“Possibly.” Silvy laughed. “Will you ask us to leave?”

“I will not.” She rang a bell and ordered wine to be brought.

After a time, wherein most of the talk was of the court and unsettling rumours about the Duke de Barratin, Silvy excused herself. She had duties at The Lamb, she said. This visit was an escape, and she’d promised to keep it brief.

“May I come see you there? I do mean to.”

“Eudes is uneasy now when elegant visitors come,” Silvy said. “Better I come to you?”

“Then do that.”

After Silvy left, Marina turned to Thierry.

“You’ve done well there,” she said. “Took long enough, but you have.”

He looked down.

“I may be slow in some ways,” he said eventually.

“Or well-defended. As a city against a siege.”

“Maybe. Maybe that. I don’t know.”

“Defending your freedom to work?”

“This from the woman lamenting she has no time to write?”

She grinned. “I believe I have missed you, too, Thierry Villar. Now let me read what you brought. Drink your wine in silence, please.”

He did. Was extremely anxious.

When she was done she looked at him, eyes bright, teased him about Alaina d’Arceval. Was pleased to get the reaction she did. But then…

“These are something new.”

He nodded. “I think I learned that…that there might be more I have to say than the quick and angry. Mocking?”

“And that is unsettling you,” she said. Didn’t make it a question.

“It is. Yes.”

She nodded briskly. “Good. We are permitted to change, Thierry. That,” she added, “might be my own difficulty. Patrons know what they want from me. Even more than those in a tavern know what they expect from you. I need to deliver that, to be paid. And acquire new commissions. It becomes a constraint.”

He looked at her in silence. “You know you are extraordinary, don’t you?” he said finally.

She smiled again. “You aren’t going to talk yourself into my bed,” she said. “Appealing as you sometimes can be.”

He smiled back. “I am, as you seem to have noted, in love. And I wouldn’t deserve your bed, anyhow, Marina.”

A private smile as she glanced downward. “You have another copy of these poems?”

He nodded.

“Leave this one with me. I know some people who ought to see them. If that is all right?”

He nodded again. Hesitated. “You can’t go home, to do your own work?”

“Not yet. The times are…too challenging. Too dangerous, I should say. And the queen trusts me.”

“That remains your real problem,” he said. “I think everyone does.”

“My problem,” she repeated thoughtfully. “I see. Perhaps I should become untrustworthy.”

When he left, she embraced him again.