The lady flashed her a positively impish smile. “I have my resources. I’m here to take you out, let’s go.”

Gwen felt her mouth open and then close again. She couldn’t even be curious about why Lady Isobelle had bothered to track her down in a village all this way from the castle—she was too busy being frantic to get rid of her before her neighbors noticed, before her father woke, before someone could see them together and somehow blame Gwen for absconding with a noblewoman in the middle of the night.

Isobelle’s smile shifted, the change so subtle Gwen would’ve missed it if the moon overhead weren’t half full and bright. “Fine, then,” she said airily. “If you won’t come out, why don’t you send down Sir Gawain?”

Oh shit.

A familiar roaring rose in Gwen’s ears, only this time the rush of feeling wasn’t anger or fury. She could feel the blood draining from her face as fear finally unfroze her. She moved away from the window long enough to grab her dress from the foot of the bed and throw it on over her night shift. She tried to banish the million questions flooding her brain—How does she know? Has she told anyone? Are there guards waiting just out of sight to arrest me? Why on earth does she still look like a fairy-tale princess while sneaking out in the middle of the night?—and carefully swung a leg over the windowsill.

As soon as she began climbing down, a lance of pain shot up through her arm. Her shoulder was still aching from that first clash with Sir Evonwald. She hadn’t noticed it much on the ride home, but it had stiffened up as she lay in bed, and now . . . god, now it was agony. But if there was any chance of rolling back Isobelle’s revelation, convincing her that she didn’t know what she thought she knew, Gwen would have to pretend she was fine.

She made it to the ground and then whirled to face the other girl, pain and fear combining to create a pretty decent semblance of anger indeed. “You can’t be here!” she snapped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, or why you’ve come, but you’ve got to let me get you home before someone sees us.”

“Oh, you don’t know, do you? Gwen, Gawain . . . it’s all really very clever, isn’t it?” The force of Lady Isobelle’s smile was like the heat radiating from an active forge—Gwen had to fight not to take a step back. “I’m here for Ladies’ Night. It’s Thor’s Day, they have Ladies’ Night every week at one of the taverns at the edge of town, and you’re coming with me.”

“Ladies’ Night,” Gwen echoed weakly.