A/N: Before anybody pounces, I made up the name Avonslea. It isn't meant to refer to any real place.

Norman Farandole: Changes

The following dawn found Rose, huddled in a warm blanket, standing on the deck of the Blaidd Drwg, watching a rather more bedraggled and rope-bound Corvantes be marched back up the road they'd come down the day before. Harold had let it be known that the suspected spy was being taken to the fortress several miles upriver at Avonslea to be held for trial, not telling anyone but the half-dozen men on the detail the true mission: he was to be taken only a few miles to the nearby woods and executed, out of sight of the fleet. The men would then bury him, then go on to the fortress and return, supposedly on a routine patrol.

Rose had been guarded through the night in the same cabin as before, but her door had not been locked – for which she was grateful, deciding it was a measure of how much of the King's trust she had earned. She watched as Corvantes and his escort crested the hill back of the sea cliffs – and then he stopped to look back. She knew he was staring straight at her, and the memory of his cold, calculating eyes sent shivers down her back. Then he was prodded into motion again, and the group disappeared over the top.

Much of the rest of the day was taken with watching Harold sneak himself and selected soldiers out of the fleet, so as not to raise suspicion of the inevitable spies. She'd been startled to learn they expected some, but Alain shrugged; it was part of the times. She wasn't completely displeased to find herself "entrusted" to the King's cousin's care; a skinnier, younger version of Harold, he was nevertheless the other's match in the looks department, sharing the same grey eyes and blonde locks. If anything, his readier smile and infectious laugh made him even more attractive. Plus, he wasn't married, while Harold was – with an already-pregnant wife, no less.

So in retrospect, she wasn't entirely surprised to find herself in Alain's bed a scant two weeks later.

^..^

"Don't leave," he whispered in her ear.

"I'm not..." she replied sleepily. "... more comfortable here..."

"No... I mean, after this is done. Stay with me."

Startled out of her drowsiness, she looked at him over her shoulder. Even though his bunk was wider than hers, they still had to sleep spoon fashion to avoid falling on the floor.

"Is that a proposal?"

"Yes. Stay with me, Rose."

"I..." She was dumbfounded. "I don't know. I can't give you an answer right now, Alain. Let me think about it. I'll answer when this is over."

He sighed, not wanting to accept the delay, but knowing he wouldn't get anything more just yet. "Promise me that you will think about it?" he pressed.

She smiled. "Day and night."

^..^

Harold finally left with a small escort late that afternoon, ostensibly riding to the nearby fortress at Avonslea, but actually planning to rendezvous with the thirty other soldiers he'd sent out in dribs and drabs all day, then start the long, hard journey north. So it was he spurred right past both woods and fortress, never giving a thought to the detail who had left that morning with the condemned prisoner.

Alain remembered them late the following day – they should have been back from their cover trip to Avonslea by then. Then he shrugged. Harold had probably decided to scoop them up, as well – they were normally part of his trusted troops. The fact that they'd not left on horseback was forgotten.

So no-one ever searched, and no-one ever found the six bodies, stripped of clothing and weapons, lying hidden in the underbrush deep in that patch of forest where they'd been surprised and murdered by their supposedly helpless prisoner.