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“No,” she lied softly, and concentrated on the feel of his fingers as they circled her lower back.

“I did shock you,” he said ruefully.

“A little,” she admitted cagily. She wanted to ask him if that was something that husbands usually did to wives, but caution held her back and she did not want the specter of her previous marriage to rise up between them again. There was a pause and then Oswald spoke.

“My Father did not pay the ransom,” he said softly. “I lied to you.”

Startled, Fenella turned her head. “What?”

“After Adarva.”

His words were so quiet, she could barely hear him. Yet, somehow, she knew he was telling her something precious. Sharing something with her that he had not told, to another living soul before. Her mind raced. She held her breath. “He didn’t?” she asked softly. “Then, how did you get free from your captors?”

“By my own resources,” he said simply.

Fen digested this. She wanted to ask why the baron did not pay his ransom, but she did not want to hurt his feelings or reopen old wounds. “That was clever of you. But what did your father say when you showed back up?”

He shrugged. “Not much. He seemed to be under the impression I was likely dead. Someone must have seen me cut down and reported it to him. Mayhap he thought the demand for a ransom was a ruse.”

Fen lay quiet, wondering how he must have felt. “You never showed him your scar, did you?” She already knew the answer.

“No.”

She wondered if Oswald Vawdrey had always been so secretive, or if he had grown that way after finding so little in common with his loud, booming father and moody, quarrelsome brothers.

He exhaled loudly. “I wish to the gods I had come back to you Fen. Things would have been different if I had.”

She held her breath. What was he saying? Her fifteen-year old self was giddy at his words. He wished he’d returned to her? His scorned little fiancée? “Different? How?” she asked, almost holding her breath.

“I would have been different,” he insisted.

Oswald Vawdrey had been twenty-one years old at the battle of Adarva. He had been her fiancée. But she had been a mere child of fifteen. “No,” she said ruefully. “I could not have handled you at fifteen.” She ached to touch his scarred shoulder. How he must have suffered. She wished she could have nursed him back to health. Would they have grown close? Become soul-mates? “Can I touch your scar?” she asked softly.

He lay so silent, she expected him to say no, but instead he disentangled himself from her and rolled obligingly onto his side.

Tentatively, she reached out to touch her fingers to his scarred shoulder blade. “I might have lost you,” she said as she traced the mass of scar tissue.

“No,” he replied simply. “If I had died, I would have died your betrothed.”

“It’s far better this way,” she said in a choked voice.

“Yes,” His words trailed off. “I wish…”

“What?”

“I wish my father could have seen me settled with you. Apparently, it was the last thing he spoke of. At the end. My marrying and settling down. He would have been pleased.” He hesitated. “He would have approved. And he never approved of me.”

She could hear the conflict in his voice, without seeing his facial expression. She wanted to make things better. She wracked her brain, before a forgotten memory surfaced. “Baron Vawdrey sent me a gold coin every year,” she blurted, hardly believing she’d said it out loud.

“What?”

“Every year since our betrothal was ended. On the date of our engagement. It used to make me angry, because it made no sense. Especially after …” she stopped, reluctant to mention her marriage to Ambrose.

“My Father?” he asked, turning back over to face her.

“There was no note or explanation or anything. Just a scribbled line on the paper. ‘In lieu of what was promised’. I never spent them. I tried to send them back to him once, but he would have none of it and they were returned the same day….”

“How?” asked Oswald. “How did they arrive?”