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down the steps and across the bailey.
    Feeling as dead as his son, William watched her go. Only his hitching puffs of breath in the frosty air convinced him that his heart was still beating.
    “Lady Katherine is right,” a small voice said once she was gone. “’Twill never be the same, William. Nothing ever is.”
    His head jerked at the sound, and he saw a gar-goylelike face peeping at him from between the stone crenellations a little way down the wall.
    It was Nab. The small fellow had been scrunched down in a hollow embrasure a few feet away from them, invisible to anyone on the narrow walkway. Now he was leaning inward toward the bailey, the floppy ends of his hat dangling. He still looked the fool, but he was clutching the scepter Will had given him tight to his chest.
    “But why would ye want it to be?” Nab asked.
    William didn’t understand the fool at the best of times, and now he had little patience for his cryptic question. “Be what?” he asked gruffly.
    “The same,” Nab said. “Yer marriage willna be the same. That’s not so bad when ye think about it.”
    “Aye, it is.” Having Katherine want to leave him was the worst that could happen. Will leaned on the stone crenellations and stared down at the frigid loch.
    “But since Lady Katherine is so sad and doesna seem to like ye much, the same isna all that good, is it?”
    In a strange way, Nab was making sense.
    “It canna be the same,” the fool repeated. “So that leaves only two choices. It can be better.”
    The words struck Will with the force of a crossbow bolt.
    “Or worse,” Nab continued. “Odds bodkins, it could always be worse. It usually is.”
    Better. He could make things better. As laird of his own estate, William was a problem solver by nature. He resolved disputes between his crofters all the time. Just because he was a party to this dispute, it didn’t mean he couldn’t hammer out a solution that would please both him and Katherine. He ground his fist into his other palm. He could fix this. He could—
    “I know!” Nab’s mouth curved into an awkward grin and he waggled the scepter over his head. “Since I’m Laird of Misrule, I could order Lady Katherine to be happy and love ye. She has to obey me. It’s a Christmastide tradition.”
    “Power has gone to your head, my friend.” Will started to pat Nab on the shoulder, but when the smaller fellow shied from his touch, he stopped short. “I’m obliged to ye, Laird Nab, but no man can give a woman that order and expect to see it obeyed. Besides, your rule only extends till Twelfth Night and I intend for Kat and me to last far longer than that.”
    Will paced along the parapet, the wind stinging his eyes. “I can start afresh, do things differently this time.” He smacked his thigh with an open palm. “I could woo her.”
    Nab raised a quizzical brow.
    “I didna have to the first time. We were promised to each other so young, ye see. I never had to court Katherine.” He was both excited and daunted by the prospect. “I’ll win her heart.”
    “I’ll help.”
    “Thank ye, Nab, but I—”
    “Lasses like poems, or so I’ve heard. I know lots of poems. Do ye want to hear a poem, William?”
    “Not now, Nab, I’m thinking.” His mind churned furiously. There was so much to do, so many things he ought to have done before. He headed for the steps leading down to the bailey. “I have to go. Wish me luck.”
    “Luck,” Nab repeated, waving the scepter, the stone atop it sparkling in the sunlight. “What d’ye need luck for?”
    “I’m off to make my wife want to wed me all over again,” he called over his shoulder.
    Nab sighed. “Ye’ll need more than luck. Ye’ll need a poem, William. Maybe two.”

I saw a fair maiden, sitten and sing.
She lulléd a little child, a sweeté lording.
    —Fifteenth-century carol
     
     
    “Dinna ye think the child might sleep better if there was less singin’ and more tiptoein’?”
    —An observation from