than Sir Theo's.

She could scarcely s.n.a.t.c.h her hand out of Lucian's now. She allowed him to draw her to the center of the circle. They stood a moment, waiting for the strains of the music to return to the beginning of the melody. In all the years they had known each other, Isabel had never heard him sing. His resonant ba.s.s quickened her heart and stole her breath.

"The holly and the ivy... " He led her two skips and a step to the right, releasing her hand to clap on when... "they are both full grown..." Two skips and a step to the left, with a clap on the beat after grown, then he laid their hands palm to open palm at shoulder height and guided her into a skipping spin to the right. "Of all the trees that are in the wood..." Left palm to left palm, they skipped to the left... "the holly bears the crown."

Isabel would never have admitted it aloud, but silently she confessed the steps as good as those she had composed. She joined her voice to his as they repeated the pattern for the refrain.

"Oh the rising of the sun, and the running of the deer, the playing of the merry organ, sweet singing of the choir."

The men and women who watched them burst into approving cheers. Lucian bowed with so buoyant a grin that Isabel trilled a mirroring laugh as she sank into a curtsy.

"And now we must all try it," Agnes cried.

Isabel turned with Lucian back towards the circle just as Ronwen moved to the left and Sir Theo to the right, no doubt each determined to reclaim their original partners in the newly designated order. But in their impulsive haste, their hands tangled with each other's before Isabel or Lucian could join them. Ronwen glared at Sir Theo, and Sir Theo went red. Apparently more anxious to mollify his new beloved rather than Isabel's prospective betrothed, Lucian drew Isabel into the gap created on Ronwen's left and took Ronwen's free hand in his. Isabel, still on his left, would remain his partner for the spins, but when the circle moved together, he would hold Ronwen's hand, too.

Her cousin pouted at having to share his attention, but he disarmed her with one of the crooked, rueful smiles that had healed all except the final quarrel between him and Isabel.

Ronwen gave a simper that jangled in Isabel's ears, and she fluttered Lucian a conditional forgiveness with her lashes.

"I shall make you repent for this later, sir," she promised, a purr in her voice.

The music struck up again before Lucian could answer. Everyone now skipped and stepped and clapped and spun about the circle, Lucian singing each verse and the rest of them, following Isabel's earlier example, joining him on the refrain.

Each new song required a new combination of steps. Lucian returned Isabel to Sir Theo for the second carole. He tried to work out the next pattern with Ronwen for the others to imitate, but despite her bright pleasure, she seemed incapable of understanding the steps. She went left when she should have gone right, skipped when she should have spun, and trod on Lucian's feet so many times that Isabel found herself doubled over with the rest of the company, giggling at the grimaces on Lucian's face each time he tried not to wince.

"You must show us with Isabel," Agnes said, to which everyone in the circle save Ronwen and Sir Theo chorused, "Aye, aye!"

Isabel could not deny that she relished taking Lucian's hand again, though she dared not voice it in front of Ronwen. It had nothing to do with Lucian anyway, but only the delight she had discovered in dancing. She seemed to instinctively understand what he wished her to do, when to turn this way and when to turn that. When they rejoined the circle, she danced between Lucian and Sir Eustace. She registered only vaguely the hot glances Sir Eustace occasionally tossed her way. She was too caught up in the merriment of skipping around the circle and echoing with the others Lucian's beautiful ba.s.s voice to be much aware of anything but her own gladness.

By the fourth song, suggestions had begun to spill eagerly from Isabel's lips.

"What if we did a double skip here? Let us try here a step, a skip, a step and another skip. I think we should clap thrice on this beat. Oh, Lucian, what if you held both my hands just here and spun me around like this?"

She dimly saw the exasperated look on Lucian's face before he whirled her around at arms' length in the center of the circle. She flung back her head and laughed, feeling almost wanton with her ribbon-wrapped braids swirling in the air behind her. Joy bubbled in her like a heady wine. She had never imagined that dancing could be so intoxicating. Another spin and she might take flight. Her head continued to reel when Lucian pulled her to a stop, leaving her so dizzy that she had to grip his forearms to prevent herself from falling.

Oh! How hard his muscles felt beneath her hands. His strong grip cupped her elbows, holding her upright until her giddiness ebbed. As he steadied her now from the aftereffects of her demand to be whirled, she felt in his clasp the power and promise of a man who would hold a woman forever safe from her own headstrong folly, if that woman could only swallow her pride enough to confess that she desired such a man.

