Whispers Of The Night

Color-- -1- -2- -3- -4- -5- -6- -7- -8- -9Text Size-- 10-- 11-- 12-- 13-- 14-- 15-- 16-- 17-- 18-- 19-- 20-- 21-- 22-- 23-- 24

WHISPERS OF THE NIGHT By

Lydia Joyce Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-one Chapter Twenty-two Chapter Twenty-three

Praise for The Veil of Night "The next great romance author has arrived, and her name is Lydia Joyce. The Veil of Night is a stunning debut from a young writer who possesses remarkable maturity and style. Every page is charged with sensual energy and confident grace. It is a gorgeous, complex, absolutely riveting novel. If there is only one new author you will try this year, it must be Lydia Joyce." —Lisa Kleypas, New York Times bestselling author of Devil in Winter "A lush, erotic historical Gothic romance, with just the right dark and mysterious hero and a strong heroine who can match him. Anyone who has ached for the Gothics of the past shouldn't miss this book!" —Karen Harbaugh, author of Dark Enchantment "A powerful love story, compelling and beautifully written." —Alison Kent, author of The Bane Affair "An extremely sensual, enthralling, and complex historical romance that had my attention almost literally glued to every page. The characterization in this book is simply outstanding. Reading through each complex layer of Victoria and particularly Byron was a true pleasure, and I kept wondering all along what new secret would be unraveled. In The Veil of Night, Ms. Joyce masterfully envelops the reader in an atmosphere of mystery and sensuality." —A Romance Review "Beautiful… The prose is lyrical, and the characters' thoughts are expressed in a mature and insightful way… Impressive… The author pulls it all off with considerable aplomb."

—All About Romance "With her debut erotic romance, Lydia Joyce enters the ranks of the best. Playing on readers' fantasies, she titillates and intrigues with a stimulating plot and unique characters. Longtime readers will realize that Joyce does for peaches what Susan Johnson did for plum pits, and they won't let this book out of their bedrooms." —Romantic Times BOOKclub "If you have missed great Gothic romances, as I have, you are sure to love this delicious debut novel. Ms. Joyce has crafted a mature, polished story that combines sizzling love scenes and captivating characters. The author brings the mores and manners of the Victorian era to life in the well-researched plot. Ms. Joyce is sure to be a rising star in the romance genre. I am looking forward, with great anticipation, to her next book." —Romance Junkies

SIGNET ECLIPSE Published by New American library, a division of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. First Printing, July 2006 Copyright © Lydia Joyce, 2006 All rights reserved SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the United States of America PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To the Bear, who one day will be humiliated that his mother dedicated one of those icky kissing books to him. Special thanks to Dr. Janie Schielack, who made sure I didn't mess up the math.

Chapter One

Alcyone Carter was frightened. She sat stiffly on the swaybacked mule, her hands clutching the pommel so tightly that her fingers had long ago gone from cramping to agony to final, blessed numbness. The reins she had no use for, and so they hung slack, slapping gently against her mount's neck with every steady step as it allowed itself to be drawn onward by the lead rope that stretched taut into the fog. Only that rope and the occasional, muffled clop of a hoof assured Alcy that her invisible guide was still there ahead of them, and only blind, desperate hope allowed her to believe that he could have any idea where they were going. Around her, the world closed in, as small and featureless as the inside of an egg. Her feet were swallowed in the swirling mist, and even her hands, scarcely two feet from her face, were shrouded. The few feeble rays of sun that penetrated the thick blanket bounced around until they became a thin, even light, flattening shadows and erasing all sense of depth. The sound of whispered prayers in French and the rattle of rosary beads grated from behind her like the dry scratchings of an insect's legs. Celeste, her lady's maid, had been terrified of the mules even without the danger of the precipitous drop on one side of the narrow trail that had been the last thing they had seen before the fog enveloped them. Now, she was nearly hysterical. Alcy found herself split between annoyance and envy, weary of her maid's moaning litany and yet wishing that she, too, could bury her mounting anxiety in histrionics. She felt utterly powerless, and to make matters worse, she knew she looked a fright. She had worn her riding habit for six days straight, and even Celeste's nightly efforts could not keep the delicate gray silk and brilliant gold braid from showing the stains of mud and damp, the wrinkles of too much wear between ironings. The dress had been created for civilized two-hour jaunts in a well-tended park, not an endless journey through the wilderness. Alcy's hair had fared little better in the wind and damp, and she felt its rebellion from its pins and ribbons as a personal insult. "How much farther?" Alcy called out in German to their guide. Her voice pierced the dead fog stridently, unnaturally loud. She tried again, attempting for insouciance. "When will we arrive? You said it was the last day." "Now, fräulein." The reply drifted through the whiteness. Abruptly, Alcy sensed an openness around them, as if they had risen beyond the rocky slope that had sheltered them on one side as they climbed. Had they reached the mountain's crest? As if in answer, a breeze pushed through the sullen air, tattering the fog into long streamers that fluttered like a thousand veils. The guide became visible in the shredding mist, and Alcy watched him pull his mount to a stop. Her own mule sauntered a few more steps before halting nose to tail behind him. "Why are we stopping?" she asked, shoving her unruly hair from her eyes and hating the nervous shrillness of her tone. "Be patient," the man said impassively. He had answered every question impassively for the last six days. Alcy had no choice, and so she sat and waited, straining through the mist for some hint of what lay before them. The breeze quickened to a wind, and through the rapidly clearing air, she traced the trail with her gaze as it sloped down until it was swallowed where the rocky upthrust gave way to the dark tangle of forest. From their vantage, she could look out over the saw-toothed tops of the trees and see the

opposite side of the valley… … and the castle that loomed above it. It stood at the edge of a cliff, only a little higher than the ridge crest where they rested, iron gray and sheer-walled, its toothy crenellations smiling indifferently down on the forest below. It looked as ancient as the mountains, and as cold. "Castle Vlarachia," the guide said. He nudged his mule back into a walk as Celeste's prayers crescendoed in panic. Castle Vlarachia. It seemed impossible to Alcy that she was facing it at last, which was odd because her father's scheme had struck her as eminently sensible and achievable when he had suggested it nearly a year ago. The plan had still seemed practical and—Alcy was honest with herself—rather romantic when she exchanged a series of shy letters with the man she came to know as János while her father quietly dealt with the financial details in precisely the way she had laid out. A bridal portion was secured in her name, and the rest of her dowry was given over to the baron in a trust upon the condition of their marriage, and with that security, she had given herself over to fantasy. So when the moment came, her long trip from England to Vienna and down the Danube had possessed the glitter of dazzling, girlish dreams, unshaken by the ugly mundanities of monetary concerns and transcontinental travel yet more genuine to her than anything in her life until that point. But then the fog had risen from the river as the barge reached Orŝova, wrapping Alcy in its insulating sense of unreality, and since the moment she had stepped onto the quay there, she had not quite been able to make herself believe that anything she experienced was truly happening. The strange entourage awaiting her had only reinforced that sensation. Someone will meet you at the docks, János' last letter had promised her. And someone had. What János failed to warn her was that her escort would not be a liveried coachman to take her on a brief carriage ride to a manor overlooking the town but a strange, ruffianly pair who would lead her far into the depths of the wilderness on the back of a mule with her baggage strapped onto four camels—four actual camels!—behind her. It was a shame Aunt Rachel had taken ill and had to be left with her maid and manservant in Vienna: Despite her own anxiousness, Alcy sorely missed seeing her reaction to that. The camel driver spoke no language with which she was familiar, and her guide seemed to know a mere smattering of German, which he employed only grudgingly and usually to assure her that they were close to their destination—very close. And now she faced it. Alcy sank into a daze of confounded thoughts and emotions as they plunged once again into forest, feeling for the first time uncertain about the wisdom of her agreement to the scheme. Reflexively, she raised a hand to her necklace, her fingers curling around the miniature that hung from it. She had spent so much time gazing at that pendant over the past four months that she could now call to mind a perfect replica of the man in its portrait. In England, she had thought the gentle, blurring glow around János' golden features to be rather dashing, but now its imprecision haunted her with grotesque possibilities. She pushed the image away and instead mentally paged through the affectionate yet distant letters he had sent her, trying to find reassurance in the shape of the underlying personality in his carefully respectful phrases. She was so preoccupied that her mule came to a stop before she realized they had somehow circled the cliff and arrived at the castle. The trail had widened to a road only to be swallowed by an arching maw in the castle's massive barbican. Directly in front of them, the gates stood shut tight as if to ward off an invading army, the oak blackened with age—and perhaps boiling pitch, too, that had splashed against the wood as it rained

down upon the enemy. The vast curtain wall stretched away on either side of the gateway's towers, gray and bleak under the shroud of clouds that smothered the sky. Are they just going to stand there until someone inside notices them? Alcy wondered as her guide stared in mute patience at the battered oak. Just as she was beginning to think she ought to call a greeting, the gates started to creak open. It was only then that Alcy remembered how frightful she must look, how pale and travel worn with her windblown hair and mud-stained skirts. I cannot go in now! She felt the first, fluttery stirrings of panic. However else she might be lacking as a lady, she knew she could at least look the part if given a chance, and all her future happiness might depend upon this initial meeting. "Wait," she hissed to the guide. He showed no signs of having heard her. "I must refresh myself," she pressed on, a trifle more desperately. "I must change clothes, arrange my hair —" By then it was too late. The gates had swung wide, revealing the servants who opened them—and beyond, a crowd of people who stared at her with wide eyes. The guide entered, and her mule followed obediently behind. A broad, sere ward stretched out between the curtain wall and a massive square keep that stood proud of the warren of low gray additions sprawling from it in all directions. The space was filled with men, women, and children, and some automatic, distant part of Alcy's mind began to frantically add them up, losing its place only after it had passed two hundred. Alcy sat ramrod-straight on her mule, trying to project the cool, calm air of a born lady when she had never felt more like a tradesman's dressed-up daughter, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. She had not thought of the local peasants and servants beyond the vague idea that there must be some—and if she had, she never would have imagined she would have to confront them all like this, at the moment of her arrival, nor that they would survey her so weighingly. If she'd considered the locals at all, she would have envisioned them clothed in wholesome English calico dresses and decently tailored wool coats and trousers. But the men wore strange, scoop-necked waistcoats with Oriental decorations under baggy overcoats, and the women's costumes struck her Leeds-bred eyes as tremendously exotic. Arches of white linen framed the women's faces, and wide aprons of the same material covered their dresses, both brightly embroidered in angular patterns that seemed almost barbaric. Alcy imagined she saw in their features traces of the horse nomads who had swept through the region centuries ago—as if they truly were the children of the Huns as many of the Hungarians claimed to be. Before Alcy even registered the pull, her gaze was dragged away from the gathered peasants to a lone man who stood to one side, apart from the crowd. The sense of separateness that surrounded him was far more profound than could be credited to such sublunary matters as physical distance or a difference in dress. It was rooted in who he was, what he was—and Alcy knew him to be the castle's lord. He wore a coat cut in the height of French fashion, though from four or five years past, with matching trousers and a wine-red waistcoat. The exquisite tailoring displayed a powerful frame, his broad shoulders narrowing to lean hips, the muscles of his wide-planted legs apparent even through the cloth of his trousers. That body sent an instinctive trickle of warmth through her before she could make out any details of his face, a reaction she had felt before when suddenly meeting eyes with a surprisingly handsome man, this time compounded by the knowledge that there would soon be far more between them than idle glances. For Baron Benedek János was soon to be her husband.

Forcing her eyes upward as her guide pulled to a stop, Alcy discovered that the man was inexplicably bareheaded, his chin shaven and hair worn long over his collar like a romantic poet from a generation past. For an instant, he seemed like the young Apollo of his miniature, with his face turned into a wind that ruffled his pale hair. But then he turned to look at her, and she realized that his locks were not golden at all but silver, shot through with streaks of the darkest sable and surrounding an unlined visage that could be any age between twenty and fifty, his features strong yet more refined than rugged and his eyes possessing a slight slant of the East that, with his hair, gave him an otherworldly cast. Alcy suddenly knew why the women of the old ballads always allowed themselves to be carried away by their faerie lovers. The man's gaze narrowed as it swept across her, and she felt her skin prickle with heat in its wake, the sensation waking an alarming sense of brazenness within her. Celeste, who had gone silent, suddenly began to pray again in earnest, and out of the corner of her eye, Alcy saw her cross herself as if the man were a demon come to steal her soul. Steal it? I'd like to see the woman who could deny him if he asked. The baron—she could not call this man by the Christian name she had been using freely in her letters for the last four months—strode toward them then, and Alcy sat frozen, watching him in dry-mouthed fascination as her body sang in awareness of every step. He moved with a kind of reined-in energy that she had never encountered before, riveting in its promise of excitement. His eyes were a cold, pale blue under the dark slashes of his brows, but they were afire with a force of character that she was tempted to call charisma, as trite as such a word seemed. She could not begin to sort through the thoughts that flickered within their depths as he approached, so quickly did they come and go, but it was clear he made no attempt to hide them. He was a man not accustomed to concealing his feelings, whatever they were—one who had never had the need. Alcy envied him suddenly and sharply. Baron Benedek stopped at her mount's side and grasped her stirrup, and she realized that he meant for her to dismount. Alcy swung stiffly down from the saddle, her stomach fluttering with nervousness and involuntary attraction. The baron caught her elbow before her feet touched the hard-packed earth, and she felt a small, twisting pleasure deep in her center even though the thickness of his glove and her sleeve still separated them. His action might have been to steady her, but he used the motion to place her arm around his and pin it neatly to his side. Alcy had the insane impression that he thought she might flee and was preemptively preventing any chance at escape. She mentally reviewed the miles of tangled trails they had traversed over the past six days. Flee to where? How? And what would make him think that she might want to? The thoughts had a fine edge of hysteria. His teasing eyes belying the gravity of his expression, the baron spoke quickly in some language that Alcy could not understand. She blinked and stared at him dumbly, letting the silence stretch out until she felt obliged to give some sort of reply or risk the appearance of rudeness. She cleared her throat, feeling a flush creep up her face as she remembered the many demurely tender letters she had sent him since their engagement had been formalized. Now, in his presence, those missives seemed impossibly naive, from another life, and she could not think where to begin. "Herr Benedek, I presume?" she asked tentatively in the schoolbook Standard German her governess had taught her. The baron's eyes narrowed, and Alcy feared she read a hint of contempt in their glittering depths. "In this part of the world, a noble is addressed by his full title," he replied in the same language. "A baron is never

just 'lord.'" Shamed at her mistake, Alcy swallowed hard against her roiling stomach. She had learned that Hungarians used their family names before their Christian; why had she not thought to research their titles as well? "Baron Benedek, then?" "As you say." The words were without inflection. He looked her up and down again, possessively, assessingly, and she stiffened under his scrutiny as she felt her cheeks heat even more, though now their warmth had nothing to do with embarrassment. "Welcome to the castle, Miss Carter. I am sure you are curious about your new home. I will arrange for a tour of the premises later, but right now we are wanted in the chapel. The priest has been waiting for some time." He flashed her a toothy smile before beginning to walk toward the nearest wing of the structure that sprawled from the hub of the keep. "The priest?" she blurted, stumbling after him to keep from being dragged. He couldn't mean for them to be married now. She had only just met the man. She must recover from her journey and spend time getting to know him better, and even then there were so many preparations to be made—people to invite, wedding entertainments to arrange, and her first parties to plan for the neighboring nobility and gentry, not to mention the travel arrangements for their trip to the glitter and whirl of the imperial court in Vienna. It didn't even make sense that he would want such a thing. After all, he would want to learn more of her, too, and before the wedding could even be countenanced, she must convert to the Roman faith. Wait—that was it! The priest must be ready for her confirmation. But she was certain that she must first be catechized or something—surely there was more to it than could be done in a single afternoon. "Why should we delay our happy union a moment longer than we must?" Baron Benedek said as if he could imagine no difficulty with the prospect. He did mean their wedding! Alcy's mouth opened, but no sound came out. The baron continued blithely, "After all, mine is a bachelor household, and it would be most improper for you to stay the night if we were not yet wed." He gave her a raking look. "Speaking of impropriety, what has become of your chaperone?" "Aunt Rachel's gout became unbearable, and she was forced to remain in Vienna with her cousin while I continued on alone." Alcy attempted to sound appropriately meek, but his words made her resentful, for he should be the one defending unorthodox behavior, not her. "I have my lady's maid as company instead. Surely, since we are betrothed, her presence is sufficient." They passed through wide double doors at the end of the wing, entering a vast Romanesque hall. Alcy was given no time to take it in, though, for the baron did not even slacken his pace in response to her hesitation, and she had to run a couple of steps to keep from being pulled along by the arm he still kept tightly pinned to his side. "All the more reason for us to wed immediately," he said. "But we can't do that!" Alcy snapped. The man gave her a sideways, patiently inquiring look, and she bit her lip and fumbled for something less blatantly contradictory to say. "I must at least put on my wedding dress," she blurted. The protest was nonsensical, and she bit her lip harder as soon as she said it, but it was the first coherent, nonaccusatory phrase she managed to pull from the welter of confused objections that tumbled through her mind. "You may wear it for our marriage portrait," the baron assured her in the voice of an adult pacifying a child.

