It wasn’t, though, was it? He suddenly wished he could ask Gauvard Colle about Alaina d’Arceval. Was she a creature out of faerie? Where terrifying beasts roared in the nights, unseen? Gauvard was the only person he knew, whether man or woman, or changeable, who might have any kind of answer.

The curtains were drawn against the night and the fog. The world was not what it had been this morning.

He stayed there for a time, then he left that room and went slowly up the two flights of stairs to where his bedchamber was. Farther along the empty hallway there was door half open, and a light could be seen within. He kept walking, his steps steady enough. He went there.

She was standing beside the bed. The night robe they had given her—or that she had selected—was white for innocence, and thin, silk, and buttoned only partway to her throat. Her hair was unbound now, for bed. For him.

“Very good,” she said. “Though we are wearing too many clothes, don’t you think?”

—

Some time later.

An interval, an interlude in the world, in his life.

“Are you here for my soul?”

She laughed beside him on the bed, a luxurious ripple of sound in darkness. There had been a lamp burning while they made love; she had blown it out, after.

“What use would I have for that?” She squeezed one of his nipples, hard. He winced. She laughed. Said, “You may do the same to me, of course.”

“On command?”

“Would that be so very bad?”

His heartbeat, astonishingly, had grown rapid again. “No,” he said, “I suppose not.” He lowered his mouth to her breast. Began circling with his tongue.

Heard her catch her breath. Was pleased by that. A lessening of control in her. She said, “That is…that is very…”

“I hope so,” he said.

Laughter. “I only wanted your body for tonight. I’ve never bedded a poet.”

He lifted his head. “Oh? Are we different?”

She smiled again, that very private look. “Possibly? As I said, you are unusual. Most men are anxious just to find release. You are…patient?”

His turn to be amused. “I’m not, really. But…maybe poets learn to be patient waiting for the right words?”

“Or woman? You have really never slept with Marina?”

“No,” he said again. That night at the inn didn’t count. “You imagine my life to be more exciting than it is,” he said.

“I do!” She turned on her side and lowered her mouth to bite his neck, and then an earlobe, hard. Earlier he had, yes, bitten her lower lip, as he’d wanted to do since the garden. “I imagine so much about the taverns of Orane,” she said.

“To be honest,” Thierry said, “you are the most exciting thing that has happened to me in this way in a long time.”