When his face ceased to swim, there was no one else in the hall but he, gazing down at her in a way that weakened her knees all afresh, for just so had his blue eyes grown dark before he had kissed her that day beneath the great oak tree.

"Oh, Isabel, that was splendid!" Agnes said. "Sir Eustace, hold my hands and spin me the same. Oh, fie on you, sir. Then Sir Gavin, I know, will oblige me."

The world collapsed back around Isabel at Agnes's cry. Lucian drew his hands away, leaving her suddenly deflated and cold in the midst of a hall that blazed bright with the Yule fire and a circle of knights laughingly whirling their own partners as they had seen Lucian whirl her. Ronwen was tugging on Lucian's sleeve, smiling up at him with her most beguiling smile. She slipped in front of Isabel and slid her hands into Lucian's, a clear signal that she expected him to spin her next.

"Oh, I hope my husband will dance with me thus at our wedding."

The coy innuendo in Ronwen's words slapped Isabel across the face. Had her cousin and Lucian progressed so far in their courtship? Isabel turned away from them. Fool, to think she could swallow her pride. Pride was all she had to cling to.

Sir Theo had backed slightly outside the circle, his sandy hair fallen forward into his eyes. Isabel wondered if he hoped that by thus obscuring his vision, no one could see him either. She sensed his alarm in his quickly tensing body when she stopped before him with a curtsy.

"Pray, my lady, do not ask me to spin you. I should be certain to let your hands slip, and I could not bear to be the cause of injury to you."

More likely, he feared he might die of embarra.s.sment if he dropped her. Isabel suppressed a sigh. It would not quite be an equal exchange for Isabel's indolent father, but she would have no trouble ruling a man like Sir Theo. Unlike Lucian, Sir Theo would let her do as she pleased and be gratified when she found some small trait in him to praise. It had not seemed so ill a trade before she had danced the caroles.

"I shall not ask you to spin me," Isabel said quietly to Sir Theo, her heart beating a dull counterpoint to the sounds of music and laughter that floated around them. "But I think it is time that we spoke of this."

He shoved his hair aside to gaze down upon her hand with the ring as she extended it towards him.

"Is-is there some other step you wish me to try?" Sir Theo asked. "I can skip side to side if you wish, but my feet get tangled when we do that turn with our palms together. Lady Ronwen gave me a fierce scolding when I stepped on her toes."

Isabel had forgotten that he had danced with Ronwen all night. She had thought of nothing for hours except her own happiness and how completely content she had been dancing with Lucian. No quarreling, no intolerable commands, no dark blond brow arched in an ironic I told you so.

She waved her hand at Sir Theo, suddenly impatient to have the decision made. "No, Sir Theo, I speak of the ring you sent me."

"The ring-I sent you?"

He had not. She saw it on his face. He knew nothing of the ring she wore. Relief washed through her, chased by the obvious question: Then who? The thought rose on a wave of panic. Agnes had been right; Isabel had been too hasty in donning the ring, too eager to show that she had moved beyond her past with Lucian by choosing herself a husband right under his nose. She would have done anything at that moment to be able to cast the ring back into the apple tart where she had found it.

A sudden wild hope engulfed her. Perhaps no one but Lucian had observed the ring. She had danced most of the night with it hidden in his broad palm or beneath his strong fingers. Except for the claps and when they had spun palm to palm. Hope turned to a sour puddle in her stomach. The sender would surely have been watching for it on her hand. Oh, why had she let pride overrule the sound judgment that usually guided her? She had 'til Epiphany to satisfy her father's ultimatum, twelve days yet to choose a husband by careful weighing rather than this impulsive throw to fate.

"There has been a misunderstanding," she murmured to Sir Theo. "Forgive me, sir."

Useless as she knew the action likely was, she turned the ring with the stone to her palm. Perhaps the sender had not seen. Perhaps no one had save Lucian.

How now to fill this awkward silence with Sir Theo? She glanced to the side of the circle opposite where she envisioned Ronwen laughing and spinning with Lucian's aid and saw Agnes ignoring Sir Gavin's outstretched hands with her arms crossed over her breast and a fierce little frown on her lovely face. Had Sir Gavin been unwise enough to say something that belittled Agnes's astuteness?

"Are you very good with sums, Sir Theo?" Isabel asked abruptly.