Alcy stifled a surge of simultaneous irritation and chagrin—irritation at his tone and chagrin at how shallow and vain she must have sounded to him. She took a steadying breath and seized upon a less frivolous impediment. "But I am still an Anglican. I must convert before we can legally be wed." "Do not worry," the man said as they entered a narrow, shadowy corridor. "The priest will deal with that first. It will only be a matter of a few minutes." He returned her incredulous stare steadily, and once again the directness of those blue eyes stirred a shivering warmth deep inside her. He was close, so close to her that his legs brushed her skirts as they walked. Alcy tried to concentrate upon her objections. "Surely four months is an engagement long enough for anyone's propriety. In England, it would be far in excess of the norm, would it not?" "Yes." Honesty made Alcy agree, but she could not keep back the words that followed, implacably logical and thoroughly argumentative. "And yet this is hardly a usual English marriage, for we don't even know one another." "Do months of correspondence mean so little to you, my little bird?" he asked. The endearment was straight from his letters, a play on the meaning of her name, but now the phrase had a sardonic twist. "No. No, of course not," Alcy said, straightening her shoulders even as she grew more confused about exactly what this man meant and what he intended. She felt as if she were engaged in some sort of battle with him, though for what, she couldn't say. She also felt, helplessly, as if he were cheating, changing meanings and twisting customs to suit himself, and yet she knew no acceptable way to call him on it. "Good," the baron said with satisfaction, and Alcy knew she was beaten. They turned down another near-lightless corridor, and Baron Benedek switched languages as he spoke. Alcy recognized the patterns of the Hungarian boatmen's speech. "I do not speak Magyar," she protested in German. Baron Benedek made a noise halfway between a grunt of confirmation and a snort and changed languages again—and this time, she could decipher the words. "Can you understand this, then?" he asked as he guided her down another passageway. "Only with difficulty," she replied in Attic Greek, markedly different from the modern vernacular he used. He nodded. "And Russian?" he asked in that language, of which she scarcely knew twenty words. "Nyet." Was he testing her? Alcy wondered. To what end? And what answer did he want to hear? Belatedly, she considered that the baron might not care for a wife who knew more than the obligatory French, the German they had exchanged letters in, and perhaps a smattering of Latin, but it was too late now to pretend ignorance. "French?" he asked, switching as if he'd read her mind. "But of course." He changed to another language, and then another and another, and Alcy merely shook her head helplessly as she did not recognize a word of any of them. The baron stopped without warning, and Alcy looked away from him, startled, to discover that the corridor reached a dead end at a dark, polished door in front of them. "The chapel," Baron Benedek explained, in German again. He looked at her for a long moment, but the

shadows of the unlit passageway were too deep for Alcy to read his expression. Still, his close attention was enough to send an edgy warmth buzzing through her, the sensation both heady and alarming. "I understand that it is customary for an Englishman to kiss his intended after she accepts his marriage proposal," he said, with a dangerously playful note in his voice that seemed somehow out of tune with the deliciously dark intent in his eyes. "There has been somewhat of a delay in our particular case, but I believe that it is a custom worth respecting." For half a second, Alcy just stared at him, uncomprehending. Then he loosed his hold on her arm, slipped one arm around her back and the other behind her head, and pulled her toward him. Only then did she realize that he actually meant to kiss her—truly kiss her. She tried to jerk back automatically, but he held her too tightly. Why resist? she asked herself abruptly. There was surely nothing improper in it, as they were minutes from being wed, and yet as he drew her near, such a hot confusion of sensation overcame her that she could not quite believe that it wasn't wicked, after all. Their bodies met, the baron drawing her firmly against his hard stomach and chest so that her skirts were crushed against him, and he began to lower his head. Dizzily, she watched his face grow nearer, nearer, as her breath quickened and her heart raced. And then—his mouth found hers. Polite, some distant part of her mind labeled that gentle contact, but it did not stay so for long. His lips were so hot, a shock of silky solidity that sent a rush of fire surging through her. She felt both heavy and weightless at once, her knees bending as she leaned against him, letting her head tilt back in instinctive invitation. Which he took. His gentle kiss hardened suddenly, and her lips parted eagerly at his tongue's urging. She wanted him even closer with a fierceness she couldn't explain. His touch inside her mouth was slick and firm, shockingly intimate, and the fire inside her roared up, flushing her skin with heat and making her gasp against his mouth. It felt so wonderful, so exquisitely right in a way that went beyond reason. When he finally pulled away, she wasn't ready, and she stumbled back, fighting for breath and blinking at him in the dimness that now seemed far too bright. Alcy thought, belatedly, that she might have shocked and repelled her future husband with her brazenness, but when she met his gaze, his expression held more pleasure than surprise. He raised a hand to her face, brushing the back of his gloved knuckles softly down her cheek. "It seems that we both got more than we expected," he said softly, cryptically, his voice roughened in a way that made Alcy shiver. He gave her a critical look. "Take off your hat and shoes." Alcy gaped at his request—demand, really—but despite his arched brow, there was no sign that he was making a joke at her expense. "Why ought I do that, sir?" she managed. Did he now think her a bawd? There was a knowing edge to his smile. "I see into your wicked mind, Miss Carter, but I assure you that I have only the most honorable intentions. It is necessary for the conversion ceremony." She hesitated for a moment but could think of no reasonable objection. She loosened the ribbon on her bonnet and dropped it onto the floor. Carefully, she hitched up the hem of her skirt just enough to reach the top of her ankle-high boots, trying to counterbalance her unseemly enthusiasm during the kiss with a display of more appropriate maidenly delicacy. She made a valiant attempt to unfasten the row of tiny

buttons with her gloved fingers without toppling over or exposing more of her leg than was necessary, but the layers of petticoats kept sliding down around her hands, and she wobbled dangerously as she battled them and the stiff leather. "Allow me." Alcy looked up into Baron Benedek's slanting, ice-blue eyes. There was a dangerous glint in them, somewhere between humor and seduction. "Oh, no," she protested automatically, her face heating. "I couldn't allow you to do that." "And why not?" he asked in a tone that made her heart race and her stomach plummet. "It isn't like I won't be removing far more than your shoes tonight." That flabbergasted her long enough that he dropped to one knee and firmly grasped her ankle before she could summon the proper "My dear sir!" in remonstrance. By then, she was left with no alternative but to fight him or allow him to assist her, and common sense told her which would be wiser. She clamped her lips tight around a tart rejoinder and straightened stoically, telling herself that she would tolerate such treatment if she must in the name of peace. Except it seemed much less like toleration than a guilty sort of enjoyment, for despite the baron's businesslike movements, Alcy could not help but be aware of the intimacy of a man's touch where no man had ever touched her before, the cerebral realization stirring a distinctly physical reaction in her. The gentle pressure of his hand cradling the back of her ankle sent a buzz across her skin, tiny but too sharp to be ignored. He pulled off first one boot and then the other, and she almost yelped when, instead of rising, he slid his hands up her calf. "What are you doing?" she demanded, tensed to jerk away. "Your stockings must be removed as well," he said calmly. He loosened the garter ribbons that tied behind her knee and gave her a look of counterfeit innocence that made her go suddenly breathless. "I can do it quite well myself, thank you very much," Alcy said. She had meant to snap, but the man rattled her, and the words came out without any conviction. Was he trying to seduce her, mock her, threaten her? She couldn't tell what his intent was—in fact, she couldn't even say for certain at that moment which of the three he was most successful in. Even as she protested, he rolled the fine silk of her stocking over her calf, his palms skating over the bare flesh of her leg as it was exposed. She steeled herself against the shiver that threatened to betray her. Alcy knew he must now be far beyond the bounds of propriety in any Christian society. She forced herself to step out of his grasp as soon as he pulled her stocking free even though one traitorous part of her wanted nothing more than to luxuriate in the wicked sensations his touch stirred in her. Suppressing that urge, she bent to remove the second stocking herself as quickly as possible. Baron Benedek simply stood and leaned back against the corridor wall, his hands crossed over his chest in a manner she couldn't help but think was smug. Pulling together the tattered remnants of her composure, she managed to say witheringly, "I hope you are quite finished now. If you think I will allow you to strip me naked here, you are very much mistaken." He pushed away from the wall as she straightened and gave him a look that she hoped was full of the greatest severity and disapproval. He merely chuckled. "I had not planned to, but what an interesting idea. A shame we have no time for such diversions; the priest will grow impatient if we tarry much longer."

And then, without waiting for a response, he captured her arm in the crook of his elbow and opened the dark and gleaming chapel door.

Chapter Two

Alcy stepped hesitantly into the chapel on the baron's arm, the flagstones cold and gritty under her bare feet. He paused for a moment once they were inside—to allow her to get her bearings? She didn't know, but she was grateful. The chapel was not what she had expected of a castle's place of worship; having never seen one, she had formed the mental image of a kind of cross between a London cathedral and the country church near the estate her father had rented in Middlesex. But the space was smaller than either of those—intimate, even slightly claustrophobic. Where a country church was light and airy, this chapel was dark and close and baroque; where a cathedral soared up to the heavens, the ceiling here seemed to bear down on the congregation despite its height. The nave and aisles formed a heavy triple barrel vault of gray stone mottled with the flaking remnants of old paint, truncating behind the altar less than twenty feet from the entrance. The short space between the door and altar was crowded with silent observers: fifty or more, Alcy guessed, some dressed in regional garb of better quality than that of those gathered outside, others wearing the sober wool suits and stiff silk dresses that had never been fashionable enough to ever be truly out of date, which seemed to be the universal Continental Sunday wear for well-off fanners and minor gentry. They stared at her, their expressions neither cheerful nor disapproving but piercing, measuring her with their eyes until she felt like a particularly interesting bolt of cloth. Witnesses to their lord's wedding, Alcy thought, acutely conscious of the handsome man—the stranger —at her side and the slovenly, windblown appearance she must have next to him. What did the baron think of the sight they presented together? She looked at him askance, but his open countenance betrayed nothing except contented satisfaction, his slight smile touched with an arrogance and a whisper of sensuality that seemed to be habitual. Clearly, he didn't feel the fluttering that was in her belly, both nervous and strangely, tautly aware. He did not fear that his next step might wobble, did not feel hot and cold all at once. Alcy bit her lip as he started forward, toward the altar that now seemed suddenly to consume her whole world. What had she got herself into? She walked beside him as he approached the altar, amazed that her suddenly shaky legs could hold her up so well. She had to break the silence between them, to make him talk to her, or she would lose her nerve. She had never been good with social pleasantries, nor did she know if they would be appropriate during what could very well be called her wedding march, but she must find something to say to keep her fragile hold on her composure. "The chapel is charming," she managed. "Is it?" the baron responded. Alcy could not tell whether he was in earnest from his tone, but when she looked up, she caught the tail of an open flash of amusement evaporating from his face. It made him look young, perhaps only a few years older than she, and roguish in a way that made her midsection feel queerly tight and heavy. "Quite," she replied, forcing her voice to sound neutral, not certain if she were more reassured or

disconcerted by the exchange. When she turned her eyes back to the front of the church, she realized that the priest was already waiting for them there, though she had not noticed him for her fixation upon the altar. A priest who wore the beard and a tall black hat of the Orthodox sect. Alcy looked up at the baron sharply. "I thought you were Roman." "Bánát is a region that has not belonged to Austria for long," he said mildly. "It has traditionally looked to Constantinople rather than to Rome. Or to itself rather than either, though always maintaining the Eastern rite." Again, Alcy caught an odd flash of mirth—and under it, perhaps a touch of inexplicable regret. Pressing her lips together in irritation, she didn't try to puzzle it out. "Did it not occur to you that I have a right to know exactly to which religion I am expected to convert?" she hissed. "Would it have made a difference?" The amusement in his pale eyes was now coupled with a high-handed air of condescension that grated against her frayed nerves. "If the religion of your fathers meant so little to you that you would trade it to Rome in exchange for a good marriage, I doubt you have any greater compunctions about adopting the Orthodox faith." Needled, Alcy opened her mouth to deliver a scathing retort when it occurred to her that she was fighting with her betrothed less than ten minutes after she had met him—during their very wedding ceremony, no less—and that she had indeed done nothing but bicker with him since they had met. Everyone was right, she thought with a sudden surge of despair. She was temperamentally unsuited to being a lady, and only a fool, a desperate man, or a stranger would take her to wife. She tried to think of something soothing, meaningless, and conventional to say to mend the breach she already saw beginning to gape between them, but by then they had arrived at the altar, and she was forestalled by the priest's approach. Alcy nodded politely to him in greeting, but now that her initial reaction had been deflected, her mind turned over what had just occurred more objectively. Why would the baron have deceived her about his faith? It made no sense. Given Anglican animosity toward Rome, he must realize that anything short of Islam would be seen with a more benevolent eye than papism. The priest returned her nod solemnly. He had a furrowed forehead and a hawklike hook nose over a bristling beard, but his fierce visage was belied by the gentle warmth of his brown eyes that seemed to almost twinkle at her. Despite her clamoring doubts, Alcy found herself relaxing infinitesimally. The priest spoke some language she could not even name, directing his deep, gravelly words at the baron but including her in the conversation through periodic glances in her direction. Baron Benedek replied easily in the same tongue. Some phrases struck her as vaguely Latinate—any more, she could not say. But even without understanding the words, Alcy could read their tones and body language: The priest alternated between gravity and remonstrance while the baron assumed a reassuring, placating stance. The nobleman must have prevailed because everything seemed resolved when the priest turned to her with a smile and said in halting, heavily accented German, "Machen keine Sorgen. Wir sprechen Sie, was Sie sagen." Make no concerns. We tell you that which you say. With that, he retreated back to the altar, and the baron brought her to the steps leading up to its base. The priest gave her a final, fatherly smile, and then, to her startlement, he blew gently into her face three times and made the sign of the cross on her forehead and chest before setting a hand on her head and beginning some long sacramental formula, projecting his now-sonorous voice to fill the high room and

reach every member of the congregation. Alcy stood frozen in place. Every so often, the gathered observers gave a reply, or the priest blew in her face again, or she was made to make a half turn toward the crowd or the altar, or one of the priest's assistants called something from the shadows, or the baron whispered some words to her to echo that she did not understand. After several minutes of this, the baron whispered in her ear, "Now say: Pisteuō eis ena Theon, Patera …" That was Greek, Alcy immediately recognized with relief. Her mind translated it to English, and she realized why it seemed familiar—it was the Nicene Creed. She obediently repeated the lines clearly and without stumbling, unlike the short responses she had given earlier in the unknown language. She felt a flash of gratitude toward Baron Benedek—at least part of the reason he had tested her knowledge of languages must have been to find an acceptable tongue in which she could easily speak the lengthy catechism. It would have been agony to attempt it just by echoing syllables. The ceremony continued, and she was soon herded to a small font squeezed behind the altar. Alcy stood still as the priest anointed her with oil—realizing when he stooped to make the sign of the cross on her feet why she was required to be barefoot—and then he dipped his hands three times into the water, pouring it from his cupped palms onto the crown of her bowed head. The icy water ran through her wind-tangled hair, trickling across her scalp and down her collar to plaster stray locks against her clammy skin and spread wet stains across the bodice of her bedraggled riding habit. After another long speech by the priest, she was anointed again with oil and led back to the front of the altar. Alcy's feet were throbbing with the cold that radiated through the floor, and her mind was so clouded with exhaustion that the fine edge of fear she had felt as she walked down the aisle was dulled to numbness long before the ceremony was over. After several more minutes in which she was merely required to stand, the entire congregation began to sing with sudden gusto and another man stepped forward from the crowd to stand beside her and the baron. Was this the beginning of the marriage ceremony, then? Alcy gave the baron an uncertain look, and he returned it with an expression of such confidence and even triumph that she felt her body shudder a little in carnal reaction. He was not regretting the promise to marry her, at least not yet. He had no second guesses, no doubts, no uncertainties. But he is not a woman, a treacherous part of her mind whispered. How bad could any marriage be for a man, even to one such as herself? Her only power, legal or actual, was that which was artificially preserved through the inviolability of her bridal portion. The priest began again, and Alcy was thrust back into the maze of alien traditions. She repeated various formulae as in an Anglican marriage, all in the language she could not understand and was certainly mispronouncing. The priest slid a ring on to the fourth finger of her right hand and switched it three times with one on the baron's. How queer, she thought distantly, that the man wears a ring, too. Suddenly, she realized that Baron Benedek was saying her name—this must be the exchange of vows. When it was her turn, she repeated many of the same sounds, but she must have mumbled out his name in the rush of syllables without noticing, for she couldn't pick it out in the flow of words. Then a pair of wreaths, united by a ribbon, were produced from somewhere and placed on their heads, switched three times, and removed, all as the baron clasped her gloved hand in his. They each sipped three times from a glass of wine, and then the priest led them around the altar. Meanwhile, the congregation sat, stood, knelt, sang, and chanted in response to the priest's promptings, and various other assistants and acolytes performed their own obscure roles. The ceremony's end came abruptly, and Alcy found herself led back through the congregation on her new husband's strong arm as the crowd erupted in confusion, a few people applauding the newly wed

