“I’m sorry I was so familiar with you last night, Your Highness,” she said. “I realize that I behaved unseemly and I ask you to forgive me. I know that you were under a terrible strain when you said all those wonderful words to me when we were running for our lives from that dreadful place and that you really didn’t mean them. How could you love me? I’m nobody. Not a princess or a duke’s daughter ...”

“Evelina,” he began, feeling wretched. “It’s not—”

“Please, drink the wine, Your Highness,” she continued, holding it out to him. Tears glimmered on her lashes. “The patriarch’s daughter made this wine and she would be offended if you did not. I promised her I would tell her how you liked it. You can lie, if you want. After all, you are a prince and you can do with people what you like—”

“Evelina,” he tried a third time.

She thrust the wine into his hands and then ran to a corner of the room and sobbed as though her heart would break.

Marcus gulped some wine. He was completely out of his depth, floundering in water that had been ankle deep when he waded in, but which was now up to his chin and rising. Evelina had said the very words to him that he’d been going to say to her—about how it had all been different when they were in Drag-onkeep and he’d been under a strain and so on and so forth. When he’d said it, it seemed reasonable and logical. When she said it, she made him feel like a worm. He didn’t know what to do now. Anything he said now would only make matters worse. Yet he couldn’t leave her weeping in a corner.

He drank more wine. It had a peculiar taste to it, not at all like the wine to which he was accustomed. And it was far more potent. The warmth spread from his throat to his belly and his limbs, sweet and pleasant and relaxing. He drank more wine and then lowered the half-empty mug to the table and walked over to Evelina.

The water was no longer closing over his head. He was floating on top of it. He had wronged her. He would apologize. She had been brave and loyal.

“Evelina,” he said for the fourth time, and she turned around and looked up at him with her blue, shimmering eyes. He floated on top of those eyes, floated gently along like thistledown.

“I meant every word!” he gasped. “I love you! I adore you!”