He looked back. “I am a fool, of course. You do not want reward for your love, but only—”

Then he saw his sister. To his credit, his face transformed, and from a comic lover he was instantly a caring brother. “Oh, sweet Mother of God,” he said.

Desiderata fell into his arms, and Rebecca backed away.

Rebecca took in the extreme discomfort writ large on Blanche’s face and nodded, even as Desiderata calmed.

“Her grace’s breviary is still, I fear, in her captain’s pavilion,” she said. “Blanche, would you be kind enough to fetch it?”

Blanche curtsied, even as the Queen protested.

“Let her rest, Becca. She has gone through everything I’ve been through but the birth.” The Queen’s sobs were slowing, and with much the same transformation as her brother had shown, the Queen’s face seemed to change. Lines smoothed, tendons were erased, and her breathing slowed.

Her brother held her by both hands. In Occitan, he said, “I haven’t seen you cry like that since you broke your arm as a girl.”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know where it came from,” she said, her voice lower and easier.

Blanche sighed, accepted Lady Almspend’s smile and nod, and fled before the prince’s eye fell on her again.

She was vexed, and fatigue made her vexation feel like something more serious. The pain was like a splinter in her finger—the more she worried it, the more painful it was.

The prince fancied her and offered her reward. It was plain enough—that’s what men of his class did to offset things like pregnancy and shame. They offered lower-class women money.

But the night before, she’d—this was the splinter in her soul—imagined rewards herself. What did that make her?

Sweet Christ, what did Sukey think? She stopped in the darkness, halfway across the smooth field of grass that grew for a long crossbow shot outside the city walls and on which the company was camped—camped, if few fires and no tents make a camp. The captain’s pavilion—travel stained and with a slightly sagging ridgepole between its two high points—was the only tent in the camp.

Sukey was gone, of course.

Suddenly Blanche had no interest in going to that pavilion, where he sat. She could see the candle-lit space within—there was Toby, his squire, fussing, and there was Nell. And, her mother’s voice said, what would they think?

Men had fancied Blanche since her breasts began to bud. She’d always enjoyed it and never let it drive her, like some girls, whose heads were turned forever—not by love, but by the power. But in this case, she bit her lip in annoyance, turning on her heel.

She was close by the pavilion by then, and she missed a tent-rope in the dark. It tripped her, and she squealed.