Three days, Honore numbered as she stared at Elias where he stood before the chest containing his clothes. As he had been occupied with demesne business since their arrival and, a half hour past, Otto’s wife and Hart had taken the children to the garden, there seemed no better time for confession.

“Can we speak, Elias?”

Chausses in one hand, tunic in the other, he turned. “If it is important. If it can wait, as it seems my sire cannot, better we speak later.”

“It is important, but it can wait.”

He inclined his head and crossed the chamber.

“This eve?” she called.

He paused in the doorway, chided himself for making much of Otto’s wish for his son to accompany him to the nearest village. But something in Honore’s tone told he would not like what she had to say.

The children were doing well, including Alice who breathed easier and no longer coughed. Likely, Honore wished to begin preparations for their departure, which meant Elias would have to reveal Hart was not his. Though he would make a place for Lettice’s son if he wished a life beyond the abbey, which would be forced on Hart when he attained the age of ten, it was a decision the boy and Honore must make rather than a man who was not a father.

“This eve?” she said again.

“Much depends on the hour I return. But if not this eve, the morrow.”

She nodded.

Elias meant to go straight to the stables where Otto awaited him, but the sound of children’s voices and laughter as he came off the donjon steps drew him around the corner to the garden.

He peered over the gate. His little sisters rolled balls to Alice and Jamie who squealed and rolled them back. Rayne, ever well covered out-of-doors, was being bounced on the leg of a woman servant who shared the bench with Otto’s wife who surprised at being so at ease with Hart’s little ones.

Nearer, Cynuit and Hart knelt beneath a tree. The boys seemed fond of each other, a good thing if Hart decided to remain at Château des Trois Doigts since it would make it easier for him to part from Honore and those he called his little ones.

“It does look like a tooth,” Hart said, examining something Cynuit held. “Do you think it is?”

“It has a curve to it like a fang,” the older boy said. “But it could be a claw.”

Hart took it, raised it to sunlight. And seeing Elias, jumped up. “Sir Knight, see what we found!”

Elias entered the garden. When the boy halted before him, once more his distinctive ears and nose drew notice ahead of the large mark of birth. But whereas when Elias had first looked on those features and been gripped by memories of the knight who beat him, now they held him loosely. Eventually, he would see only Hart.

“What think you?” The boy thrust nearer the tooth that might be a claw.

As Elias reached for it, his gaze drifted past and he looked near on the mark of birth. Though he did not know every curve and hollow of the island kingdom, it was not necessary to appreciate the wondrous rendering.

The lowering of Hart’s hand moved Elias’s gaze to his, and he saw wariness there. “Forgive me, Hart.”

The boy jerked a shoulder. “Everyone looks. I just do not like when they touch or rub it to discover if it is only ink.”

As he had surely endured in the wagon.

Elias lowered to his haunches, placing the boy slightly above him. “I am sorry for all you and your little ones suffered.”

“I took good care of them, and when I am back at Bairnwood, I will help Honore with them so she does not have to work so hard.”

Elias glanced at Cynuit who had returned to digging in the dirt. “Then given the opportunity to remain here with Cynuit in my service, training up into a man-at-arms—or of letters, if you prefer—still you would return to Bairnwood?”

He nodded, then frowned. “In two years, five months I will have to leave the abbey. Can I come to you then?”

The boy knew the end of his time at the abbey down to the month, perhaps even the day. Elias was about to assure him he would collect him himself—a chance to see Honore again—when realization struck. Had it knuckles, it might have knocked him back. Rather than the defect with which Honore had been born, the month of Hart’s birth had to be the other thing she kept from Elias besides the identity of Thomas Becket.

Two years, five months until the boy was ten. It required little calculation to confirm what Elias already knew. Hart was of another, sown well before Lettice was found with that knight.

Elias had told himself she was faithless only the one time, but it was a lie. Another lie. Too many lies. Though this last one in which Honore claimed uncertainty over Hart’s birth was not as dangerous as that of not revealing Elias aided his liege’s enemy, it had been outright—

He backed up his thoughts. Non, a more dangerous lie it had been. It had set him on the path to Becket, and though it seemed the De Morvilles would escape retribution, it could ever be an axe above their necks ready to slip from the hands holding it—those of Becket and his brethren, the abbot of Clairmarais, even Honore who would surely do anything to protect her foundlings.

“Sir Elias?” the uncertain voice returned him to Hart. “Did you not mean it, that I can return here when I am ten?”

He wished he had not offered. Though he would not have to collect the boy himself, ever Hart’s presence at Château des Trois Doigts would remind him of Honore.

“Sir Elias?”

“I meant it,” he said gruffly.

The boy touched the mark of birth. “This may fade some the older I get. Though I would like to learn the sword, I could become a man of letters. Honore taught me to read.”

Then he feared Elias would prefer to keep him hidden. Hating his inability to respond properly, Elias set a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I believe a hilt will better fit your hand than a quill.”

Hart’s lips curved. “When my work at Bairnwood is done, I will come back here.”

“Two years, five months,” Elias said and straightened.

Hart thrust forward that which had brought him to the gate. “What think you?”