couple but most chattering animatedly—already dissecting the ceremony that had just taken place. In the space of a few moments, Alcy was back in the corridor where the baron had kissed her before their marriage. Now he stopped, shut the door on the crowd as if he were doing nothing more than closing a private parlor door, and looked at her again. Slowly, deliberately, a smile spread across his face, and Alcy felt an edgy tingle of warmth pass through her at its feral twist. "Now we are wed in ceremony, and all that remains to be irrevocably wed in law is the consummation," he said, his pale eyes glittering. Alcy's mouth dropped open at such bluntness, and he laughed like a boy caught at some high-spirited prank and bent his head swiftly to kiss her open lips like the man he was. He had straightened again before she could do more than gasp at the contact, and her body vibrated from the shock of it. She felt as if she had never truly understood what it meant to feel before—as if her nerves had never truly been awake until that moment, and now they all sang rawly, discordantly for more. "That must be your maid," the baron said abruptly, tilting his head in the direction of the corridor so that the light from a distant doorway glinted off his black-streaked hair. Now that he drew her attention, Alcy could make out the faint click of heeled shoes against flagstones. "She will know where my chambers are and will take you there to dress for dinner." He paused, allowing the significance of that to sink in. "Our chambers, you mean?" Alcy rallied and retorted, her instinctive defensiveness putting more of a bite into her words than she intended. He surveyed her slowly, and she had to swallow against the lightness in her head and the heaviness in her stomach. "After tonight, our chambers. Until then, mine. Come into the drawing room when you are ready. You have had an eventful day, and so we will take our wedding supper in private. I did not think it fitting to subject you to the public spectacle that usually accompanies such occasions." Even in her dazed state, Alcy felt a stirring of alarm. "Won't your people think me aloof?" An odd expression crept across his face. "Not at all. I made the arrangements more than a month ago. They have no reason to dream that you would have any say in the matter." Just then, Celeste arrived in a flurry of starched gray silk, making reply impossible. "Ce qui's'est passé, mademoiselle?" the woman asked, reverting to her native tongue in her distress. Alcy looked back toward the baron, but he was gone. "It seems that I am married," she said numbly, staring at the empty space where he had been. The baron's suite occupied the entire top floor of the rectangular keep, the stairs ending at a door that opened directly onto a vast drawing room with three doors coming off it—two against one wall and one against the second. The third and fourth walls were lined with windows. Even queasy with nerves, Alcy stopped for a moment, arrested by the dramatic panorama of the ranked mountains marching off into the distance. Such a view, Alcy felt, demanded a room of immaculate white simplicity or elegant pastels or sparse, muted jewel tones or something that echoed its exquisite aesthetic appeal. But almost anything would have been more suited than the indifferent hodgepodge of uncomfortable furniture and threadbare carpets that now occupied the room. A stiff medieval settle, two massive high-backed chairs, and a small, rough dining set that must have been local work two centuries old sat in a lonely, isolated island near the

enormous fireplace. The only piece of furniture from the past fifty years was an incongruous, undersized sideboard in the delicate Empire style. Alcy cast a look at Celeste, who gave her a pained, anxious smile and opened one of the side doors to another room. It was the baroness' bedchamber, Alcy realized as she entered. Her trunks were piled next to a massive, dusty-looking bedstead in the center of the space. "I'll have the maids draw you a bath, shall I, mademoiselle?" Celeste said. "Oh, but you don't speak Magyar," Alcy protested. Celeste's smile relaxed. "I scarcely spoke English, either, when I went into service with you, but I can mime well enough. Don't worry yourself about me." She made a small, abortive motion, as if she wished to place a reassuring hand on her employer's shoulder, and then ducked quickly out the door. Clutching the strange new weight of the ring on her finger, Alcy suffered a moment of mingled panic and desolation to find herself alone in the cavernous room. She took a deep breath and told herself, Don't be such a ninny—you want this. Her bridal portion was safely stashed away under her own name, so it wasn't as if she was utterly powerless. What more could she hope for in a marriage? Those thoughts didn't help much, but half an hour later, after a deliciously hot hip bath and with a cheerful fire popping on the hearth, she felt considerably steadier. Celeste combed out her hair as Alcy nestled in her favorite ruffled dressing gown, a buttercup yellow that did nothing for her complexion but always brightened her mood. It had been warmed before the fire as she bathed, and now the sweet, everyday smell of English lavender wafted from it. She studied her reflection critically in the dressing table mirror, trying to guess what the baron had thought when he had first seen her. Even in her bedraggled condition, he could not have been too displeased, she decided without vanity or false modesty. They had hardly even conversed, and so he had no reason to repent their marriage, not yet, for her face, at least, was never a disappointment. Alcy had known from the cradle of her parents' aspirations for an illustrious marriage for their only child, and as she had blossomed into brilliant young womanhood, they had made it clear that with a daughter with such obvious advantages, they would not settle for less than a peer for a son-in-law. With my face and form, my father's wealth, and my mother's distant connections, who would have imagined that I could have failed? Alcy thought grimly. All it would have taken was a touch of grace, an ounce of discretion, for goodness sake, and she could have had her pick of society's bachelors, regardless of the taint of trade upon her father's silver. Instead, she remained on the outskirts of the best circles, reputed to be beautiful but not charming, her cleverness held in general suspicion as not being the type quite suited to a lady. She knew her failings and yet seemed powerless to change them, and in her heart of hearts, she wondered if some rebellious, inappropriate part of her didn't really want to. Alcy frowned as Celeste arranged her now-glossy black hair into maidenly side curls for the last time. Would the baron despise her, too, when he found out the price that had come with his part of her dowry? That he needed the money, she was in no doubt, for age and neglect were evident everywhere. She could only hope that his need was so profound that his gratefulness would include a large dose of indulgence toward his new wife. Celeste chattered nervously as she laid out Alcy's clothes, and Alcy responded in little more than monosyllables, knowing she deceived her maid into believing in her serenity no more than the maid fooled her. Alcy slipped out of her dressing gown and stood still as Celeste tightened her corset laces, tugging and muttering and then tugging again until it seemed that she would go on forever.

"Fainting might be a mark of sensibility, but I truly doubt that even a bride ought to do it over the soup," Alcy protested when she could hardly breathe. Celeste tittered and desisted, picking up the first of half a dozen petticoats that had to be slid carefully over Alcy's perfectly coifed hair. Then came the dinner dress itself. Like all Alcy's clothes, it was a magnificent exhibit of the capabilities of her father's mills. As a small child, she had resented being made into a walking dressmaker's doll, but she had long ago begun to find the daily artificiality reassuring, as if she were an actress putting on a costume for the performance of a familiar role. The dress was of a deep, vivid turquoise that brought out the green of Alcy's eyes and the fairness of her skin, the silk doupioni worked over with intricate pleats and black velvet accents in the current stiff, Gothic-inspired manner. The skirt ballooned over her layered petticoats to brush the floor, and the stylishly wide décolletage revealed only the merest hint of her breasts while the bodice hugged her curves in a show of coy modesty. Current fashion was meant to accentuate both delicacy and uselessness, and though Alcy had long become inured to it, the strictures of modish dress tonight seemed yet another reminder of what she was meant to be yet could never become. Alcy chose her jewelry and pulled on her stockings and shoes, and then Celeste buttoned and fussed and straightened and fretted, as if pure exertion could cover Alcy's failings, before finally declaring her charge ready. "You will do wonderfully, mademoiselle," she said maternally, as if Alcy were a quarter century younger than she was instead of two years older. "Thank you, Celeste," Alcy replied, defeating the urge to point out how many times her maid had made a similar pronouncement—and been wrong. Celeste slipped out of the room, retiring to her new quarters below. Alcy stared at the bedchamber door and straightened her shoulders, taking a deep, fortifying breath. For Celeste, passing through that doorway had meant nothing more than that her duties were finished for the night. For Alcy, it was the start of a new life. After another moment's hesitation, the weight of the ring against her finger's naked flesh feeling like a lump of lead, she put her hand on the knob, turned it, and pushed. Baron Benedek already awaited her in the drawing room, sitting silhouetted against the bank of peaked windows that now framed an interrupted view of a brilliant dusk that washed the mountains in reflected shades of the flaming sky. His eyes widened slightly at her appearance, the flicker of desire that passed over his face raw and unmistakable, and she felt herself smiling shyly, foolishly, as the warmth of the sunset seemed to trickle though her, softening her nervous stiffness into something more pliable and less frightened. He rose, his eyes never straying from her face. Standing at ease in the ancient room with the even more ancient mountains visible behind him, he looked like an illustration of an ageless king out of a fairy tale, a wise shape-changer with the sable-streaked silver hair and pale eyes of a wolf. Yes, a wolf-king: Though his frame was more solid than spare, something about him looked hungry. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous, Alcy quoted inanely. She shook her head, dismissing the allusion. Nothing could be less appropriate to a marriage than a passage from Julius Caesar. He thinks too much? That was a criticism more aptly leveled at herself. She should be reciting Spenser's "Epithalamion" instead, a poem composed for a wedding. And yet her mind reached the line Helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound and ground to a halt, unable to continue. "Your ladyship," the baron said in accented English, giving her a deep bow that balanced profound respect with a strange irony.

"Sir," she replied, stepping all the way into the room and closing the bedchamber door behind her. His greeting, she knew, was an explicit recognition of her victory of achieving the title her father had purchased with her dowry. She should have been filled with a sense of triumph. She was a baroness now, a lady of a castle, no less, and married to a man who was almost unearthly in his handsomeness. Instead, a trickle of unease went through her, almost lost in the other, more earthy sensations that stirred in the wake of his penetrating survey. Something was not quite right here—something she could not put her finger on, not yet. The baron looked away abruptly, and at his glance, a manservant stepped forward and pulled out a chair for her at the small, round table. Alcy sat, knowing that every move had the grace of hours of merciless practice and yet feeling unaccountably clumsy. The baron resumed his chair swiftly, the movement seeming almost predatory to her unnaturally sensitive state of mind. In an attempt to distract herself, Alcy stole a glance at the half a dozen footmen—in livery as old as the dining set—who stood silently against one wall. At home, in Leeds or at the Middlesex estate or in London, her family had always been attended by half a dozen footmen at every meal at her father's insistence, and yet she could not shake the feeling that here, it was an unaccustomed gesture of ostentation and formality, made only for her benefit. Alcy jerked her attention back to the baron as he began serving soup into two bowls from the large tureen that sat at his elbow. "You must excuse our cooking," he said. "It must be very inferior to what you are accustomed to, though the cook does make up in quantity what the food lacks in quality. I carried back many books on cookery from my time in France but no chef to prepare them." Despite his words, he sounded not in the least apologetic. "And why not, sir?" Alcy asked hesitantly. She did not want to be seen as prying, for she was determined her husband would find no fault with her tonight, and yet it seemed that he expected a response. He shot her a wry glance. "Books cost money only once, while chefs continue costing—especially if a chef is to be persuaded to work in such a remote region as this." Alcy took a cautious sip to cover the awkwardness of his blatant reference to the reason he had sought a wealthy English bride. The soup was warm and rich, the flavors of fish and butter blended with savory herbs. "Well, I must say, your cook has done quite respectably with only books to work from. And in French, no less?" Baron Benedek smiled—wolfishly, or so it seemed to her. "Ah, you have discovered yet another difficulty I was forced to overcome. Not only does the cook not know French, but he is illiterate in every language. I spent many nights in the kitchen dictating my translations of the recipes before he could produce a respectable béchamel. So I will take half your compliments for myself, and I will convey the remainder where they are due." He called over one of the servants, who bowed respectfully and murmured a reply. The baron spoke to the man in the same Latinate language the priest had used, looking at Alcy meaningfully to let her know that he was translating what she had said. The man bowed and repeated his formula before slipping out of the room. They lapsed into silence, which Baron Benedek seemed content to maintain. But as Alcy ate, she was burdened with the knowledge that she was now his wife and so, in a way, his hostess, and thus the onus fell upon her to make the polite conversation expected in such a situation. "You have a lovely suite of apartments here," she said brightly. "I believe they occupy the top floor of the keep? The view is enviable."

Amusement, never far from the surface, flickered again in his gaze. "My grandfather's idea. Vistas to stir one's soul and stairs for the prevention of sloth." Alcy made a face. "I don't think I would have liked your grandfather much, though he would have got along very well with mine. But I rather think the placement of the chambers would encourage one to stay abed on a cold winter's day, for one would know that if one did venture forth, one's blankets would be intolerably far away when one desired to return." He chuckled, a light, rich baritone that sent shivers across her skin. "I am afraid my grandfather never met one with your arguments, Miss Carter." He cocked a mocking eyebrow at himself for reverting to her maiden name. "Alcyone." He pronounced it Al-key-oh-nee, as if it were Greek. "Al-see-oh-nee," she corrected. "The English make the C soft." She hesitated before adding, "Most people who call me by my Christian name just use Alcy." "Alcy." He said the name as if he were tasting it. "It is like an upside-down 'Alice.' But quite pleasant on the ear and tongue. It suits you." Yes. Alice was the name for a normal, respectable young lady. Turn her upside down, and Alcy was the result. She took a quick sip of soup to chase away that thought. "You never told me why your parents gave you such an unusual name," the baron was continuing. "My mother loves old stories, both classical and European," Alcy said. "My father refused to countenance the names Isolde and Heloise, but he liked the way Alcyone sounded. It's from a Greek myth—" "I am familiar with it," he interrupted, treating her with his slightly condescending smile. Alcy tried not to bristle. "It's a myth without murder, tragedy, or malice. Unusual enough to be remembered." "A happy story of a couple's enduring love rewarded," she agreed with a reflexive hint of acid she couldn't control. "If only all men could be so lucky." He gazed at her steadily. Was he expressing a sincere hope or making a facetious gibe? Despite the guilelessness of his face, she could not tell. Before she could devise a discreet way to probe the question, his gaze dropped to her soup bawl. "Ah. I see that you finished your soup. I know it is not customary, but let us be extravagant tonight. Would you care for some more, my dear?" The dancing light in his eyes betrayed the pedestrian endearment as a tease, and Alcy replied in kind without thinking. "No, thank you, my darling, I am quite done with it." She immediately bit her lip, afraid she had overstepped her bounds,. but he merely nodded and waved at one of the hovering servants, who answered with the same formula as the previous one and whisked away their bowls as the baron served them both from the fish dishes. As he set a plate in front of her, Alcy watched his bare hands with more interest than was proper. They were long and untanned as a gentleman's hands should be, but the bones were strong, and they were wide and well built in a way that was more man than gentle. Alcy had never actually touched her bare hand to the baron's during the wedding ceremony, having removed her gloves for no more than the space of time it took the priest to put the ring upon it, and so the last man's hands to touch hers had been Ezekiel's, during that imprudent confession that had left her feeling confused, confounded, and unaccountably betrayed. Ezekiel's hands had felt like cracked leather, scarred and roughened with the

work he did breathing his laborious, intricate sketches of machinery to life, "the modern world's manticores," as he called them in his buzzing Scots-accented English. His hands had also been rather cold, yet she could almost feel the lingering heat of Benedek's where he had touched her, and compared to the reality of the baron's broad hands, the memory of Ezekiel's now seemed quite small. Alcy jerked her eyes away and fixed them upon her plate as the baron set it in front of her, trying to rid her mind of the ghosts of the past that seemed to flock around her like those poor feckless spirits of Homer's limbo, thirsting for remembrance rather than sacrifice. She ate quickly to cover her unsuitable thoughts, sipping at the sherry the baron wordlessly poured her. The fish was delicious and flaky, the eel pie quaintly medieval but equally savory, and Alcy tried to keep her mind occupied by speculating where the nearest stream of any size might be to provide such fare. She almost jumped when, without warning, Baron Benedek launched a question like a salvo. "Why did you agree to this marriage?" Almost choking at his bluntness, she jerked her head up to stare at him. A small, private smile played around his lips, but there was deadly earnestness behind the glitter in his eyes. "Pardon me, sir?" she managed. "Come now, Alcy, do not pretend that you do not know what I mean," he said with a touch of exasperation. "And do not play coy. This is not the dark ages, and rich women don't wed strangers every day. You, however, have crossed a continent to do just that. I think I deserve to know why." Alcy frowned. "It is not a subject I wish to discuss." The glint in his eyes softened slightly. "I wouldn't have brought it up if I thought it were information you would freely part with. Why should I ask a question if waiting a few minutes meant that the answer would fall into my lap? But you would be content to discuss the lovely pattern of the tablecloth until dawn unless I goad you into some other topic." She scowled at him. "What else would be fitting for me to discuss? My delicate mind cannot handle more weighty topics." At that, he guffawed outright. "Alcy, my little bird, you have a very sharp beak. I thought you were a wren, and it turns out I have clasped an eagle to my breast." Alcy sat mute, utterly incapable of deciding how she should reply, not sure even of what she felt. Her flash of anger had burned away like a burst of gunpowder, leaving only smoke and the memory of heat, and yet she could neither quite manage to regret her outburst nor be embarrassed by it. She was spared the need to speak when he continued. "I am asking you because the situation hardly seems just to me. After all, my motivations are perfectly transparent. Penury can drive one to many unusual decisions. But you…" He trailed off, lifting one eyebrow. "I had expected something much different from you, and now that I have met you, I find myself baffled." "What do you mean?" she asked stiffly, curiosity forcing her to speak despite herself. "How old are you?" he returned, neatly sidestepping the question. She frowned at her fish. "One and twenty."

