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What would it be like occupying Holton Manor as a widow? Although she’d dreamed of something very different before her wedding—a happy future here at Stokesay Castle with children and plentiful laughter—it had not taken long for reality to set in. She’d fallen in love with a man conjured by her own imagination. Her handsome husband had been neither honorable nor kind.

Roysa shuddered.

“Lady Roysa?”

Her maid peeked inside, and for some reason, it was the sight of Lisanne that finally brought tears to Roysa’s eyes. Although her maid, who was six and twenty, was only her elder by two years, Lisanne had been married, widowed, and married again. She looked after much more than Roysa’s wardrobe.

“Why are you crying?” she asked, her gentle tone reminding Roysa of her sister Idalia, which made her cry a little harder. “My lord was a horrible man, God rest his soul. And a much worse husband.”

Pulling away, Lisanne grabbed a small linen cloth off the bedside table and handed it to her.

“Because I did not do so when Langham told me.” Aware she was making no sense, Roysa attempted to explain. “I felt nothing. What kind of woman learns of her husband’s death and feels . . . nothing?”

Lisanne planted her hand on her hips. “One whose husband mistreated her. Who refused to allow her to leave, even to visit her sick mother. One who should be thankful his brother despised my lord even more than the rest of us did.”

Roysa’s brows drew together. “Despised? I thought the brothers got on well enough?”

Lisanne’s look of pity did not inspire her to make further inquiries.

“You’ve not heard, then?”

“I came here immediately, and you know none but you will speak freely to me.”

Fear had stayed their tongues rather than loyalty. Roysa often wondered how she would have gotten along at Stokesay had Lisanne not taken her into her confidence.

“They’re only whispers . . .”

Lisanne hesitated. This gossip, whatever it was, made her nervous, which did not bode well for Roysa.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

“’Tis possible they are false rumors, my lady.”

She resisted the urge to beg her friend to speak, and instead waited for her to do so.

“’Tis said,” Lisanne said, raising and then lowering her shoulders. “’Tis said ’twas no accident. That Langham killed my lord for having relations with his wife.”

Roysa simply stared.

Her mother had often reprimanded her for gossiping with the maids, but she’d done so for a reason: the servants were often correct.

Lisanne’s worry became her own as she thought back to her short meeting with Walter’s brother. Langham had smiled as he spoke of sending her to Holton Manor. That smile had been anything but pleasant.

Although the story was outrageous, she suspected it was true. And she suspected something else—Langham did not plan for her to live comfortably there until the end of her days. He thought to dispose of her as he’d very possibly done with his brother. Title and land and the possibility of power did strange things to men, something Roysa knew all too well.

If she’d thought Walter dangerous, his brother was even more so.

And Roysa would not wait at Stokesay to learn if she was right.