“Gracious Melqart, Vai. Are you embarrassed that the skull has seen you naked?”

“You’re the one who turned her to look away from the bed.” His look of offended hauteur only emphasized his grip on the blanket.

I laughed so hard that I cried. With a mumbled apology to the cacica, I draped cloth over the skull to cover the eye sockets.

“Oh, Vai,” I said, wiping tears off my cheeks. “I adore you when you’re indignant.”

He was looking very smoky and irritated in a way that made me bite my lower lip lest I laugh again. The man looked delectable when he had been driven up the pinnacle of disdain by feeling his pride and dignity had been slighted. Without a word of warning, he hauled me to the bed and strenuously, if very quietly, worked through his wounded feelings with my full cooperation.

Afterward he left me a sphere of cold fire and went outside. I uncovered the skull. I had grown so accustomed to the skull that it was easy to chat to her, although I was grateful there was no actual conversation or the chance that she would reveal by expression or unguarded comment what she might have seen. As I lit a fresh fire in the ashy hearth, I remarked that as difficult as it was to cope with the lack of fire, it certainly was pleasant to have cold fire as light. I explained that I had grown up in an impoverished household where beeswax candles were too expensive and tallow candles so smoky and foul-smelling it became a chore to sew or read by their light. I set a slab of fish to soak, and softened the dry barleycake in a hot parsnip-and-bean soup.

The water in the tub held a ghost of warmth in which I scrubbed his clothes. I went through them first, but I did not say anything to the cacica when I discovered three of the prophylactic sheaths tucked up one of his cuffs. The rascal! On Hallows’ Night he had been prepared to reunite with me. Of course, he hadn’t known I’d been imprisoned on Salt Island.

Washing done, I tidied up part of my sewing kit, and mended one of the tears in his much-abused dash jacket. The fire roared, drenching me with blissful heat. But I missed him.

How Bee would mock me!

Let her. I had faced worse than her mockery.