Rigobert’s squires removed his armor as the Count’s did his, and then they walked after him as he went, limping slightly. Their path led farther into the family quarters; when they stopped at a door that looked as if it had a solid steel core so did the reinforced guard detail. When the door closed behind them the noiseless whuff and the abrupt silence confirmed her suspicions; she blessed his parents’ paranoia. The room within was probably his wife’s, from the decorations, which included a big oil painting of a snowbound landscape realistic enough to make Tiphaine shiver a little at the black pines shedding wisps of ice crystals. Certainly his wife was in the chamber, dressed in a thick night-robe trimmed with marten fur. The only windows were narrow and thickly barred, though open to the air. She started up, reached for his hand, and then stopped at the bandage.

“I’m fine,” he said.

They embraced a little cautiously, for his bruises and injuries and her pregnancy, and he kept the bandaged left hand well clear of her. Ermentrude followed the words with close attention as he spoke, then curtsied to Tiphaine, and again to Rigobert.

“Please, be seated, my lady, my lord,” she said, gracious but pale. “Refreshments?”

Felipe grinned at her, a tired expression. “I think we could all use a stiff brandy, my beloved,” he said.

“Not for me,” she said, and touched the slight swell of her stomach for a moment. “But how I wish I could.”

She did the honors, poured herself a cordial, and they all sat around a table that bore some sewing gear and a copy of Sense and Sensibility with a tooled leather cover and a silk ribbon marking a place. It rested on another with the title, Birds of North America.

You never knew everything another human being. Tiphaine sipped at the brandy, which was excellent, not quite as smooth as the pre-Change salvage Sandra preferred, but demonstrably on the same road. Though at present raw hooch distilled from potatoes by peasants would have been welcome.

“You said that I should send for the Mother Superior of the house of the Sisters of Charity here,” Felipe said, and raised his injured hand. “I presume not for their medical skills, excellent as those are?”

“No,” Tiphaine said. “We are contending with . . . I think the expression is principalities and powers, my lord. And I’m not a superstitious person by natural inclination, as you may have heard.”

He’d probably heard scandalized whispers that she was the next thing to an atheist, which, until fairly recently, would have been absolutely correct.

Not that I’m a good Catholic now either!

“Not the archbishop?” Ermentrude said curiously, but she sounded curious about Tiphaine’s reasons rather than disagreeing with the judgment, from the tone.