“Then must you hear this and believe, for never have I spoken more true. Full well do I know you, every part of you. And I love you better than myself. I love you so well that I did flee from it.” She felt tears on her face, womanly and weak, a frailty she could not help, but she let them come. She did not let herself hide them, nor let her voice waver. “I have seen you, Ranulf of Morency. And sooner would I carve the heart from my chest than I would have any other man but you.”

Her lips trembled and her eyes wept, but she did not turn her face from him. Let him see it, he who thought her so strong. Let him not shy from her weakness, as she did not flinch at his dark places.

“There can be no man would take you from me,” he said at last, “for I would cut the manhood from him who tries.”

She gave a choking laugh that was more than half-sob. A wild hope that he might mean it, that he might truly believe her rose up in her – and, in the same breath, a sharp pang at this reminder of what she could never be. She could not make apology for it, but neither could she leave it unsaid.

“Nor can I ever be such a lady as men fight for, nor bards sing of.” She touched her thumb to the cut on his lip, evidence of the fierceness of their coupling. It was his blood she had tasted, and she who had drawn it. “It has grieved me, that you must suffer such an unnatural wife.”

He turned his face into her hand to kiss her palm and did not answer. He did not hear, or understand, and it raised a panic in her. He would have her return to Morency, where she must try again to be what she could not be.

She pulled away from him, feeling the weight of her armor as comfort and curse. With distance between them, she swept her hands roughly across her face to wipe away the senseless tears left there.

“Do you heed me? I know not how to be a lady. Naught do I know but this life.” She gestured to indicate her armor, her male clothes. “I do not weep to leave it but I cannot welcome what will take its place, so ill-suited am I to the life of a woman.”

“I need no bards to sing of you, to know your worth.”

“Nor do I know how to be anything but a master of men, to command and lead them.”

“Then command me,” he said simply. He was himself again, the pleasant teasing, the warmth in his eyes when he looked at her.