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not uncommon, although as the new lord pointed out, that position would usually go to an older woman. She might have given herself a lower position, even in the scullery, but it would have wreaked havoc among the servants. It was best to keep things simple.
    Melisande raised the hem of her skirt to mop at the perspiration that collected on her brow. She shoved a flat-bladed wooden peel into an oven and extracted a baking loaf, and nodded silently to denote her satisfaction. The cook's helper removed more loaves from the other ovens.
    "How shall we call you, lady?" Nelda whispered as she wrapped a cloth around her hands to lift a steaming oval loaf from its peel.
    "Edyt," Melisande murmured back. "It will at least be easy to remember."
    "Aye, easy enough. But he knows your mother's name. Will he not suspect?"
    "I told him I am named for her." As if she could change it now. But she wished she had thought faster and given him a different name.
    "But I fear some shall slip."
    "'Tis best that none speak it unless they must."
    No one would betray her purposefully. Even those who had been strong partisans of her father would find no benefit in giving her identity away. It would be a slip that would eventually give the Norman what he sought. But Fyren had been right. Then she would not outlive her wedding night.
    Melisande returned to the kitchen and checked the spits, hung with great haunches of boar and oxen. Copious drippings sizzled as they splattered onto the fires below, a certain sign that they were properly done.
    The sigh she released was almost indiscernible. If things had only been different. Once she had prayed for a husband to come forward for her, to take her from her nightmare. But the Norman came too late. And the most futile of wishes was that of changing what had already come to pass.
    She buried her anxiety in her tasks and returned to the back-straining chores that would bring food to the table of a household suddenly tripled in size. Wiping her brow again of the dripping sweat, Melisande glanced toward the kitchen door.
    The Norman lord stood at the threshold, his black eyes watching her.
    * * *
    So, he made her nervous. He liked that.
    The vision of those wondrous eyes clung to him as he and Chrétien turned away from the kitchens and followed in Thomas's steps. But Alain De Crency was not a man to be daunted, either by a reluctant bride or an enigma of a girl with startling blue eyes and the most solemn face he had ever seen. He had much to do, and little enough time to accomplish it.
    They walked through the upper bailey and up the stone steps to the narrow allure atop the new curtain wall. Alain ran a practiced eye over the fortifications, catching here a weakness of mortar, there a cleverness of structure that enhanced its basic strength.
    "Who designed this?" he asked Thomas while his gaze skimmed over the wall and back to the kitchen outbuilding.
    "It was Lord Fyren's doing, lord. This was a monastery, but most of its buildings were derelict."
    "And he added the chambered wing to the hall?"
    "Nay. But it was one long chamber until Lord Fyren divided it. The outer balcony and doors to it came later."
    "You disapprove."
    "It is not for me to say."
    "Say, anyway."
    "A lord should not seclude himself from his people."
    "I see." Alain rather liked the concept, but decided not to mention that. "And the new tower?"
    "Lord Fyren's doing also. He made it round, for corners are hard to defend."
    Looking down, Alain surveyed the beginnings of the grey limestone tower that would soon dwarf the older hall. Like the Conqueror's London Tower, it seemed intended for living quarters as well as a refuge during siege.
    The design made sense. When finished, its only opening would be far above ground on the first story, with wooden stairs that could be removed. For the present, a rough, doorless entry remained at ground level for masons and hod carriers to pass. But the site puzzled him, for it was not the best. Why compromise