FORTY-THREE

ONE YEAR LATER.

It was a fine afternoon as Adalene practiced in the shooting range built nearer the manor since she started training. When they started planning on doing the trips Fabian and Duke Philip Lornier privately discussed the first time she accompanied her husband to the Duke’s castle and court, she told her husband she wanted to learn how to shoot arrows and defend herself. As she expected, he thought about it instead of negating as it was unwomanly to do so, and only about if they had what she needed in their weapons room. It took more than a month after the wedding before he started teaching her himself. She could easily move by then as her wounds have completely healed, and he had tasked a favorite bow and arrow craftsman to devise a set for a woman of her build and height.

So the first time they went on the trip to Italy to trade in the ports where merchandise arrived from the remnants of the silk road, she already knew how to shoot arrows. News about robbers on the