He pulled her toward him and stroked her hair. The straw crackled beneath them. “Tell me what happened. Your brother has died?”

“It was a shipwreck,” she said indistinctly. “A calm sea, a clear crossing. But they were all young men on the ship, and they had all been drinking. They went right against the Cauldron Rocks. There were no survivors.”

“I’m so terribly sorry,” he said, continuing to stroke her hair.

She pushed him angrily away. “You don’t understand, Roric! Of course I’m saddened to have lost my brother, but I hardly knew him any more-I hadn’t seen him in over ten years, not since I came here as a hostage. And I’ve never been able to feel the same toward either my father or my older brother since. After all, they gave me into the hands of the enemy.”

When Roric said nothing, she added after a moment, “I was much sadder back when I heard my younger brother had died, only a few months after I arrived. He and I had been playmates… But you wouldn’t remember that!” she finished brusquely.

“I didn’t really know you then,” he said, looking at her with his head cocked. “You were just the pretty little girl that I understood had come to live with us. You were an outsider- I did not then realize that you and I were both outsiders here. I do remember you crying, and I wondered why.”

“You still don’t understand,” she said through her teeth. “Now that pretty little girl has become an heiress.”

He considered her in silence for a moment. “So will you still love me when you’re queen?” he asked with a grin.

She gave him another push. “Don’t joke, Roric! You, of all people, should realize what this means.”