There were lamps lit for him. They knew his habits by now. He read from one of Marina’s poems. A retelling of a story by another woman writer from long so. A folk tale of enchantment, in fact. A knight wounded in combat, carried to a ship named The Reverie, a boat without any sailors. It carried him magically across the water—it wasn’t clear where—to dock itself beside a castle wherein lived a lady imprisoned by her jealous husband. And the lady and her maidens came aboard and found the wounded, unconscious knight and nursed him back to strength, and she kept him with her secretly, and…

Marina was skilled, witty, the rhymes elegant. The observations of that world were sharp. Because she was, he thought. She was sharp. It was far away from what he knew and wrote, what he wanted to add to the world himself. He wanted to conjure with a different sort of people than those in gardens and castles and bowers of love, with birds flying in and out of windows, caged, then free. But he finished reading her poem with admiration.

She knew her readers, her courts, what she needed to write to keep doing her work, pleasing patrons, maintaining her mother and children here. Living this life. He thought about that. She might have married again. Had chosen this path, instead, offering pleasures and insights into men and women for the men and women of the court. Obligations accepted, as to what they wanted—but done by her own choice.

Men and women, he thought. Men and men, and women and women, too.

And sometimes solitude.

A light knocking at the door. It opened before he could respond.

She still wore her riding clothes, and her scent. It entered the room with her. She looked at him from just inside the door. She said, thoughtfully, “I think you are a man at ease with women. Used to having them come to you. In the taverns, no? I think you are also unusual for a small man. I think you wait. Most, I have found, try to prove their assertiveness. Well, if you wish to lie with me tonight, Thierry Villar, you will have to come find me. To show me that you do so wish.”

She turned, went out, closed the door.

He found he was having difficulty breathing. She would know that, he thought. Of course she would. He set down Marina’s book, which he’d still been holding. He stared into the fire. Why was he so overwhelmed? Surely this was just another assignation among many others with women who wanted him, or accepted his coins over a loud room below.