Once there had been talk of marriage between her and David, a wedding that would have made her blissful with joy. But times had changed and alliances, too. David's family supported the house of Lancaster and her kindred the royal house of York. Henry Tudor had wrested the crown from King Richard on a distant battlefield, and she was now eighteen and David's wife. David had insisted on the match, and her parents dared not refuse him, as he was a man now and rumored to have the ear of the new king. He had lost a brother to the battle between King Richard and Henry Tudor, as she had, and Alis feared he had chosen her for reasons of revenge. Alis prayed she was mistaken in her dread, but her husband of a few days was so very forbidding and stern. Riding on a small gray palfrey behind his glossy chestnut horse, she remembered the blond-haired, laughing lad she had loved and compared that David to the powerful, laconic, shorn-haired stranger ahead. Only a month earlier, they had met after a gap of four years, a single meeting, and then he had demanded her hand.
