“Yes,” he said. “And we shall have all day and all night,” he said. “This is like a dream, as if I still had fever.”

At once she put the back of her hand against his forehead. “No,” she said. “No fever and it’s no dream.”

“And tomorrow . . .”

“Let’s not think of tomorrow till we have to,” she whispered, and he drew her down to him, as he lay on the bed and pressed her against him.

The hours went by unnoticed. Two or three times Stuart called from the yard below, and Alinor threw on her gown and let down the rope from the window. He passed up food, water for washing, ale for drinking, but they hardly noticed how often he came, nor what he brought. Alinor made up the bed with clean linen and they both lay down together naked, made love, fell asleep, and woke to make love again. They watched the sun set over the marshes from the west window, and they saw the moon set. All night they stirred and woke and made love and slept, as if there was neither night nor day, and they needed no light but the flickering candle that made their moving bodies glow.

“I never knew that it was like this,” James confessed. “When the brothers spoke of the love of a woman in the seminary I thought it was somehow harder and cruel.”

“Was this your first time? Your very first?” Alinor asked, feeling a pang of guilt as if she had sinned against James and taken his innocence.

“I’ve been tempted,” he said. “When I was in hiding and traveling from one house to another. There was a lady in London, and another at a house in Essex, I knew that I felt desire; but it always felt like sin, and I could resist it; but this feels right.”

Alinor imagined that the handsome young priest had been desired by more than one woman, receiving him into her house and hiding him from everyone, delighting in the secret. She laughed at the thought of it and at once his face lightened. “You must think me a fool,” he said. “To be a virgin at my age!”

“No,” she assured him. “I’ve learned to despise a man who has been with many women and loved none. Zachary was the only man I was ever with, and he was a hard husband. They were right to teach you that at the seminary. Hard and bitter and . . . thankless.” She found the truest word. “It was a thankless task being wife to Zachary.”

He took a bright lock of her hair and twisted it around his third finger as if it were a ring. “And have you had no man since him?”

She looked at him. “Did he tell you otherwise?”

He shook his head. “He told me all sorts of fears and terrors,” he said. “I was not asking because of his lies, but because I cannot believe that no one courted you.”