Loghlan looked at Mairwen. The look that passed between them was the kind of silent conversation that thirty years of marriage made possible, and what it contained was too private and too complicated for anyone else in the room to read. But when Loghlan turned back to Isabell, the wariness in his eyes had been replaced by something sharper.
Not agreement, not yet, at least. One part in twenty of his treasury was still a great deal to stomach, and he was cautious. But under that caution lay the hungry, careful attention of a man who had just realized that the woman across the table might be offering him exactly the thing he'd been trying to build for his entire life and failing to achieve with sandbags along the river banks and shallow wells.
