Marcus shook off the voice of doom at his ear. He wasn’t a madman. He was being very practical. The wooing wasn’t going well, but one word from Nesta and Genith would thaw.

Nesta lined up little covered pots that looked to contain ointments. Then she plucked a rolled parchment from her basket, and unfurled it on the two boards pushed together to form a crude table. A tiny brush emerged next, and she settled herself on the sun-bathed bench, opened the tiny pots, and bent over her work.

Marcus watched from under a tree near the portal. Absorbed in her preparations, she had not heard him enter.

He smiled ruefully at his predicament while he walked toward her. He had never wanted a woman in this relentless way before. Actually, he had never much wanted any particular woman at all before. Now he was suffering this hell because of the only woman for miles around whom he dared not touch.

Nesta heard his approach, and glanced her acknowledgment before returning to her parchment.

He stood over her and watched the tiny brush make precise little strokes of color. He peered into the pots of inks. “You have no blue.”

“It is hard to come by.”

“The monks at the Cistercian abbey probably have some, and also more parchment if you need it. Tomorrow I will take Genith to the town, and while there I will send to the abbey for both.”

“I could use the parchment, but the blue is too expensive. I am accustomed to working without it.”

She was finishing a design based on the one she had carved into the dirt that night on their journey. It still did not include him, but he would buy her the blue anyway and to hell with the cost.

“Are you succeeding with my sister? As I promised, I have not whispered in her ear,” she said, as if guessing the excuse he had devised in order to stand beside her a while.

“I am knocking on a barred door. One made of ice, not wood. She is polite, but distant. I think that I bore her.”

“I doubt that you bore her. More likely you frighten her.”

“I can’t imagine why. I am very mild with her. Besides, I don’t frighten you, even when I want to.”

She looked up, and an arrow of flame shot through his blood when her gaze met his. “That is not true, but you and I are speaking of two different kinds of fear, I think.” She dipped her brush and returned her attention to the parchment. “As to my sister, why not allow Dylan to sing tonight? It will soften her much. She told me you had promised to consider it, but you have not done so and now she thinks that you do not care about her pleasure.”