He chuckled. “That gal? I reckon not. But that don’ mean she shall for a surety live a happy life there. Had she married a Taino man of the common run I reckon she should have as good a chance as any to have a good life, for the Taino live as well and justly as any folk do. But I’s not a man to choose a palace of gold and precious shells over a humble room if the first come with a knife in the back and a foot on me heart and the second come with a smile and a kiss. I don’ know what yee cousin wish for above all else. She may be glad later to have another choice.”

When I thought about it, wondering what Bee would really want, I realized I wasn’t sure. If anyone had asked me a year ago if I hoped and dreamed a handsome, wealthy, and well-connected young man would fall in love with me at first sight, I would have laughed and said yes because it was the sort of thing a young woman was supposed to say yes to. But it wouldn’t have been true. Bee was the one who dreamed of a romantic story in which she figured as the principal heroine. I had wanted nothing more than to have a chance to follow in my father Daniel’s footsteps, to travel the length and breadth of Europa seeing new places and, if I was fortunate, have adventures as he had had. I would have wanted a romantic interlude… at some unspecified later date.

Bee had made her choice. She had chosen to be loyal to me.

I released Kofi’s hand and smiled crookedly at him. “Thank you, Kofi.”

Rory had fallen back asleep, so Luce took the first watch in a chair and I settled on a bed of blankets on the floor. I shut my eyes, but my mind kept pressing me back into the bitterly sweet memory of lying in Vai’s arms the one night we had shared. How he had kissed me! How was a gal meant to sleep if she could not stop thinking of his passionate caresses?

The scratching at the window just would not stop. I sat up. Luce slept, one arm curled against her chest and the other flung out to one side. Kofi was leaning against the interior door, eyes closed, napping on his feet. I crawled over to the drapes that concealed the glass doors. I twitched aside the lower corner to peer out into the night-swamped courtyard.

Shadows marked the glass in blotches and lines. Winged shapes flittered across the sky.

A slender green finger was tapping on the glass. I recoiled. A branch had elongated until it reached the doors, as if trying to find a path inside. A bat perched on the swaying end, staring at me with obsidian eyes. I blinked, and it vanished.