“In your fever, you raved about an angel, and a lady.”

She felt him tense beside her. “Haps it was madness. I thought it may be so, and I would have her brother’s thoughts of it.”

“Did you kill her?”

She should have waited to ask him in full daylight, so to see his face and examine it for lies. But here in the closed-up darkness, it felt like a confessional, like a place where he might say the truth of such things.

“Why ask you this thing?” He did not sound angry or defensive, or sly as she might expect.

“Is whispered in the court that you slayed Aymer’s wives.”

He was silent for so long that she began to wonder if the vicious whispers of ladies might wound him, too.

“Do you fear me?”

She considered the previous ladies of Morency, who were only like all other women in the hands of men. She turned her head to face him, though she could not see him. “Such defenses as I have, they never possessed.”

They returned to silence, and she turned her face back to the canopy overhead. In a while she thought he might be dropping to sleep, so regular was his breath. She lay there remembering his touch, high up on her leg. She closed her eyes to remember it more fully: the feel of air across her damp legs, his thumb pressed hard across her lips.

But he did not move, and she pushed the memory back down. If she were a man, she thought it might be less difficult to banish it from her mind. It was said that women were possessed of a greater lust than men, but she had always doubted it until now. Likely he never thought of that day, or his mouth on hers. She could not know what thoughts he might dwell on. He had visions of dead women and angels. He had saved her in the woods, when the thief would have killed her. He wished to leave court immediately.

She did not know his mind, in any matter. It was always this that robbed her of her balance when he was near, that she could never trust his intent or know the impulses on which he acted. She was accustomed to understanding men with a swiftness and ease born of long practice. She knew Madog’s mind as well as her own. King Edward’s intent was clear to her. But Ranulf of Morency – her husband – was hidden as though from a fog.

“Wherefore did you have me wear red dragons today?” She murmured low, thinking him half-asleep.

But he was not. She heard his head rustle the bed linen as he turned his head toward her.