That it was a light gray rock the elements had curved, thickening and blunting one end, thinning and pointing the other. But Elias also knew Hart had need of the wondrous imaginings of children of which Théâtre des Abominations had deprived him.

“Could be tooth or claw, but I guess the tooth of a very large beast, perhaps winged.”

Wide-eyed, Hart closed his fingers around it. “A dragon’s tooth,” he pronounced and ran to Cynuit.

Leaving the boys to their chatter, the little ones to their laughter, Elias closed the gate behind him.

He had kept his father waiting. But what was another quarter hour?

“You lied.”

Honore had heard boots on the stairs but not expected they belonged to Elias who ought to be with his sire rather than accusing her of that of which she was guilty.

Hand on the door of the chamber she had closed behind her, having decided to join the children, she turned to where Elias strode the corridor.

“That is what I wished to speak to you about,” she said when he halted before her. “The greater possibility Hart is not your son, though now it seems more likely he is—”

“He is not mine.”

She swallowed. “You cannot be certain, but do you tell me when last you were intimate with—”

“That is of no consequence. I have just come from Hart who revealed the month of his birth which he had to have learned from you. However, ere he told what you withheld, I knew he was not mine. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on him. His eyes, nose, and ears are of the knight with whom I found Lettice, he who beat me, he whose armor I took, he who unwittingly revealed to the nobleman who bought him a drink that Lettice had birthed a child.”

He had given her cause to fear he rejected Hart, so she ought not be surprised.

“Why, Honore? Why did you not speak in truth?”

She clasped her hands at her waist. “I feared you might not give aid in recovering Hart.”

“Then you believe I am without honor—that I would not keep my promise to Lettice.”

“I knew you not when you gave your word, though the more time I spent with you the more I believed you would keep it, especially as long as there was a good chance Hart was yours, but…”

“But?”

“Did I reveal the month of his birth, I felt I would also have to reveal another’s claim upon him.”

“You speak of the knight who beat me?”

“Non, Finwyn.”

Elias took a step back.

“At the stream where he near drowned me, he said he had the right to dispose of Hart however he wished since he had fathered him. And when we found Lettice…what he did to her…” She shook her head. “I feared if anything could turn you from the promise made her, it was that so foul a being had fathered Hart.”

Elias stared, then understanding shone from his eyes. “That is what he demanded of you last eve—if you had told me of his claim on the boy.”

“He but taunted me, having minutes earlier disavowed the possibility Hart was his. And more he told.” Honore paused over how much to reveal, then decided he ought to know all. “I am thinking you do not know that Lettice and Finwyn were betrothed ere your troupe came to Forkney.”

His shoulders jerked. “I do not believe it.”

“Last eve, he told that when he made a child—Cynuit—on her friend, Lettice broke their betrothal and began selling her favors to earn extra coin. He spoke of the troubadour come to Forkney, which is how he recognized you when you came looking for your son, and told that when Lettice’s pregnancy caused her to lose her position at the castle, he and his grandsire provided for her and her family. Afterward…”

“Afterward?”

“Once Hart was given into my care, Finwyn aided Lettice in prostituting herself.”

Anger deepened the lines of Elias’s face. “Revenge on her that ended in murder.”

“He said her death was not intentional, that they fought when she refused him the purse you gave her and he threw her against a wall, breaking her neck. Hoping to blame me for her death, he put her to the noose.”

Elias was hardly recognizable, so dark and hard his face, so corded his neck she wondered if she should not have told all.

She touched his arm. “Even ere I knew all of it, I knew him unworthy of being Hart’s father, so much I feared…”

“I would put the father’s sins on the son.” Elias held her gaze, and yet it was as if he looked at something beyond her. Did he question if he could have kept his word to Lettice?

He returned her to focus. “Without regard to endangering my family, you allowed me to believe I could have fathered a child I did not.”

“I did not know it was impossible until you told it was the knight who beat you.”

As if she had not spoken, he said, “The sooner to deliver us across the channel, you withheld from me the identity of Thomas Becket, allowing me to think I but aided a lowly, indefensible man of God attempting to flee persecution.”

“I did, but—”

“At this moment, a man who is my liege’s greatest enemy. If Henry learns I made it possible for the archbishop to slip through his fingers, all for which my ancestor fought at Hastings will be lost.”

“You know I will never speak of it.”

“Do I?”

“I will not!”

“Even to save Hart—or another foundling?”

She nearly denied it, but were a blade at a child’s throat, she could not sacrifice an innocent to prevent the De Morvilles from forfeiting their lands.

Elias inclined his head. “Though I would not have a child die to save this demesne, such a choice would never even be imagined had you at least been honest about Becket. Still I would have crossed the channel for Hart, and though it might have taken longer to rescue him, I would have.”

Chest aching, she lowered her chin. “What of Becket?” she asked. “Henry is vengeful. Had you not—”

“I have business to attend to, and you must begin preparing the children for the journey.”

She reached to him as he pivoted, left her hand on the air as he strode toward the stairs. “I have ruined all,” she whispered, then almost laughed. She hated that Elias thought so ill of her, but the outcome was the same. She and the children would leave France, and she would not see Elias again.

She closed herself in her chamber, dropped onto the bed, and pressed her face into a pillow.