"Exactly. That is very young to have decided that Britain holds no future for you." Alcy looked at him sharply, expecting to see derision. Instead, his face had an open, almost innocent look, devoid now of even the habitual hint of superciliousness. "If you say so," she said begrudgingly. "I just did, I believe," he said dryly. "I had expected a much older woman—one who was firmly on the shelf." Alcy shook her head stubbornly. "I do not know why. Surely my father told you how old I am. After all, as a nobleman, you would want to be certain that I was of… an appropriate age to bear your children." She cleared her throat, ignoring the incipient flush that threatened to turn her face scarlet. It was hard to speak of such things aloud—harder still when they involved her and a man whose mere presence made her clothes feel unaccountably tight. "Practicalities aside, your vanity would demand a certain nobility." "What is the English phrase? Beggars can't be choosers. And so I must admit that I looked upon Mr. Carter's assurances with some skepticism. Why would a girl with only one and twenty years wish to marry a Hungarian baron? It makes no sense. I had also, despite the portrait your father sent, expected a woman of a certain homeliness." His gaze traveled over her intimately, across her face, her neck, and the bare, white expanse of her shoulders. Alcy felt her skin heat in its wake, and a flush crept up her neck and into her cheeks. Yet when the baron continued, his words were matter-of-fact. "I had thought the portrait to be too lovely to be credible, and yet it appears to be a perfect likeness. So why did you come here?" "Perhaps I simply enjoy travel," Alcy said, as evenly as she could manage. He dismissed that reply with a negligent wave and pressed on as if she had not spoken. "One reason springs immediately to mind. Have you perhaps been… how shall I say it? Compromised?" "Certainly not!" Alcy did not have to fabricate her indignation, though a remote part of her mind was amused by such an accusation. If only she were so irresistibly alluring, she might be married now to a young English lord instead of this barbaric man, however attractive. Even Ezekiel, her mentor, her peer, her friend, had wanted more than what she could be. The baron made a placating motion. "I shall find out tonight, anyhow, so I wish you to know now that you should not fear that I will be angry—" "Of course I haven't been compromised or anything of the sort!" she said, with even more exasperation. The baron sat back in his chair, cocking a quizzical eyebrow at her as if she were an intriguing riddle. "Then is there something wrong with you physically? So that you cannot fulfill all of your marital duties, perhaps?" "No!" She could hardly believe that anyone would ask her such questions, and yet the ludicrousness that the baron would and had made her bite back a burst of incredulous laughter. "Then why are you not wed?" he said, leaning forward suddenly, intent. She narrowed her eyes and stared right back at him. By Jove, he was more handsome than any man had a right to be. And, it occurred to her, more devious. "You are trying to anger me into blurting out an answer, aren't you?" He plastered a surprised expression across his face, but it didn't fool her for an instant. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. If he wanted the truth that badly, then he deserved it. She steeled herself against the old pain of her inadequacies, sheathing herself in icy defensiveness.

"Very well, then, sir. I'm sure that somewhere in that babble of words at our marriage ceremony, I promised to obey you, so I might as well let you know before you order me to tell and find out exactly what your title bought you." She took a deep breath. "My father intended me to wed a peer. There were none so poor as to want me in England, not even a superannuated baron with a passel of grandchildren. Quite simply, I am not the kind of woman whom men want to marry. I cannot soothe a man when he is riled. I cannot feed his self-importance. I am not a restful presence, a good wife, or a gracious hostess, nor do I even especially like babies. My only chance to make a match pleasing to my parents was to marry a stranger and hope that he, at least, will tolerate me for the sake of my dowry and, yes, beauty. But I am no charmer." She had thought the same a thousand times before, and yet saying it aloud was unimaginably difficult, as if she were making real something that had, until that moment, been a phantom. "What are you, then?" the baron asked. "I do not think there is a word for me, but what I am not is an accomplished—or even adequate—lady." Alcy lifted her chin, bracing for his response. Baron Benedek leaned back in his chair with his eyebrows raised. "I still suppose I got a far better lot than I had anticipated," he said in a tone that seemed quite unconcerned. Was his insouciance impervious? Alcy did not know what to think. She contented herself with saying darkly, "You do not yet know me very well," before stabbing at the last of the fish. Nevertheless, she felt the icy sheath around her lungs not thaw, exactly, but crack a little, just enough that she could breathe and her heart could beat freely again. "Nor do you know me." The baron cast an eye at her glass and tipped a few more inches of wine into it. "Have some more sherry. It will settle your nerves." Not knowing what else to do, Alcy drank. The baron spoke briefly to the servants in the Latinate language they had been using all evening, and the table was cleared in preparation for the roast. Again a sense that something was amiss crept over Alcy, and she frowned as something tickled the back of her mind. Latinate, not Hungarian. It was true that the Bánát region had not been the property of Hungary for long, but once that thought intruded, other details of the afternoon began cascading into place, forming a picture that was alarming yet all too logical. She stared at the man across from her, seeing him clearly for the first time. No, he did not look like the man in the miniature. Not at all. "You are right," she said. "I do not know you even a little bit, for you are not Baron Benedek."

Chapter Three

Dumitru Constantinescu stilled for an instant, then snapped an order to the servants, who hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind them. Turning his eyes to his new wife's china doll face, he demanded, "What did you say?" "You are not Baron Benedek," she repeated, her voice no longer amazed but firm, certain. Dumitru folded his arms over his chest and took a breath. He did not know whether he wanted to curse her for discovering his ploy so soon or kiss her for her delightful cleverness, however inappropriate such

an urge was in this grave situation. "Why do you make such an accusation?" he temporized. He was accustomed to games of deception, but those had always been played out in a political sphere; though he could make spies from half a dozen countries dance to his tune, he found himself at a loss as to how to deal with this one woman. Alcyone's frown deepened, an expression too stern for the delicate features of her face, and Dumitru could almost see the reasons shuffle themselves into an orderly list within her mind. "First, there was the six-day ride when I'd had the firm impression that the baron's estate was close to Orŝova. Second, you pushed me to the altar before I even had time to change my clothes. Considering the circumstances, waiting would be much more sensible—unless, of course, you feared I would discover your deception before I was safely wedded and bedded." She took a visible breath. "Third, you never once explicitly acknowledged that you are the Baron Benedek János, not even when I asked, and though you implied we were in Bánát, you fell short of declaring it. I suspect that you wanted to avoid lying to me so that I would be less angry with you when you revealed the truth, especially considering how legally tenuous the marriage would be given the deception. Fourth, you're no Catholic, even though Benedek János told me that he is. Fifth, I never said the name 'Benedek János' during the marriage ceremony even though you said mine, so I must have said another in its place. Sixth, everyone here has been speaking a language that is not Hungarian. And seventh and finally, your servants have addressed you by a title other than 'Baron Benedek' nearly half a dozen times so far this evening." Dumitru's stomach sank, but even as it did so, a small part of him wanted to stand and applaud. Instead, he forced himself to keep his voice even and say, "And so who do you think I am?" Alcy gave him a steady look. "You own a castle, and you have many dependents, so I am inclined to believe that you, like Baron Benedek, are a nobleman. However, your people are Orthodox, they do not speak Hungarian but a language with many Latinate words, and you apparently could not have supplanted Baron Benedek by merely pressing your suit in contest to his. Considering those issues and the distance I traveled to arrive here, you must be Rumanian—Wallachian, to be precise." Dumitru sat back slowly, staring at the woman in front of him, unable to come to terms with exactly what she represented. Though he had first read her reservation as timidity, she was fierce to the point of recklessness every time she forgot she should be shy. He should have been attuned to detect the first hint of her suspicion, but even though emotions often flickered across her expressive face, they were almost always immediately veiled behind a show of polite interest that was so stiff it might have been painted onto a mask, which made it hard to credit her with any thoughts of substance. Completing her air of artificiality was the fact that she was too beautiful to be real, with her enormous, black-fringed green eyes and cream-and-rose complexion—a breathing facsimile of a very expensive child's toy, both her porcelain face and extensive wardrobe copied straight from the best fashion plates. If it hadn't been for her slightly travel-worn appearance when she had first arrived at the castle, he would have had the urge to search her for seams. He had met many beautiful women in Paris salons, and each had carried herself with an obscure, almost smug self-assurance, secure in the knowledge that admiring male eyes would be drawn to her no matter where she was. The clever ones employed dazzling smiles and witty repartee with equal elan and had men swooning at their feet by the dozen. But though she was a match for any of the Parisian women in both beauty and, obviously, intelligence, Alcyone was at once reserved and defensive, as if she had reason to distrust men's attentions rather than to merely accept them as her due. If not for the painstaking exquisiteness of her dress, he might have thought she was oblivious of her physical charms, yet even her dinner preparations seemed more like the

careful construction of a draper's display than an attempt at allurement It was not as if she did not find him attractive—without a hint of vanity, he could declare that he could read those signs even in her—but there was something strange and troubled about the way she reacted to him, as if she could not quite trust herself or him to respond appropriately. What should he say to her now that would not make his position more difficult? No lies—she would not soon forget that—but there must be a tactful way to deflect attention away from his admission of deceit and back toward her. He settled on noting, "You are most perceptive." "Of course. I am much better at perceptivity than tact," she returned coolly, her small chin lifting slightly. "And don't you think this discussion is so much more interesting than the pattern of the tablecloth?" Dumitru treated her to his most engaging grin." 'Interesting' is not always a good thing, my sharp-beaked little eagle." She just looked at him, unmoved, and he took a drink of wine to cover his chagrin. So. He would not be able to charm her into acquiescence. If he wanted to win her over, he would have to fight for her. He took a deep breath. "What difference does a border and a name make, anyhow, my dear wife? Does it really matter whether you marry one unknown nobleman over another?" She opened her mouth to deliver what he was sure was a scathing rebuttal, then gave him a hard look and stopped. "How did you know that I was to marry Baron Benedek? You read our letters—you called me your little bird, so you must have read our letters—but how?" Dumitru shrugged. "When one is caught between empires, as I am, it pays to keep a close eye on one's neighbors. Both Benedek and I send our correspondence to the wider world by means of Orŝova. I have merely made certain that his letters are copied before they are sent on. When he made arrangements to wed you, I could not pass up the opportunity. I need your money as badly as he does, you see. I had your last letter forged with a different arrival date, and I had my men meet you at the docks in place of Benedek's and had your dowry redirected to an account I opened." Alcyone's expression betrayed scandalized astonishment. "You stole me. How do you know Benedek wouldn't treat you the same?" She was like a lamb straying innocently into a den of wolves. Though he had no reason to ever let her learn of the extent of his meddling in such matters, she should at least have some idea of the realities of the world she had now entered. "I am sure he would, which is why I am careful about what I write, though a nonentity like Benedek is the least of my concerns. There are a thousand nascent schemes and rebellions in this region, and many nations watch us carefully, ready to provide a little push in the direction that would make things fall in a manner most favorable to them." "They read your mail, too?" she asked, looking even more amazed. "And they send their spies through my lands and their diplomats to attempt to persuade me to their point of view," Dumitru said. "Note that I use the word diplomat in the loosest possible way, for here there is no law but that which I enforce, and so the nations send men untroubled by ordinary scruples." She still did not look like she entirely believed him. "But why?" He shrugged, taking another drink. "It is an issue of more symbolism than sense. Ottoman Turkey in Europe is the place where two great powers meet—Russia to the east and Austria to the west. Each wishes to control any lands the Ottomans are forced to abandon while Britain any France would like things to stay just as they are so that neither gains ascendancy over the other." "I did not know," she said quietly. Her eyebrows drew together. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Dumitru Constantinescu," he said with exaggerated blandness. Her lips tightened for an instant before relaxing again. "And your vaunted title?" she asked pointedly, which is what he knew she had meant all along. "I prefer to use that of count," he said, hoping that it would do much to repair the damage his deception had caused. "I am entitled to it by any measure, for it has been recognized by both the Austrian emperor and the tsar." She gave him a suspicious look. "But not the sultan? Wallachia is still controlled by Turkey, is it not?" Dumitru snorted. "The sultan has not given any titles in Rumania in centuries, and he has never willingly bestowed positions of hereditary nobility to anyone, much less a Christian. Some boyars in Rumania and Hungary have invested themselves with titles of their liking, but only those recognized by Austria or Russia are generally regarded as genuine in the West. Of course, if you would rather not be a countess, you could call yourself Princess Constantinescu. It has less significance though a grander sound, for all descendants of the Wallachian hospodars are styled in that way." "Princess Constantinescu," she repeated. The twist to her lips had a caustic edge. "Strictly honorary," he reiterated. "Still, it is a pity I will never be announced at the Ferrers' ball as a princess and countess," she said, her eyes hooded with unreadable emotion. "It would cause a reaction almost worth the trip to England to see." Dumitru heard worlds of pain in those few words, and he began to understand what her society life in London must have been like—an industrialist's daughter with the beauty to inspire hatred in the heart of any woman inclined to jealousy or class solidarity and yet without that special grace that makes men adore women despite the disapproval of mothers and sisters. "You do care about titles, then, for your own sake." "Why would I have agreed to this if I did not?" she said, frowning at him. Dumitru shrugged, admitting, "I'm not sure I would dare to guess why you might do anything." She grew very quiet, her attention upon him sharpening. "What a curious remark. I don't believe I've ever met anyone who did not presume to know exactly what I thought due to the accident of my age and sex. Let me ask you this, then, half an answer to the question you did not ask in the form of a question you do not need to answer: If I did not do what is expected of me, what would I do instead?" Dumitru shook his head ruefully. "I never thought of it quite in those terms." "Yet how strange it is that you think of who I might be at all rather than only of how I might affect you." Alcyone smiled slightly, sadly. "Still, the fact that you are Rumanian—and I am certain you would have corrected me if I were wrong—affects my view of this alliance, and that is quite aside from my doubts about the character of a man who would abscond with another man's betrothed and trick her into becoming his wife." "Necessity is a hard mistress." Dumitru treated her to his most rakish grin. It was a mistake, for she returned an icy look. Yet a faint pink stain crept up her cheeks; she was not as immune as she would like to be. "Yes, it is," she agreed. "Necessity demands that I weigh my situation well. Married to a Hungarian peer,

I would live at least half of every year in Vienna at the court of the emperor. What could you promise me in Rumania that could equal it?" She shook her head, her black ringlets bouncing in the candlelight. "Would you take me to the Wallachian capital, whatever pathetic little village holds that unlikely title?" she asked scornfully. "Or might we become envoys to the court of your Ottoman overlord, so that I could live out my days in some Istanbul harem?" "In Severinor, we have no overlords, Wallachian or otherwise," Dumitru said dryly, ignoring her tone. "We are well protected by our mountains, too sprawling, too difficult, and, for now, too worthless for other men to fight over. It is true that we ape loyalty to whomever it suits us at the moment, but we pay homage only in words, not gold or men." He smiled crookedly. "As for visiting Istanbul, for those reasons alone, the sultan would not be happy to see me." Alcyone frowned, turning an unused fork in her fingers. "And therein lies the rub. The arrangement was simple: my dowry for a title and a shining capital. You offer me only one of the two." She gave him a level look. Dumitru restrained a snort with effort. "Your argument is only valid if Baron Benedek János had any intentions of keeping his part of the bargain. The truth is that he might as well have offered you the moon." "What do you mean?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "He is one who is truly a boyar, not a baron, and to the Austrians, that means no more than a landowner." "He is not a peer, then?" she asked, though he could tell from her expression that she was already certain of his answer. He allowed himself a smile, knowing it had a hard edge. "He would not be considered a nobleman beyond his own lands." Alcy was silent for a moment, as if she were trying to decide whether to believe him. "You implied that he cannot offer me Vienna, either," she finally said. "If Benedek János kept his promise to you, he would take you to a city where he knows no one and no one knows or cares about him. His interests are not in Vienna but in his own dear Hungary and in the rebellion he hopes to fund with your generous dowry." Dumitru shook his head. "He would only spit upon the emperor if he could, and the emperor likes him no more than the sultan likes me and would be only too happy to find some excuse to throw him into prison if he knew Benedek was within his grasp. Why is it that you crave high society so badly? You indicated you were unsatisfied in London, so I cannot imagine you would be happier at a rigid Hapsburg court." "My reasons are none of your concern," Alcyone said stiffly. "But if what you say is true, it means my choice is exile with a Wallachian noble who has kidnapped me or a Hungarian pretender who spent six months lying to me." Her grimace of distaste stung. "I never said you had a choice," he returned, irritated into making a declaration of a determination he'd had no intention of ever admitting to her. Her eyes flashed in instant understanding, her entire body going tense. "It is not an irrevocable marriage until it has been consummated." She stumbled a little over the word, her gaze sliding briefly away from his. It was not simple embarrassment or delicacy—not with the expression that flitted across her face before she blanked it.

