She felt they both hesitated on a threshold far more perilous than this entrance to the manor’s shrine.She closed the door from the great hall’s dais behind her. ‘What are you doing?’‘Who told you I was here?’ Ilysh laid a garland of leafy green stems and bright blue flowers on the pedestal before Saedrin’s statue.‘Never mind.’ In fact, Jora had told Raselle, all fond amusement and the dutiful maid had hurried to rouse Zurenne. ‘What are you doing here?’‘If I am now truly wedded, then my claim to Halferan is secured.’ Ilysh’s composure and determination reminded Zurenne painfully of her dead husband. ‘Whatever the parliament might say.’ Her eyes flashed with a hint of the indomitable will she had inherited from her father. ‘So I must undertake the duties expected of a baron’s lady while my husband is away. Just as you have always done, Mama.’‘But no one must know of your marriage.’ Zurenne forced herself to speak calmly. ‘We agreed on that and you promised me, in this very shrine.’As soon as Corrain had departed, she’d been tormented with doubts, demanding oaths of utmost secrecy from Ilysh and Raselle, before Saedrin’s statue and Drianon’s.Ilysh laid fennel stalks and an elder spray on the shrine table.
