My Lord, the Hermit

It was on the boar hunt that the Lady Joanna injured her arm ¿ saving a nine-year-old page from the charging beast. And there ¿ in the forest ¿ there was no one to help her¿other than the Hermit¿He was like no other hermit she had ever seen ¿ he was young, strong and dark ¿ and vowed to silence. His name was Keren, but he was always called the Hermit¿And as he touched her arm, and healed it, a bond was forged between them ¿ a hopeless bond, for she was Joanna of Leybourne, ward of the Count, and he was a man sentenced to build a church with his bare hands, as expiation for the crime of murdering his wife¿