There was no going back now, and so he simply answered, "I know." "You would force me, then?" To her credit, she sounded neither shocked nor hysterical. Instead, she blanched and lifted her chin like a soldier facing a firing squad, which made him feel more the monster than any more expected response would have. "I would coerce you," he corrected. "Not force. It would not please me, but there is too much at stake to balk at such a measure. I am not a brutal man, but you may not leave these chambers until we have satisfied every legality that now stands between us and becoming husband and wife in truth. And you must know that I will have heirs. If I must pay a peasant girl to pretend to be your attendant and have her bear my children instead of you, I will do it. But I believe you will find any alternative better than remaining in these rooms long before then." Alcyone did not even flinch at his bald speech. "Yet say I did give in tonight. If I did not become with child immediately, I could still claim you could not perform and have the marriage annulled, anyhow," she countered, only an edge of anger coloring the coolness of her tone. "It would be my word against yours, and even if I were forced to undergo the indignity of an examination, I might have been ruined before we wed, just as you pointed out." Dumitru returned logic with logic. "If you managed to engineer the annulment somehow, you really would be ruined, and do you think you could do better than me?" "Do you think I care at this point whether I marry anyone at all?" She gave him a steady look, her face as still and clear as if it had been sculpted of alabaster. "Gamblers, liars, flatterers, false friends, and fops have been my prospective bridegrooms. Spinsterhood seems a veritable heaven compared to that." He was surprised to read pain in her deep green eyes, to realize that much of the bitterness in her voice was directed inward, as if she obscurely blamed even this trickery on herself. "I could also claim to have never converted, which, given that I understood almost none of that sham of a ceremony, would have more than a little truth. Annulment would be independent of consummation then." Her words were still crisply precise, but the small flush that crept up her pale cheeks, staining the alabaster rose, testified that she was less dispassionate than she appeared. It was not anger, for that made her turn stony. This was an emotion that was quite, quite different. "Why do you protest so?" he asked softly. "I cannot believe that you will miss the Viennese court. What is your objection?" She closed her eyes for a moment, her forehead creasing for just an instant before it smoothed into perfection once again. Then she looked at him, fixing him with her clear gaze. "Don't you understand, Count Dumitru or Constantinescu or whoever you are? You give me no choice." "And yet you resist," he said, not sure whether she was being ridiculous or preparing to make a profound point. "And that is why I resist," she said impatiently, the stillness of her expression shattered as her face twisted with frustration. "I object to having the pretence of independence just as long as I agree to everything I am intended to agree to." She tugged at the double necklace that encircled her neck, a cleverly reinvented Tudor style in emeralds and sapphires that played off the brilliant turquoise of her dress. She thrust the dangling pendant toward him, demanding his attention. "This is worth five hundred pounds, yet for all the power I have over my life, it might as well be an iron collar and chain. I have read that there was a time when the Turkish sultans were kings in name only, when they were kept contained in splendid, impotent isolation within the palace that became their gilded cage. I, too, know that not all prisons have bars."

"I will not give you your freedom, Alcyone," Dumitru said softly. But a part of him wanted to, suddenly and urgently—to ease the distress of this woman he scarcely knew, to erase the pain in her eyes even though the cost of such a thing would be inconceivable. "Of course you won't." She made a hiccoughing sound that was almost more of a sob than a laugh. "Even my own father, who has adored me and petted me and showered me with gifts, would not do that for me. Not even my mother, who first introduced me to the beauty of Virgil in Latin and Euripides in Greek and found me the daughter of a German professor as a governess, would not do that for me. How could I expect it from someone who has known me for a handful of hours?" The sharp bite of guilt dug deeper into him—but it was no sharper than what he felt when he visited the ragged, starveling villages of his domain and compared them to the plump communities of the West. It was just another pang among many, however poignant. He wished to apologize, but he knew the words would be empty since he could not change his mind. Instead, he reached across the table and cupped her cheek in his hand. She stiffened instantly but did not pull away. As cool as her pink-tinged flesh appeared, it felt like hot silk under his fingers. "I would like you to be happy," he said. "So would my parents," she returned evenly. "Yet they wished me to marry a stranger, and you threaten to lock me away." The sadness and bitterness in her voice cut deeper than the most bile-filled accusations. "I would rather not. I doubt you'd ever forgive me for that. And I am not sure that I would deserve it." He stopped and said with difficulty, "Do you really wish to marry Benedek? To return to England and face the shame there?" "I don't know." She pulled back. "I do know that I will kill you if you rape me. It may be in one month or twenty years, but I will do it. Even if I come to love you." He realized she was deadly serious—and more, that she was quite capable of it. It was not a threat but a simple statement of fact, and it made his heart contract with sudden pain—for her or for him, he didn't know. "I would never do that. Believe me, Alcyone, there are things I balk at even for this." He gave her a lopsided smile. "It is how I know that there is a difference between me and the Benedek Jánoses of the world. Sometimes, one person is more important than a cause." In his games with the great nations, that was the one thing he was always certain of. She looked at him and nodded slowly, a haunted light dawning in her eyes that heated his blood and tightened his body in response. "I believe you." "I have lied to many men, and I have deceived you, too, but whatever else I have done or may do, I will not tell you an untruth." The words came out with a fervency he did not intend, and he paused to gather his wits again. Even if I come to love you, she had said. He searched her eyes and saw the sensual awareness in their flickering depths. "But I do not think that I will have to wait until I would even be tempted to take such an extreme and damning step," he said slowly. "And why not?" Her voice was slightly tremulous, slightly husky, and her eyes glittered hotly under the dark fringe of her lashes. "Why do you think, Alcy?" he asked with a crooked smile. "Because you are willing now." There was a long, breathless moment in which Alcyone didn't even seem to breathe. Her porcelain face was blank of all expression, but her clear eyes searched his face, then dropped slowly, inevitably to measure the width of his shoulders, the shape of his arms through his coat, the backs of his hands where they rested lightly upon the table. Finally, they lifted again to his face.

"You arrogant ass," she pronounced, and then she stood, leaned across the table so that her hands were braced on either side of his empty charger, and kissed him.

Chapter Four

The man's mouth was immobile under hers for an instant—but no longer than that. He unfroze and took her face in both his hands, holding her hard against him as his lips and tongue moved insistently against hers. Heat speared up out of her core, passing through her limbs and leaving tingling awareness in its wake. The texture of his palms, their surfaces slightly roughened by a careless disregard for gloves, rasped against her cheeks as his mouth played over hers. Her body felt heavy and light at once, filled with a rushing buzz that amazed her and scattered her thoughts to the winds, and need coiled tightly in her center. So enveloped was Alcy in the sense of him that she scarcely even noticed the crystal on the table jangle in warning. He heard, though, and stilled, and after a long moment, he let her go—reluctantly, or so it seemed to her. He sat back, his eyes burning into hers with such pale intensity that her heart raced, desire flowing out from her core to spread across her skin in a flush that was almost irritating but at the same time made her aware of her body in a way she'd never been before. "Dumitru," she said, trying out the name. A deceiver. Almost a kidnapper. And yet she already knew she was going to agree to become his wife in every sense of the word that night, nor did any part of her want to hold back, however much she might regret it later. "Yes," he agreed, arching one dark eyebrow, the ever-present undercurrent of amusement quirking up the side of his mouth. The warm, delicious mouth that had been kissing her only moments before. "I am generally styled Count Dumitru von Severinor, Prince Constantinescu." A man who did not understand her but who seemed to believe that there was something in her that was understandable, that was worth being understood. A man who seemed to like her better after half an hour's conversation, as unbelievable as that was. A man who, if she were honest with herself, set her own body aflame as much as she knew she did to many men until she began to speak, and who seemed to possibly have enough gentleness and compassion in him that their nights should be nothing to fear. Alcy took a deep breath. "Then I am Countess von Severinor, Princess Constantinescu." Dumitru stood, his gaze not leaving hers for an instant. "Not yet," he said. "But soon, you will be." He circled the table slowly, not menacing but seducing, his eyes full of his lascivious intent. Alcy's breath caught. She wanted to stand up, to face him down, but her legs felt suddenly weak, her head spinning dangerously, and so she did not move as he approached, not even when he reached down and grasped her upper arms, pulling her up into his embrace. His mouth was everywhere, kissing her eyelids shut, sliding to her lips, moving down her throat toward the slight swell of her breasts above her bodice. Her skin heated along his mouth's path until her entire body felt suffused, almost painfully tender and yet craving more of his touch, more of him. Dimly, she realized that Dumitru had unfastened her necklace and dropped it on the table, that he was unhooking the back of her dress. Yes, she thought, modesty temporarily forgotten. She was hungry for his flesh against hers, starving for it. She attacked the buttons of his coat, her fingers fumbling in her haste.

When they were free, she slipped her hands under, to his waistcoat, the fabric warm with the heat of his body. She had just finished with it when she felt the last hook of her dress give, and he moved his hands to her shoulders to push the bodice down her arms. Alcy froze as the sleeves slid downward, encumbering her upper arms and baring her corset nearly to the waist. She met his eyes boldly even as her heart skipped a beat and she felt a blush creep across her preternaturally sensitive skin and up her neck to her face. Dumitru laughed softly, shaking his head, his eyes shadowed with desire. "You would stare down a dragon in its lair, wouldn't you?" "I don't know," Alcy replied, her voice slightly breathless in her own ears. "Do you count?" "A silver-haired, silver-tongued dragon," he said, beginning to smile. "I think I am flattered." Feeling ridiculously bold, she returned in a voice that hardly seemed like hers, "Then how do you intend to thank me?" This time, his laughter had a dark edge. "You will just have to wait to find out, won't you?" He tugged her bodice free from her arms, stripping her to the waist, and then pulled her against him again, trapping her arms to her sides as he set to work on ties at her back that held her petticoats on. Alcy made a wiggle of protest at being restrained, but he ignored her. His neck was tantalizingly close as he leaned over her shoulder to see what his fingers were doing, and so she gave him a light nip on the shoulder to express her pique at his disregard. His hands stilled for an instant, and he made a sound deep in his throat. Experimentally, she nipped him again, this time on the narrow strip of skin above his high collar, tasting the warm flesh as she took it delicately between her teeth. He shuddered, and her body flared hotter in sweet sympathy. She kissed him then, energetically, and his body went rigid, the strength of his reaction winding the heat more sharply in her center—until she was startled by a light swat on her rump. "Leave off!" Dumitru said in a strangled voice, half laughing, half gasping. "At this rate, I will never get you naked." Alcy fought a rush of embarrassment with her best weapon—her tongue. "I hope that you will get yourself naked at the same time, for that is what I want," she said. "And yet you seem to be ignoring this desire, though I am sure it has been made clear to you—a quite practical desire, too, I might add, considering our planned activities." She felt her face flame at her own words, but she did not drop her gaze. He snorted, his expression a muddle of half a dozen emotions. "You are quite certainly the most difficult woman I have ever met—but I like that," he added hastily as she began to pull away. His eyes glittered, somewhere between mirth and threat. "Have patience, and you will get your wish. Nothing at all will happen if you keep that up, though." With the last word, he gave her petticoats a sharp tug, and Alcy squawked reflexively as they slipped a hand span downward before jerking up short on her hips: He had missed untying one of them, which caused them all to arrest in their downward slide. Dumitru muttered something Alcy couldn't understand—a curse, she was sure—and pulled her against him again, peering over her shoulder as he felt for the final tapes. His hair slid forward as he worked, tickling her ear suddenly and unbearably.

"Stop!" she squeaked through her giggles, jerking her head aside. "My ear—it tickles!" But by then, he had found the bow and untied it, and he gave her skirts another pull, which sent them sliding dramatically over her hips and down to the floor—just as he must have intended in the first place. Alcy stood looking at him as he surveyed her, his expression torn between admiration and hunger. "I have imagined my first time with a man on many occasions," she blurted. She snapped her mouth closed, but it was too late; the words had already escaped. She stepped away from him, automatically retreating from her confession. Dumitru lifted his startled gaze to her eyes. "You have?" "When one exists only to marry, it would be remarkable if one did not consider it," she said as airily as she could manage in the face of his surprise. She had to admit to herself that she didn't do a very good job of it. She tried again. "Anticipation is natural, whether it be tinged with hope or dread." Something flickered in Dumitru's expression, too fast for her to catch it. "And did you dread it?" "Most frequently, I imagined that it would be unpleasant but tolerable. Occasionally, I would have wild dreams of bliss or nightmares of misery." She stopped, too embarrassed by her candor to go on. "I shouldn't have brought it up. I only mentioned it because I never imagined, in any situation, that I would laugh." "And I have never been so pleased to be laughed at." His retort was frivolous and instantaneous, but his return smile seemed haunted. As if to shake free from some entangling emotion, he took her by the waist, lifted her up, and swung her free of her clothing. He set her back down and began to loosen the tapes at the back of her corset, leaning forward to kiss her. The soft-hardness of his mouth, the heat and firmness of his body against hers, the heady smell of him, a mixture of a man's perfume and his own, individual scent—they all combined into one overwhelming feeling. Her thoughts fled, and she let them go despite the faint feeling that he was cheating once again and surrendered to the delicious, twisting warmth teased from her by the play of his mouth across hers, drowning sense in sensation. When he finally released her, Alcy realized that he had kept enough of his wits about him that he had managed to loosen her corset so that only the hooks on the front busk were keeping it closed. And he still had not removed a stitch of his own clothes. With a surge of irritation, she prepared to reproach him for his high-handedness despite the way her body still thrummed with their last contact, but the words died in her throat when he shrugged out of his coat and waistcoat in one movement. She had never seen any gentleman except her father in his shirtsleeves, and Dumitru was as far as she could have imagined from that image of paunchy, paternal middle age. The crisp, snowy fabric outlined broad, well-muscled shoulders, shaping over the planes of his chest and narrowing neatly at his waist. Seeing him, Alcy realized why the white shirt had become the male uniform, suitable for every occasion —realized what form it was meant to enshrine. She put a palm flat against his stomach and felt the ridges of muscle beneath. Even as some distant part of her mind was amazed at her own temerity, she slid her hand down until she reached his belt, a tingling sort of delight going through her when she tugged the tail of his shirt loose. She unfastened the bottom button, but Dumitru caught her hands in one of his. She looked up to find him watching her intently. "Come to my bedchamber now," he said. His eyes were grave even as the edges of his lips twitched. "Some other night, I would enjoy dallying here, but for our first together—" "Yes," Alcy interrupted, caught between self-consciousness and desire. It was too late to change her

mind now, too late to go back, but she found that she did not want to. And so when he turned away, she followed him silently into his room, her heart thrumming with far less fear than desire.

Chapter Five

With great deliberation, Dumitru set the oil lamp upon his dresser and shut the door softly behind them. He wanted her, this strange woman, his wife, so badly that he ached, yet despite her apparent boldness —a boldness she herself might even believe was genuine and complete—he knew it was best to take matters slowly for both their sakes. She was a sassy little bird, amazed by her own bravura yet still wild, with a warning flutter when he moved too soon or too fast that told him how little it would take to make her fly away. Was she even aware of the difference between the thrills of excitement, of desire, of nerves? He did not know. He turned to find Alcyone surveying the chamber with every sign of interest. She was truly beautiful—not merely lovely and animated and charming, as most women who receive that sobriquet were, but so truly beautiful that a small jolt of reaction went through him every time he looked at her. Her corset was loose now, but it still hugged her luscious curves tantalizingly, its white damask cover emphasizing the fairness of her skin. Her translucent chemise emerged below it, its fabric falling into gentle folds that clung to her legs as she walked, revealing shifting shadows of their shapes with each step. Even with those distractions, it was hard to look away from her face. The clarity of her complexion, the refinement of her features, the brilliance of her eyes—they were almost too perfect. He had an unsettled feeling that somehow the beauty did not suit her, that it did her an injustice, that it tried to flatten and simplify her in ways that she could not be simplified. "It is the same size as mine," Alcyone said, interrupting his thoughts. She had finished her survey of the room and was now looking at him, her gaze level but her voice a touch strained. "Much better furnished, however." It was an observation, not a reproach. Dumitru stripped off his cravat and began to unbutton his shirt, and immediately, her eyes locked onto his fingers, her expression torn between hungry eagerness and apprehension. "Yes," he agreed, keeping his tone casual. "The other room hasn't been inhabited since my mother died when I was three, while this one has been continuously occupied since my grandfather divided it off some sixty years ago. All of the modern pieces, however, are mine, brought back from Paris." "Along with your cookbooks," she murmured absently, her gaze never straying from his hands. "Those, too." He finished with the last button, shrugged out of his shirt, and dropped it across the high, peaked back of a Gothic chair. "You truly cannot stay focused upon the task at hand, can you?" Alcyone looked up at that, surprise written on her face. "Discussing the furnishings?" "I meant our purpose for being together," Dumitru clarified with all due delicacy. "Alone. Tonight." A tiny crease of annoyance or exasperation formed between her finely arched brows for an instant before being replaced with her usual smoothness. "The task at hand, as you call it, being my deflowerment, I find it rather hard to keep my thoughts steadily upon it. If I think upon it too hard, they go skittering away, like fish under the surface of the water where a stone has just plopped in." "And why is that?" he pressed. He should have been impatient, but instead he found himself honestly

