“I apologize for my wife’s flat-handed sarcasm,” the earl said to Arable. “She has decided it is entirely my fault we were victim of robbery on our way to Nottingham earlier this day.”

Arable made a concerted effort to have no reaction. A minute ago she had been staring at her own disfigured face trying to drum up the will to stand, and now she was expected to care about this lady’s jewelry.

“I would not call us victim.” Lady Margery turned elaborately away from her husband. “All in all, it was a rather pleasant experience. I found him charming.” She toyed with her fingers, as if to highlight precisely where her jewelry had once been. “You ought to try being charming now and then.”

She was pleased with herself, which she showed by lilting her head back and forth like a top.

“Try not to smile, love,” the earl moaned at her. “You haven’t used those muscles in decades. If you ask them to work now, they’re like to quit entirely and slough off your skull.”

At this the Lady Margery narrowed her eyes to slivers, her lips pursed in preparation of her next words. Arable, who was at the moment categorically incapable of any interest in their minor troubles, was still forced to participate in their meaningless banter. “A robbery, you say?”

“Yes indeed.” Waleran de Beaumont snatched the chance to tell the story, his wild eyebrows burning white from the window’s glow. “Not as you may expect it, though. We made haste from York, as it were, until our carriage came to an unexpected stop in the middle of the Sherwood Road. There lay a gathering of men, all quite friendly, who apologized for the delay. One of them shook my hand and slipped my father’s signet ring from my finger, explaining himself thusly—‘Don’t worry about this, I promise to take care of it,’ and ‘You’re lucky to have come across us.’”

“Pay him no mind, girl,” Lady Margery commanded. “He cannot comprehend how little you care about this.”

Arable startled at the lady’s accuracy. The passing inconvenience of a lost ring was meaningless to them, but a single piece of jewelry like that was worth everything she had just spent. The lady’s trivial losses could send Arable to France half a dozen times over.

She would never abuse Roger de Lacy’s trust, but it was impossible not to fantasize. How easily she might return to the room later, when it was empty …

But the other half of the equation was also there. No matter how gentlemanly, thieves on the forest roads were far more dangerous for a woman on her own than for a carriage full of notable dignitaries. She doubted she could survive an encounter with the same glib lack of consequence.