As if reading the thought, he moved out of shadow, to where the moonlight could find his bright, tousled hair. And he did drop to a knee then—letting the light fall like benediction on his face.

And so she did see, finally. The eyes, wide-set and deep, were very blue under long, almost feminine lashes. The mouth was wide as well, too much so, and there was no softness in it, or in the lines of the beardless chin.

He smiled, though, and not mockingly. And she realized that from where he knelt she, too, was in the light to be seen.

“Well—” she began.

“Fools,” said Diarmuid dan Ailell. “They all told me you were beautiful. Said it sixteen different ways.”

“And?” She stiffened, anger ready as a lash.

“And, by Lisen’s eyes, you are. But no one ever told me there was cleverness in you. I should have known. Shalhassan’s heir would have to have subtlety.”

She was completely unprepared. No one had ever said this. Off balance, she fleetingly remembered all her Venassars, so effortlessly handled.

“Forgive me,” this man said, rising to stand beside her, very close. “I didn’t know. I was expecting to deal with a very young woman—which you are not, not in the ways that matter. Shall we walk? Will you show me your gardens?”

And so she found herself in stride with him on the northern perimeter of the Circle Path, and it seemed foolish and young to protest when he took her arm. A question, however, insinuated itself as they moved in the scented darkness, haloed by the lienae flying all about them.

“If you thought me so simple, how could you write me as you did?” she asked, and felt her heartbeat slow again, as a measure of control came back to her in his silence. Not so easily, my friend, she thought.

“I am,” said Diarmuid quite calmly, “somewhat helpless before beauty. Word of yours reached me some time ago. You are more than I was told you were.”

A neat enough answer, for a northerner. Even honey-tongued Galienth might have approved. But it was well within her ability to compass. So although he was handsome and disturbing in the shadows beside her, and his fingers on her arm kept shifting very slightly, and once brushed the edge of her breast, Sharra now felt secure. If there was a twist of regret, another downward arc of the mind’s falcon, she paid it no attention.