caring about the answer. She pursed her lips, her green eyes severe, though it seemed that whatever emotion she felt was turned inward, not against him. "First, I have never done this before, so I haven't the slightest idea whether I shall be any good at it." "And second?" He raised an eyebrow, trying to keep his face bland as he stifled a snort of laughter. "And second—" She broke off. "Second…" Her expression changed, becoming that of a small, lost child, frightened and yet determined to be brave. "Second, I shall be at your mercy, dependent upon your kindness, gentleness, and humanity. I don't much like being at anyone's mercy, especially when there is no hope for recourse at any date in the future should I be wrong about your intentions and character." All levity fell away from Dumitru like a weight being dropped, and an arid chill slid up his back. Without thinking, he took her by the shoulders and pulled her against him, pressing her hot cheek against his shoulder. She submitted stiffly, her first hint of awkwardness since he had laid eyes upon her. She was not short for a woman, nor was her build exceptionally delicate, and yet she was so much more fragile than he, smaller, slenderer, weaker. How dangerous must the disparity appear to her, knowing what was going to happen between them—what could happen if he chose. The thought frightened and revolted him at once. And yet that very vulnerability stirred a sense of protectiveness in him that had little to do with altruism. Beneath all his other startled, tumbled emotions, a primitive part of him that he had scarcely known existed roused and said, Mine. His to shelter, his to keep, his to have. Could that part of him forget her even in his taking? He did not know; he did not want to find out. "My God, Alcyone," he said hoarsely. "Do not fear me. I will be gentle, as you say. I cannot promise that there shall be no pain—" "I know," she interrupted softly, her dark eyelashes shadowing her cheeks as she looked down at her hands. "I do not expect that." "—but there shall also be pleasure," he finished. He tried to give her a charming grin, but he knew it came lopsided. "Most likely, much more pleasure than pain." She looked up at that, relaxing slightly as she gazed cat-eyed at him. "You are no novice, then." "No," he agreed simply, honestly, not certain what answer she preferred. She appeared to think about it for a moment. "Have women who have been with you always been… pleased?" "I would like to think that it has been years since they have not been," he said, bemused by her line of questioning. "I certainly have reason to believe so, though I am hardly a Casanova. I have had lovers on and off through the years, but I do not take this lightly, if that is what you are wondering." "Not at this moment," she said with a hint of causticity—which he took as a good sign, for she was no longer looking so lost but had regained her customary appearance of cool self-possession. The rough beast inside him slunk back, but he still felt unnaturally aware of her, of the unconscious inclination of her body toward him, of the memory of her mouth, hot and slick and flavored with the faint aftertaste of sherry, and of his own mounting desire. "I had not yet thought so far ahead as to consider your fidelity one way or another." He shook his head, smiling despite himself. "I have never met a woman like you."

Alcyone stepped away, turning aside slightly as she gave him an arch look. "That is because my particular breed is made rare by the fact that so few of us ever manage to reproduce." She paused. "Yet despite my uniqueness as a woman, I am, in the end, only a woman, confined by the social strictures and biological vulnerabilities of us all. Do not mistake me: I do not wish to be a man; I only wish that womanhood were less powerless." Powerless. How ironic it was that his very act of seizing control of his destiny and freeing himself and his people from poverty and the whims of empires thrust her into a position where her own impotence was most painfully revealed. But he still wanted her for herself, wanted her so badly he ached. He stepped forward, and her gaze grew sharper, but she did not move or flinch when he gripped her shoulders firmly but gently so that they faced one another squarely. "Alcyone, I swear that you have nothing to fear from me," he said. Then he brought his head down slowly enough that she could avoid him if she had wished. But she didn't. Her eyebrows drew together slightly, almost in pain, it seemed, and she tilted back her head, leaning toward him as their lips met. Dumitru had intended the kiss to be reassuring, businesslike, even, but the instant they touched, Alcyone made a tiny sound and seemed to go boneless in his arms, her body melding to his as her mouth opened in mute trust—and demand. She believed him. She believed him and wanted him as much as he wanted her. He did not even think about his response. The deep, wild part of him roared up, and her mouth, her body, and his desire consumed his world. She was so soft, small, hot, and willing in his arms, which suddenly seemed like those of a giant, enveloping her in their embrace. And very far away, almost as if it belonged to someone else, there was a sense of being taken up and shaken by her faith in a way he could not explain. Finally, they separated, and Alcyone took a wobbling step back, gasping. His entire body beat in rhythm with his thrumming heart. He needed her so badly that he did not trust himself to speak. Holding her gaze with his, he touched her corset busk in mute question, and still looking slightly dazed, she nudged his hand away, but only so that she could loosen the hidden hooks. She unbuttoned the corset's straps, and the entire contraption clattered to the ground, leaving her in nothing but a sheer chemise. He almost groaned. It clung to her body, damp with the slight perspiration of her desire, hugging lush, pale curves and outlining the dark rose of her tight nipples. "Alcyone—" he began, but she held up a finger to his lips. "Enough talk now," she whispered, her eyes glittering emerald. So without a word, Dumitru picked her up and carried her to the canopied bed that sat as an island in the middle of the room. Her body was soft, pliant, and deliciously warm against his chest, her fingers laced around the back of his neck. He set her on the mattress, releasing her reluctantly, and knelt to take one of her feet into his hands. She wore slippers, and Dumitru slid them off easily and dropped them to the floor. He paused for a moment with a hand around her ankle. Even her feet were beautiful, as bizarre as such an assertion seemed—graceful, delicately boned, and soft through her silk stockings. He slid his hand up slowly to her knee, savoring her reaction and the answer it stirred in him: She twitched, then froze, as if she were not sure whether she ought to pull away or encourage him. He untied her gaiter and rolled the stocking down her smooth, white leg, enjoying it even more this time than he had the first. As soon as he released her, she thawed and loosened her other garter with a quick tug. He caught her hands in his before she could pull that stocking off. "Lie back," he ordered, lifting her hands away.

For an instant, she looked like she was going to argue, but she must have thought better of it, for she scooted backward until she met the pillows piled against the headboard. She reclined hesitantly, her expression still showing her reluctance. Her chemise had been pushed down by her movement, and so he lifted it gently, sliding it up her leg until it revealed the upper edge of her remaining stocking. He slipped his hands under the curve of her calf. Her breath caught, and he smothered a smile as he rolled the fabric down across her leg and off. "I liked that," she said, her face pinking at her own words. "I thought we weren't talking," he teased, barely restraining himself from kissing her again. "Who's talking?" she returned with a smile. He stood and pulled off his under vest, shoes, and socks in quick, easy movements. He paused with his hands on his belt buckle. "I have heard that many maidens find the first sight of a man… aroused quite disturbing," he said. "I can blow out the lamp, if you'd like." "Mmm," Alcyone replied, her gaze shifting away from him. "I have seen illustrations in medical texts, so I have some idea of what to expect. Though I suppose that in color and, um, in the , flesh, so to speak, it might be more alarming." Her eyes flickered toward his groin. "I have already observed that it is a bit… disproportionate to what I had guessed from seeing isolated diagrams without scale." "I see," Dumitru said, forcing himself to remain earnest even as his body tightened and heated at her blatant gaze. Feeling unaccustomedly self-conscious, he unfastened his belt and unbuttoned his trousers, stripping them off with his drawers in the same movement. "Oh," his wife said, blinking. "It is almost… purple. I never imagined it would be that color." He cleared his throat. "Well, it is. A perfectly normal and healthy specimen, too, I might add." She blinked again and looked at him. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to stare at you like, well, like a specimen, but I was curious, and—" She buried her scarlet face in her hands, huffing out an exasperated breath of air. "I seem to be making a mess of things. I suppose I should not be surprised that I am no good at this, either—" "Stop." Her head jerked up, and he climbed onto the bed, kneeling so that he was straddling her legs with his erection between them. She stared at it again, pulling back slightly. He motioned to leave no doubt about what he was talking about. "This is evidence that you are doing nothing at all wrong." She tittered slightly at that, blushing even harder. "Now, it is sometimes customary for a bride to leave her chemise on, if she is too embarrassed or too, um, refined to bear to remove it." She tore her fascinated gaze from his erection, and he read a note of hunger in it. "I will not say that I am not a little embarrassed, but I have never been refined, as you call it, at all." He smiled slowly, and he felt her reaction to it as her eyes sparked, a sizzle that seemed to leap from her to him and back again. "Well, then. Off with it." It took an appreciable amount of wiggling to get her chemise off, which Dumitru enjoyed more than was absolutely necessary. When the garment was finally free, Alcyone tossed it to the floor with a cry of victory. Then she caught his eye and froze. "I don't suppose any of this comes as a surprise to you," she said shyly, fidgeting a little against the pillows.

He knew that he meant her—her very female, very naked body. "In general terms, no. In particular ones… let me just say that I am as far from disappointed as I think I ever could be." He meant it. Her body was every bit as desirable naked as it had promised through the chemise. Her skin was as pale as cream except where her corset had left pink pressure points, her curves just short of lush, her breasts two perfect pillows with nipples of a deep, magnificent rose. "You are glorious," he said with a fervency that was not feigned in the least. "And so are you, my silver-maned wolf of Severinor," she said, her tone teasing but her eyes dark pools of desire that Dumitru knew must be echoes of his own. "And I thought I was a dragon," he teased. He added, more softly, "You aren't afraid anymore?" "I do not mind that I am afraid," she replied, her lips twitching ever so slightly. "I believe you shall be good to me." "I think it would be easier for you in darkness," he said. "Just this once." "Just this once," she agreed. "Then no more talk," he said. "No more talk," she echoed again. Alcy watched as Dumitru rose and walked over to the dresser to blow out the lamp, his broad back and muscled flanks silhouetted against the light for a moment before it went out. Then the room plunged into darkness, and she heard him walk back across the room, felt his weight return to the bed. She held very still as he moved across the mattress toward her, her body thrumming with anticipation. She gasped when a hand brushed her ankle, then encircled it, and a moment later, his other hand brushed up her side and rose to cradle her face. And then his mouth found hers, and a delicious, dizzying heat went through her, and all her tensed-up muscles dissolved at once as pleasure unspiraled through her in a sweet wave of desire. His lips moved against her mouth, her neck, and lower, circling her breasts and sending shivering little surges of delight through her until he took one nipple into his mouth— —and sensation receded as he rolled the insensitive nub in his teeth. She stilled under him, feeling strangely disassociated from his eager actions on her body despite the need that still heated her veins. After a moment, the shadow of Dumitru's head rose. "What is wrong?" "Nothing's wrong, exactly…" she began, squirming with embarrassment. "But it's not right?" he guessed. "Yes, I think that is a good way of putting it," Alcy managed to say around her strangling embarrassment. "If you are enjoying yourself, then by all means, don't stop." "But you are not?" he filled in. "Not precisely, no," she agreed. "I don't feel much of anything at all, in fact." She could hear him shake his head in the darkness, one lock of his hair falling forward and swishing softly against her skin. "There are many, many ways that I can enjoy myself with you. If you are not also deriving pleasure from my choices, please, never hesitate to let me know."

"I will keep that in mind," she said, feeling even more humiliated. "In fact, at this moment, I would agree to almost anything that ends this conversation." He laughed, his body weight shifting against her, a full-bellied, carefree sound that she didn't think she had ever made the likes of. Then he bent without saying another word, gave her nipple a final, light kiss, and turned his attention to the delicate valley between her breasts instead, moving slowly upward to the place on her collarbone that made her breath come in short gaps and her mind grow both dim and deliciously sharp. His hand was on her thigh, she realized with a dull thrill amid the other sensations that washed across her. It was moving upward to the jointure of her legs… and then it was there. She caught her breath in startled amazement as he slipped a finger inside of her. Is he supposed to do that? a corner of her mind blurted. But his lips were still dancing across her skin, and his hand was moving inside her, and that thought was dashed away in a wash of pleasure, followed by a sensation of aching emptiness that suddenly opened inside her, as if his touch had awakened some instinctual hunger that she could not have imagined even minutes before. "Please," she found herself whimpering against his neck. "Please." She did not even consider what it was she was asking for, but he seemed to know, for he shifted and removed his hand, and a moment later, she felt the broad, blunt tip of his erection pushing against her as he separated her folds with fingers that were slick with her moisture. She had a wild moment's thought about pain, and then he pushed, and with a single jolting stab, he was inside her. She realized she had lifted her legs, twining them around his hips and pulling him harder against her. She held him there as their ragged breaths merged, her fast little pants and his slower, rougher gasps as if he were lifting an enormous weight. Though she burned where he pressed into her, something seemed to drive her onward, forcing her to wriggle slightly against him in protest of his stillness. He groaned. "My God, Alcy," he muttered. "Tell me if it hurts." Then he began to move. The burning sharpened for a moment, and Alcy whimpered, but she couldn't tell him to stop, she didn't want him to stop for anything in the world. Soon, it lessened into a dull ache that was subsumed in the flood of heat that rushed through her, just another feeling in an overarching sensation that was too wonderful to be pain and too intense to be pleasure. Dumitru's hands and mouth and body pushed her higher, her mind blinded with a roar that consumed all her senses, and then, without warning, the world dropped out from under her. Something blasted through her as she plunged down, as pitiless as a furnace, consuming beyond anything she had ever experienced. Was this ecstasy? The thought scarcely flitted through her mind before it was gone, taken and tossed into meaninglessness with everything that wasn't this moment, this feeling, this being. The instantaneous eternity stretched out, thinning, pulling her apart, and she cried out, welcoming her obliteration and protesting it in the same, wordless sound. Vaguely, as if from very far away, she felt Dumitru shudder, and then, slowly, the world came back. She was not falling at all now but floating on the last, trembling wavelets of some massive tide. She discovered that she had been clutching him to her, and she loosened her hold self-consciously even as lingering shivers of pleasure rippled across her skin. Dumitru slowed in his rhythm: slowed, and stopped. After a long moment in which they both lay still, breathing hard, Dumitru rolled away, doing something to himself before turning to face her and nudging her so that she turned, too, to fit against the curve of his body. Her rump nestled against his groin, she was exquisitely conscious of the lessening hardness of his erection, slightly damp from their passion. The muscles in her legs burned, and she felt both emptied out

and strangely full. "See?" Dumitru said into her hair, sounding ridiculously smug. "Much more pleasure than pain." "Yes," she allowed him, feeling herself smile ridiculously. "Much." It was done. Irrevocable, complete, fulfilled. She was married. But she didn't know how to be married. What in heaven's name was she supposed to do now?

Chapter Six

The sun was a fat yellow yolk halfway over the ring of the mountaintops when Dumitru finally opened his eyes. He had been teased into half-consciousness nearly an hour before when the first tentacles of steely gray light had begun to trickle through the valleys in pursuit of the night, but he had been uncharacteristically loathe to greet the morning, burrowing deeper into the quilts and burying his face in his new wife's soft hair without even a conscious rejection of the daily call to duty. Consciousness—and conscience—could not be held at bay forever, though, and so when the sunlight began streaming insistently through the wall of windows, he roused and reluctantly sat up. Alcyone didn't stir. She lay across three-quarters of the bed with the automatic selfishness of someone unaccustomed to sleeping with another. Even in sleep, she was a bundle of contradictions: black hair on white sheets, setting off a porcelain complexion of such clarity and fragility that she seemed hardly real— a vision in stark contrast to her contorted, bed-hogging sprawl that was suited to an ungainly tomboy of twelve, not a beautiful woman of nearly twice those years. The incongruity was almost jarring—and thoroughly intriguing. A woman of more refined stuff would have been a perfect lady in bed: not stiff but still passionless, mute, made for more rarified experiences than corporeal pleasure. But Alcyone had reacted with wonder and humor and wit and an alarming vulnerability, a combination even his most fevered dreams could never have concocted but that was simultaneously disarming and devastatingly seductive. Afterward, he had listened to her easy breathing in the dark as she enjoyed the sleep of the blameless. He had wanted nothing more than to cradle her against him for the rest of the night. And so he had. Now, in the clearer light of morning, Dumitru felt a touch of unease returning. All his initial misgivings had been met and countered: Alcyone was not old, ugly, stupid, promiscuous, or bad-tempered, though he had built nightmares around each possibility. Yet theirs was still a daunting proposition—that two people, still strangers, would discover how to be married to one another without knowing beforehand all the small, commonplace details about each other that usually facilitated even the most distant society match. It would be a difficult situation for even perfect mates, and he knew that he, at least, was not without his share of flaws. Yet as he gazed at his slumbering wife, Dumitru couldn't help but feel that just maybe their adjustment to each other would not be so hard, after all. After one last look, he slipped quietly out of bed, careful not to disturb her. He shrugged into his dressing gown, gathered his clothes, and ducked into the drawing room, shutting the door softly behind him. As Dumitru had expected, his valet was sitting patiently by the door, anticipating his tardy morning

