“Had I my sword, and my balance, I would challenge you again,” she declared softly. “This time you would best me. And I would be glad of it.” She watched him lift his brows, full of skepticism and a faint disdain that made her despair. “Do you doubt it?”

“That I would best you?”

“Nay, that I would be glad of defeat. I would.”

She thought he would say something flippant, that the best swordsmen would say a defeat at the hands of the famed Ranulf of Morency could be called a great honor. Or something more cutting, capable as he was of such clever insults. But he did not. He was silent for a long time, looking down at where she huddled on the floor.

“You left,” he said at last. The mocking was gone from his face. She thought perhaps, under the impassive mask he wore in its stead, that he might be as wretched as she. “Knowing the ruin it would bring to me, still did you come here. You would have Edward think me a traitor, would have my life and lands made forfeit. Such a hate has lived in your breast, all the while I lay my head there. You have you no need of a sword, my lady. Already am I defeated.”

She shook her head in denial, her breath coming short as she absorbed his words. She wanted to tell him that he was to have ridden to Edward, that even now he should be standing before his king to declare his wife and her mother conspirators against the crown. But instead he had come here, and told lies to keep her from Edward’s suspicion, and stood before her to say she had hated him.

“You were to save yourself,” was all she managed to say.

“Was I? Such intelligence as you left on the matter failed to reach me.”

“Nor is there hate in my heart for you.” She rose to her feet, compelled by force of feeling.

“Then it was love that made you ride away from Morency.”

“Love for my mother, yes!”

If there truly was a God to strike her down for falsehood born of pride, she thought in the ensuing silence, surely now would be the moment. Her mother was but the tiniest reason she had run from Morency, from him. She opened her mouth to tell him about the child, but the words would not come. In truth, it was not the child. Not really.

“I fear what you make me.” She stared at his hands as she said it, where they rested against the dark gray of his tunic. It was safer to look there. “With your kisses. When you touch me. You make me... soft. Weak.”