summons. Like the recipe books, Guillaume was a French import. He had served as Dumitru's "man" in Paris, fulfilling all domestic needs that the day maid-of-all-work and the landlady's meals did not satisfy, and when Dumitru had returned to Wallachia upon his father's death, his employee had chosen to shed all roles except that of body servant and accompany him. It was both an immediate promotion and an exile, and the man's reasons were dismissed with a Gallic shrug the one time Dumitru had ventured to broach the subject. Guillaume steadfastly refused to learn any language but French and regarded his employer's surroundings with a kind of unfaltering pretense of excellence just as he had in rue Chêne, as if he were one of the most eminent members of a great household instead of one of the few domestics whose duties did not extend to the stables and fields as well as the house. This morning, Guillaume was not waiting alone. Dumitru recognized Alcyone's lady's maid, a plump blond girl of no more than twenty who sat across the room, taking the seat farthest from the other servant without actually moving a chair. They were eyeing one another with expressions of mutual distrust and defensiveness, Guillaume no doubt resenting a second authority in the chambers that had once been his exclusive domain. Neither had noticed their master's entrance. "Bonjour," Dumitru greeted them. They both started, and Guillaume jerked to his feet, trying to cover his surprise with almost military alacrity and precision. "Oui, monseigneur?" he asked with a formal little bow—for the maid's benefit, no doubt. "I have decided to make my morning ablutions out here to keep from disturbing my wife," Dumitru informed him in his driest tone. The little maid's eyes lit up even though he replied in Parisian French—she must share Guillaume's nationality as well as his occupation. Of course. A woman of Alcyone's wealth would have no less than the best and most fashionable appurtenances, from fans to horses to servants. "Pardonnez-moi," the maid murmured. She rose, executed a perfect curtsy that might have been the female twin of Guillaume's bow, and slipped into the lady's bedchamber, shutting the door scrupulously behind her in a show of exaggerated diffidence that radiated approval of his courtesy to his sleeping wife. Dumitru gave the ancient pine a crooked smile. At least he would not have to contend with her muttering obloquies in her mistress' ear: Guillaume disappeared down the stairs to order hot water brought up for Dumitru's morning wash and shave; only in winter did he have the damper opened and a fire built in the massive fireplace, and so the nearest source of hot water was the kitchen. As he waited for his valet's return, Dumitru viewed the drawing room with fresh eyes, thinking of how a pampered, wealthy Englishwoman must see it. Even in the lord's chambers, there was little modern or comfortable about Castle Severinor. Alcyone's rooms in London would be wanned with a toasty little stove or a fireplace with a clever flue constructed to prevent back drafts, not a hearth three hundred years old that smoked more indoors than out and made the room only colder unless a bonfire were built. She would be accustomed to walls hung in silk or Chinese wallpaper, but here, only whitewashed plaster covered cold stone. The furniture was shabby and piecemeal, the detritus of many lives of an impoverished yet noble family, as far from the experience of a rich industrialist's daughter as anything he could imagine. It would surely be a source of dissatisfaction to her if it continued in such a state. But why should it? Dumitru thought suddenly. After all, her dowry was more than ample. He could countenance devoting a small part of it to renovating their living quarters, and he would enjoy being warm in the winter for the first time since he left Paris. He smiled, feeling a twinge of self-satisfied munificence at

his impending generosity. She would be quite grateful, he was sure. The morning sun struck Alcy's eyelids and woke her in a wash of red light. Alone. The chill of the mattress beside her was her first conscious sensation, a discovery tinged with disappointment, anxiety, and relief. She scrubbed her face with her hands and sat up, automatically facing what had roused her, and she opened her eyes to beauty. The long outer wall of the room was pierced with half a dozen windows, mullioned in an arching Gothic style to frame the view. Thrusting up against the deep blue bowl of the sky, mountains marched away as far as she could see, standing in serried ranks like an army of stone. Below their wind-stripped peaks, they were cloaked in the dark greens of pine and fir, giving way in the sheltered valleys to the lighter intensity of broadleaves. A track led from the castle gates below the keep to a small clutch of cottages nestled against the bulging root of one of the mountains, and the patchwork of grain fields filled the wide and shallow valley next to it and overflowed up the mountainside. In the middle distance, a flock of sheep wandered like small, aimless, earth-bound clouds over a ridge and out of sight. Perhaps Dumitru's grandfather was as much a romantic as an ascetic, she thought. The entire scene had the unreal brilliance of an Italian Renaissance painting, the sky too vivid, the gray-green peaks too bright. Almost as incredible as the view was the knowledge that, at some level, all the land she could see was hers now by virtue of her marriage—or, at the least, she and the land now shared a common master. She shivered even though she was only slightly chill, remembering the night before and all she and Dumitru had shared. What had it meant? Everything? Nothing? She did not know—she felt she could not know until she saw him again. She did not even know whether to be dismayed or glad at his absence. He had stayed through the night, she was certain of that—even if she hadn't woken at intervals, stirred into wakefulness by the strangeness of having a body so close to hers, this was his bedroom, and if he had tired of her, he would have surely dismissed her. That he had not was a sign that whatever warm or gentle urges he had toward her had not evaporated with the final legalization of their union, at least. Yet she more than half wished she had risen with him, spoken to him over breakfast, connected with him again before he went off to attend to whatever duties there were that occupied a landowner's time. As embarrassed and nervous as she was at the thought of seeing him again, she needed to solidify what had happened between them to try to begin to understand what exactly her new life was and what expectations there might be of her in it. And, of course, she wanted to talk with him again for reasons that had no reason in them at all—because she craved reassurance and because, as strange as it was, she missed him even though a day ago they had never even met. But that had not happened, and so she pushed it from her mind with determination and cast about for a bellpull to summon Celeste. Her thighs ached slightly when she stood, and she blushed even in the absence of its cause. There didn't seem to be any method of summoning a servant, and so after a minute, she gave up. Most of her clothes had been left strewn about the drawing room, so with no way of knowing who might be waiting outside the count's bedchamber, she pulled on her chemise and opened the monstrous wardrobe that stood against one wall in search of something to cover herself with before venturing out. She began to paw through the clothes inside, ignoring the twinge of guilt and fear she felt at such an invasion. Dumitru was supposed to be her husband, after all. It could not be wrong to borrow some of his clothing, at least for a little while.

She found an ancient, tattered dressing gown—surely not what he usually wore?—and pulled it on. She was just shutting the wardrobe when the room's door opened and Celeste stepped through with an overloaded tray. "I waited until I heard madame stir," Celeste said, at her most formal. Madame, when just last night Alcy had been a mademoiselle. "Thank you, Celeste. I needed my sleep," Alcy returned with equal politeness. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to save her maid or herself from embarrassment. Whichever it was, she was not successful. Circling the room, Celeste picked up her mistress's scattered shoes, stockings, and corset from their various locations with her free hand in a manner so carefully neutral that Alcy's face flamed again. "If madame cares to return to her bedchamber, we will see to her toilette there," the maid murmured, keeping her eyes averted. She ducked out of the room before her mistress had a chance to reply—all but fleeing, Alcy thought. She followed, grateful to have her maid's pointed politeness temporarily pointed in some other direction. Much to her surprise, Alcy found herself wishing that Aunt Rachel were there despite how much she had disliked her chaperone's complaints and henpecking during the journey from London to Vienna. Before her mother's sister had embarked upon her career of professional poor relation, she had married— unwisely, it was said, and for love—and been widowed and bankrupted within two years. While that history was little enough to recommend her as a confidante in matters of the heart or flesh, Alcy still felt the want of someone of any experience at all to talk to. As devoted as Celeste was, she had never married—and despite occasional displays of ostensible worldliness, Alcy was certain the maid was no more knowledgeable in carnal matters than she herself had been before the past night. Even her old governess Gretchen Roth could not have provided as much comfort at that moment as a married woman —any married woman. The drawing room was empty when they entered, to Alcy's slight disappointment, if not her surprise. She found her own bedchamber greatly changed from how she had left it. Celeste had made the most of the few furnishings as she unpacked, shuffling them around to attempt to make the single room do the work of Alcy's entire suite in the Carter residences in Leeds, London, or Middlesex. The wardrobe was full to bursting, the dressing table loaded with jewelry boxes and various personal accessories, and the two gateleg tables near the door stacked perilously high with books and papers. Even the nightstand had a precarious load of hatboxes upon it. Yet two of her massive travel trunks still stood open in one corner, their contents scarcely disturbed. "I managed as well as I could with your things," Celeste said, comfortable again now that she had returned to territory she regarded as her own. The last traces of stiffness were carried away in a wave of disapproval as she surveyed the room. "This is no suite for a great lady. Why, even the London house was many times better than this." "If my husband could afford apartments suitable to his station, he would never have been forced to marry me," Alcy pointed out dryly, though she privately agreed that something must be done. At least the room was vast, plenty large enough to be subdivided into chambers of whatever usage she desired. Celeste merely sniffed, set her tray and Alcy's clothes on the bare corner of one of the tables, and crossed to the dressing table, where a steaming pitcher of water waited among the clutter-to be poured into its matching basin. "There is no plumbing here, so I had to send a maid all the way to the kitchens to get you hot water for your morning wash. And, mademoiselle, there are no bells anywhere in this pile of rocks, and so I had to find a maid first, which was no small task, I assure you."

"Perhaps we can have that changed," Alcy suggested, glad to sacrifice her new title of madame for this easier communication. She shrugged out of the pilfered dressing gown and began to paw through one of the trunks for her favorite yellow one. Without comment, Celeste opened the wardrobe and handed it to her. Alcy set it over the back of a chair and stripped out of her chemise to wash. Unlike Dumitru's chamber, this one at least had a hearth, upon which a fire snapped and popped merrily, driving some of the chill from the room so that she was not quite shivering during her wash. The smells of Alcy's usual breakfast of cocoa, sausage, and marmalade toast wafted out from under the lid of the tray. "How did you manage to get my regular breakfast?" Alcy asked curiously, pouring a measure of water into the basin and beginning to scrub herself hurriedly. "Miming must have its limits, and even if some of the servants speak German, you don't." Celeste snorted. "I don't need to speak anything but French. The baron has a valet from Paris who has been here three years and still refuses to speak a word of the local babble. He's made certain that everyone in the place knows what he wants, and hot water and breakfast are things he wants every morning." "So you've met him," Alcy remarked blandly as she splashed the hot water over her face, taking full advantage of the chance to put her maid on the defensive for a change. Celeste made an indignant little noise. "Yes, I have, mademoiselle; you shouldn't act so coy. I am not in the least interested in him. I don't even think he's from a decent family," she added primly. Alcy smiled but did not pursue the subject. She washed her arms and, when Celeste's back was turned, discreetly used the cloth between her legs, where she was still slightly sore and sticky from the night before. The white cloth came away marked with red-brown streaks, and she dropped it into the basin before her maid could see. That was something, for all her imaginings, that she had never thought about —the practical part of sharing a marriage bed, far removed from the agonies and ecstasies of idle speculation yet almost more real for its very ordinariness. Married. I am married now, Alcy repeated to herself as she watched the cloth's stain dissolve in the hot water. "At dawn, I came up to wait in the drawing room, and I saw the baron leave an hour after," Celeste was saying, her tone studiously conversational. "He must be quite taken with you to have remained all night, mademoiselle." There was an implied question in her statement—Was Alcy equally taken with him? But Alcy did not wish to discuss that with her maid, and besides, she had a confession to make, one that Celeste would not take well. Alcy took the towel from beside the washbasin to dry herself with, cravenly keeping her back toward her maid. "He is not the baron." Celeste gasped. "Whatever do you mean? Who else could he be?" "The good news is that he is a count," Alcy said. She paused and forced herself to turn around, wrapping the towel around her. "The bad news is that he is Rumanian." Celeste's mouth dropped open. "Rumanian! The blackguard! That devil must have told you after he had taken his pleasure. You poor little dear! Vienna is lost to us now." "Yes," Alcy said uncomfortably. "I know how you will miss the city. If you do not want to stay on with me here—" Celeste was indignant. "Teh! Don't be ridiculous, mademoiselle. I cannot leave you among these barbarians. It would be like abandoning my own child! Besides, who else will brush your velvets like I do

or make sure you come to dinner when you are preoccupied with your dry old books?" Alcy smiled despite herself. "The books are quite new, Celeste, which is why they are so exciting." After a moment's hesitation, she took the Frenchwoman's hand. "Thank you for not leaving me. I would be quite lost without you." "Of course you would," the maid replied, appearing mightily gratified. "But I can hardly believe that you are taking that demon's betrayal so calmly. When did he break the news? As soon as he had taken his pleasure?" Alcy shifted uncomfortably. "He didn't break it. I puzzled it out on my own." "Clever girl!" Celeste beamed, picking up a fresh chemise and the corset. "Such a shame that you didn't discover it until too late, though. Imagine him trapping you into marriage like that, then expecting you to, what, not care? It's enough to make my blood boil!" Celeste stopped, an expression of sudden suspicion crossing her face, and gave Alcy a closer look. "You did find out too late, didn't you?" Alcy felt herself blushing, but before she could reply, Celeste threw up her hands, quite forgetting the corset she held. "Oh, mademoiselle!" the maid cried. "I will never understand you. Why would you do this? You mad little cabbage!" "Celeste, you forget yourself," Alcy said, putting a little more bite into the words than she intended. "You are my lady's maid, not my nurse, which I am far too old for, anyhow." "Yes, mademoiselle," Celeste murmured, casting her eyes downward in a show of contrition that was entirely fabricated. "Madame," she corrected. Alcy might have stifled Celeste's exclamations, but the look the maid gave her was no less piercing. "I still do not understand why you would do such a thing. Not that it is my place to ask, of course, even if I did just agree to share this exile with you." "You don't understand because you are not me," Alcy said, taking the fresh chemise from her and shrugging it on. "But you do understand as well as I do that I am a failure as a lady and a woman." "Oh, no—" Celeste protested reflexively even as Alcy saw the truth in her eyes. "Oh, yes," Alcy echoed. "Knowing what a failure I am, could you not see why I might be persuaded to overlook many faults in a man who speaks with me for nearly an hour and seems more interested than when he first laid eyes on me?" "Oh," Celeste said. Then, "Oh!" in a tone of pure joy. "He will love you," she said quickly. "I know he will. I don't care if he's a Turk; if he loves you, I will forgive him anything." Alcy smiled despite herself. "I am not yet aspiring so high, but rest assured that I am content with my choice." And to her surprise, every word rang true. Dumitru was a mile from the castle, surveying the progress on the construction of the new terraces, when Mihas, the stableman's boy, came hammering down the road in a loose collection of flailing limbs, elbows, and knees. The count spotted the lad a hundred yards out but carried on with his discussion with the workmen while he wondered in the back of his mind what message the child might bear. Did his wife need him for something? Had she had an accident—or had she run away, after all? Mihas arrived before he could sort through the sudden jumble of emotions that accompanied those

thoughts, and the workmen broke off their conversation as the boy skidded to a stop in front of them, his face beet red with exertion as he panted out his message. "Petro Volynroskyj has returned!" Dumitru broke into a grin as relief and joy washed through him. Of all the news the boy could have brought, this was the most welcome and the least expected. "Already?" "Yes!" Mihas said. "Bela and I were up on the ramparts, and we saw him coming through the pass. He'll be at the gates any minute!" "Good work, there," Dumitru said, digging through the Maria Theresa thaler in his coin purse until he found a copper kreuzer to give the boy. 'Two hundred years ago, you could have made a good living as a watchman with your eagle-eyes. "Run back and tell Herr Volynroskyj to meet me in my cabinet." He reconsidered. "Never mind. I rode out—I'll leave now and meet him myself." He nodded to the workmen. "I shall return before dusk." Turning on his heel, he took the two paces to where he had left Bey tethered and swung onto her back. He allowed her to fall into an easy trot on the back road up to the castle, hardly able to restrain himself from an undignified gallop. The main road led to the other side of the fortress, so he did not see his friend arrive, but when he passed through the postern and into the stable yard, he found Petro Volynroskyj just handing over the reins of his mount. Volynroskyj grinned at the sight of him, his red-gold hair gleaming in the sunlight under the dust of the road and his gray eyes sparkling in greeting. Dumitru swung off his mount, tossing the reins to the stable boy. He took the three strides to his friend and embraced him roughly in the Eastern European fashion— the fashion he had assumed was universal in the Christian world until he had arrived in Paris to discover his politeness regarded as an archaic barbarism. What a shock France had been to his deeply Wallachian ways and mind! In self-defense, he had gravitated toward his fellow expatriates, Hungarian and Polish, Prussian and Servian. Though they were a heterogeneous group, they had their foreignness in common. Of all his fellow self-exiles, Dumitru had come to know and like Volynroskyj the best. Originally from the Ukraine, he was the younger son of an unimportant boyar. He had scraped together what money he could and headed for Paris, keeping himself out of debtor's prison by being charming to rich widows and developing an extraordinarily clever method of winning vingt-et-un. His financial dexterity was so impressive that Dumitru had invited him to become his steward and agent. At first, Volynroskyj had declined to leave the excitement of the city, but six months after Dumitru left France, the Ukrainian had shown up on his doorstep, circumstances involving an interrupted elopement with a nobleman's young daughter having made Paris abruptly inhospitable. "Volynroskyj, you devil!" Dumitru exclaimed. "How did you get here so soon?" The lean man grinned broadly. "Those bankers in Geneva are very efficient. My business took scarcely a day, and I knew I could come back faster than any letter. Besides, I missed seeing your hoary head— and eating your cook's good French food." "Hoary head! You caused every white hair when you involved me in that charade with the duchesse," Dumitru countered. "Your hair had turned long before then." Volynroskyj snorted. "I would not be surprised if you bleach it for the ladies. Shamming wisdom attracts them, especially with such a pretty face under all that white hair. And speaking of ladies, Severinor, how do you find your new wife?" He gave Dumitru the lopsided grin

that had rekindled many a rich widow's long-banked desire. "You had better stay well clear of her, and that's all I shall say." Dumitru cast a look around the stable yard, where a dozen servants and dependents had managed to find some sort of work to do since his arrival. "Come to my cabinet. We'll discuss more there." They ducked inside the residence and made their way to the room that had served as the semipublic study for the rulers of Severinor for the past four centuries. A battered and heavily upholstered chair stood behind the desk, and Dumitru dragged it around to face the tall settle against the opposite wall before flinging himself into it. "Well?" he asked as Volynroskyj perched with exaggerated formality on the edge of the settle in deliberate counterpoint to his flop. "Well, what?" The man's face went blank with feigned innocence. Dumitru made a face at his friend. Volynroskyj would joke at his execution. "How did you fare in Geneva? Don't toy with me now—both our futures are hanging on this." Volynroskyj dropped his pretence with a last, crooked grin. "The dowry was deposited as I had arranged. It was placed in a life trust in your name upon the condition that you marry Miss Carter. If you survive her, it will be split between you and any children she bears, going to them upon your death. If she bears no children, half will revert to the Carter family immediately upon her death and your half upon yours." A life trust. Dumitru blew out a puff of air in exasperation. He had been afraid of this. It was a sensible precaution for a doting father to take, but it meant that he could not invest the capital in his land. "At three percent?" he asked. "Of course." Volynroskyj hesitated. "That is not the only difficulty. The deposit only amounted to one hundred thousand pounds." Dumitru frowned. "Are you certain? I thought she was worth two hundred thousand. Three thousand pounds a year is a small enough sum for a man to hope to keep a woman like her in the manner to which she is accustomed, never mind other expenditures. The money must be there somewhere—or it must surely be coming." Volynroskyj shrugged helplessly. "It seems that the balance of the money has been transferred to a separate account as her bridal portion, explicitly and entirely in her name and accessed through an agent her father hired for her. And she has access to both the principal and the interest, if she chooses to use it." Damnation. "Volynroskyj, I need that money," Dumitru said tensely. Even if he had been restricted to the three percent of the full two hundred thousand, he could have managed, but on half that… It simply wasn't possible. "I know, old friend. I know." Volynroskyj's voice was soft, but his agreement was solid, and his face, for once, was devoid of mirth. Dumitru thought for a moment. Three thousand pounds per annum was a great deal more than he had ever had at his disposal in the past—more than half again his current net income. He could make many improvements with such a sum: new livestock lines, new crop strains, new equipment. But the most important, lucrative, and expensive projects would remain out of his reach—unless he could gain control

of that money. After a long moment, Dumitru said, "You know what we must do." Volynroskyj straightened. "Are you certain you want to take that step? When she finds out…" "If she finds out," Dumitru countered. "Unless she begins spending profligately, I see no reason that she ever need know that the money is not still under her control. It is the safest way." He made a motion of helpless frustration. "What other choice do I have? Beg my new wife for it?" He grimaced in disgust at the idea. He was a man, by God, not some child to be given an allowance, constantly constrained by his wife's feminine caprice. He had kept himself free from the control of empires; he would not give his hard-won autonomy over to a mere woman. "True enough," Volynroskyj granted him. He understood Dumitru's motivations, for similar thoughts had led him to risk the French count's third daughter when he might have lived safely as the petted lapdog of rich widows forever. "If you're decided, then—" "I am," Dumitru said firmly. "Then I will take the appropriate steps. First, I must discover what documents the bank director needs to give control over to you." "And then I can have Father Alecse forge them," Dumitru said. "Naturally," Volynroskyj agreed. "And then I will take them back to Geneva and do my best to convince the bank that they needn't inform her father's agent of this little transaction because it would only get back to her father and worry him. I doubt it will be of much a challenge, given the director's thinly veiled disapproval of the situation as it is." "Good, then. It is settled." Dumitru checked his pocket watch. "Time for luncheon. I would invite you to dine with us, but I do not wish to surprise my wife with an unexpected visitor so soon." "So how is she?" Volynroskyj asked, not stirring from his seat despite Dumitru's broad hint. "You have not said." "Young and dazzling," Dumitru said succinctly. "And remarkably confusing." "Confusing or confused, do you mean?" Volynroskyj asked, with his usual flippant disregard for the female sex. Dumitru couldn't help but smile. "Confusing, to be sure. Confounding. Vexing. Difficult. Charming." "You sound like a man in thrall." It was almost an accusation. Volynroskyj believed that the greatest mistake a man could make in life and love was to be controlled by anything but his most mercenary thoughts. Dumitru chuckled. "No, not in thrall. But engaged, certainly. And unexpectedly." He gave Volynroskyj a piercing look. "Which is why it is so critical that you be as discreet as possible about your business." "Always," Volynroskyj assured him. He rose with a little flourish. "I will retire to my lonely chamber to glut myself on your good food, then. Enjoy courting your lady wife, and I wish you a warm bed and a cold heart." Dumitru laughed. "Get out of here before I have to call you out for talking about her like that."

Volynroskyj shook his head in mock dismay, casting up his eyes to the heavens. "Lost, I tell you! Yet another good man—lost!" He left the room with a dramatic sigh.

Chapter Seven

When Dumitru reached his chambers, the drawing room was empty, but the door to Alcyone's bedroom stood open. From the doorway, he could see her lady's maid napping in a window over her knitting, and so he edged silently inside rather than wake her, expecting to find the girl's mistress engaged in similar handiwork nearby. Instead, Alcyone was seated at one of two broad tables in the room with her back half to him, surrounded by stacks of books and journals and frowning at a pile of papers that lay in disarray in front of her, alternately glaring at the nearest, half-empty page and scribbling some note upon it. She was clothed in a breezy confection of a morning dress, the severe lines currently in fashion softened by its lavender shade and the gauzy wrap she had draped around her shoulders. Her black hair—he realized that he had no idea how long it was, for she had not taken it down the night before—was dressed in a sophisticated married woman's twist, lacking the side curls of a debutante and ending with a final, complicated knot at the base of her elegant white neck. Even limited to the half-obscured profile that he could make out from where he stood, Dumitru was still arrested by her face. She was beautiful, startlingly so even though he had seen her only that morning. And yet her expression had nothing of the limpid idleness or quiet virtue that would have been drawn by any artist who wished to portray such a face as that. Instead, it was alive with emotion, with thought, with annoyance, even, containing an intensity that was disconcerting in contrast to the sense of expectation such features created. No more disconcerting than the fact that she has more ready money than her husband has ever dreamed of, a corner of Dumitru's mind muttered resentfully. Despite the bitter tendency of his thoughts, the expressions that flitted across her face struck him with the unaccustomed feeling that he was intruding, and he began to retreat to knock a warning. But Alcyone must have heard him take a step backward, for she stiffened and looked around quickly, her hand coming down to cover the page, then flying up again as it encountered wet ink. With an instantaneous cry of dismay, she fixed her attention back upon the paper. "Look what you made me do! I've smudged it," she accused in a tone of despair, grabbing a scrap of blotting paper and ineffectually attempting to repair the damage. Dumitru had opened his mouth to defend himself when he was interrupted by the maid, who came awake with a small, ladylike snort and blinked owlishly at them. She stood ceremoniously and retired without a word, shutting the door behind her with what Dumitru couldn't help but feel was greatly exaggerated courtesy. By that time, his instinctive defensiveness was overcome by natural curiosity, and he approached to see what his wife was blotting so frantically. He prided himself on his knowledge of English, but that was no help here. The papers spread across the table were all in the same hand, and all full of cryptic notes, odd diagrams, and formulae he couldn't begin to decipher. R? rules??? i2 = j 2 = -k2 = -1, i2 = j 2 = k 2 = -1 read one. Society et govrt.—divisible or elephant-parts? read another. "What is all this?" he asked.

Alcyone gave him a stricken look over her shoulder and shoved the papers into a single stack, hiding everything below the smudged page. "It's just part of a sort of game that I like to play by correspondence —a puzzle, like the anagrams some people enjoy." "It didn't look like a puzzle to me." Dumitru motioned to the papers in her hands and the stacks of publications that still littered the tabletop. "And this. What is all this?" He cast a glance over the cluttered surface, choosing one at random. He picked it Up. "Journal de mathématiques?" "It's nothing," she repeated even more tightly, frowning at the journal in his hands. But Dumitru was intrigued, and so he ignored her disapproving and increasingly anxious gaze and began digging through the stacks of material. Alcyone made a noise of protest and stood, her hands fluttering ineffectually as if torn between the desire to snatch away her possessions and the awareness that such behavior might not be becoming to a lady. He fully exploited her indecision. Hydrodynamica. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Acta eruditorum. Qu'est-ce que la propriété? Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. Göttinger Studien. No wonder she knew so many languages. She read journals and books from all over Europe. "I believe that I married a lady scientist." He smiled humorlessly at his situation and her discomfiture. She held the purse strings, so why should she not have a masculine occupation as well? Soon she would be in the trousers and he in the corset. "You needn't sound so amused." Her eyes narrowed into green slits, her mouth pursing in a manner that was quite unsuited to her face. "Whyever not?" Dumitru retorted. After the revelations of the morning, he had a petty desire to entertain himself by tormenting her a little. "It's not every man who has such an honor." "Like I said, it is a game, no more. Please, leave me to indulge in my little diversion in peace," she said tightly. Then she did pull her books away from him, planting her back firmly between him and her table as she set them where they belonged. "Alcyone—" he began. She stiffened, and he broke off, his amusement leaving him all at once, replaced by guilty repentance. He might be frustrated at her father's disposition of her money, but she had no control over that. If anything, the fault of his ignorance was his own: The details of the dowry's disposition had surely been written in a letter to Benedek that he had somehow failed to intercept. There was no virtue in taking out his frustration on her. "Alcy," be began again, gentler this time. "I am not mocking you. I merely meant that it was unexpected. Fascinating, but unexpected. What I feared the most—well, besides that you were a hideous eighty-year-old murderous madwoman—was that you would be dull, and you have most definitely proven to be anything but that." The line of her shoulders softened a little, but still she did not turn around. "Most people think that maths and philosophy are dull." She had a point, but he wasn't about to admit it—not now. "I do not know about that," he said, attempting to inject some levity back into their conversation. "I have never had much of an interest or talent in either, but I was considered a poor student of any subject that did not immediately capture my imagination, and my imagination was rather notoriously fickle." At that self-deprecation, Alcyone finally faced him, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and even though she did not speak, he knew he was forgiven. Her eyes had mellowed to a gentle, mossy green, the color coming back into her momentarily ghost-white features. She looked almost painfully beautiful, with an air of self-containment that seemed oblivious of both her charms and her fragility.

"What are you working on?" he ventured. He had no real burning interest, but he knew that she would enjoy telling him. "The same thing I have been working on for three years now. I call them extracomplex numbers." The enthusiasm in her voice would have been contagious if he had any idea what she meant. But he did not, so Dumitru just looked at her. She sighed. "Do you know what imaginary numbers are?" "No," he answered honestly. She frowned. "Surely you know what square roots are, then." "Of course," he said, bristling slightly at her tone. "Well, an imaginary number is what you get when you take the square root of a negative number," she said, as if it were the most logical thing in the world. "That's impossible," he objected immediately. "It does strike one as a bit counterintuitive when you first encounter the idea," Alcyone admitted, smiling, "since, of course, no one could ever show you a negative square root in the real world. But mathematicians have found"—she waved a hand vaguely—"relationships among numbers such that they have needed to take the square root of a negative number, and then when they do something else to that number, they can end up with numbers that do exist in the real world." For the first time since Dumitru had laid eyes upon her, Alcyone looked truly at home in herself, her mind animating her face and body so that, for once, her spirit and flesh seemed to fully belong together, a queer and brilliant harmony emerging suddenly from the usual discord of incongruity and juxtaposition. "Now," she continued, "complex numbers are what you get when you add an imaginary number to a real number. Extra-complex numbers are… like groups or clusters of complex numbers that interact in a way that breaks the rules that apply to real numbers and ordinary complex numbers, both." "What can you do with them?" Dumitru asked, thoroughly lost yet so transfixed by her sudden enthusiasm that he could not bear for her to stop. "Pardon me?" She looked startled. "Maths are usually used for something—for building bridges or describing the arc of an arrow," he said. "What can you do with your extracomplex numbers?" She blinked at him. "Frankly, I haven't the slightest idea." She stopped and seemed to reset herself. "That is, the formulas and rules I am developing describe a way in which numbers can interact, but I don't know yet of any particular situation that must be described in that way." Her expression grew radiant, and she seemed to look through him at some distant point that she could see only in her mind. "For centuries, maths ran behind or, at best, abreast of scientific knowledge, being employed to prove rules that were already in use or to describe behaviors that could already be measured. In this century, however, maths have acquired a level of abstraction independent of objective experience for the first time, and yet when a situation is later discovered that needs such advanced calculations, the groundwork is already in place. But that is the occupation of some other field. I care first about the numbers." She stared into the invisible for several seconds longer, then blinked and seemed to come back to herself all at once, shooting him a look of chagrin. "I'm being tedious, aren't I?"

Dumitru couldn't help a lopsided smile. Tedious, when she had that expression of almost holy wonder? A man should feel privileged to experience it. He ought to be disapproving of such an unfeminine hobby, for fear that it would overheat her brain or damage her ovaries or some such. But he'd always suspected such claims were bunk, and she had never looked so whole as in those moments of explaining her passion; he could not believe that such a diversion, however unorthodox, could possibly be unhealthy for one such as she. "No," he told her. "Not yet, at any rate. It is quite fascinating, even if I do not quite understand you." He paused for a moment as she looked at him with suddenly anxious eyes. She seemed to be taking his knowledge of her interests with deathly seriousness, as if he had uncovered some momentous and even shameful secret. She needed a sense of proportion. So he quipped, "When I lived in Paris, I knew women renowned for their cleverness, and they spent their days playing the piano or making needlepoint samplers in between bouts of witty repartee." "You have no piano here, and needlepoint is only good for occupying the hands while leaving the mind free to roam," Alcyone said, frowning as if sincerely analyzing the possible merits of the activities he had listed. "As far as that goes, such handiwork is an enjoyable diversion, but once one's thoughts are ordered, they need to be expressed, and that requires pen and ink rather than a needle." "You misunderstand me," he said patiently. "I meant that their cleverness was a very different thing than yours." Alcyone looked stricken for an instant, and then her face shuttered. "Less abstruse? Less inappropriate?" she supplied. "More conversational," he corrected. "Though rather lacking in substance in comparison." "Mmm," she said noncommittally, her expression still closed and her tone unconvinced. "I admit that a piece of paper comes in rather handy when one's correspondents are half a continent away, but intelligent conversation still has the potential to be quite as fruitful on mathematical subjects as on any other." "Not if your interlocutor has never advanced past basic geometry," he countered lightly, feeling that he may have met his match in the face of her unrelenting gravity. She blushed, her defenses coming down all at once. "I am sorry. I did not consider—" "Oh, for God's sake, Alcyone!" Dumitru interrupted her, all but rolling his eyes in exasperation. "You take all the joy out of teasing you, with your embarrassment and your apologies." "Oh," she said, blinking at him for a moment. She gave a slightly nervous laugh. "I am sorry. I am not very good with frivolity—I am much better with more caustic flavors of humor. My mother blames it on my intensity, but I credit it to my experience with others who find my interests an affront to their sensibilities. I have had little opportunity for frothy conversation, particularly on a topic such as this." Her words pierced him, but he covered it over quickly with an arched eyebrow and a facetious reply. "You know that you just apologized again, after everything I said." "I am—" She stopped, stymied for an instant. Then realization flashed across her face. "Oh, you! You're teasing me again." She struggled against a smile and lost, and with a choked sound, she burst into laugher. "What a fierce little thing I've been!" she said after her outburst died away. "I hadn't the least idea of how to tell you of my work, for I've told almost no one at all, but I believe that if I'd thought for a month, I could not come up with a worse way of doing it. I am amazed you didn't beat a retreat right when I began."

"If that is your worst, I think we can muddle through," he returned dryly. He heard the door open in the drawing room—luncheon had arrived. She looked relaxed now, and almost happy, and so he allowed himself to change the topic. "If you can credit it, I did not come here to discuss mathematics or marriage. I wanted to invite you to share my luncheon with me." "Is it that late already?" She cast a look down at her immaculate gown. "I am still in my morning dress, but if you do not mind—" "Not at all," Dumitru said. He hadn't even changed for dinner since he'd returned from Paris except on his wedding night. "You will find that we do not stand upon ceremony here." "Then I am at your disposal," she said, offering her hand. He bowed over it with a show of self-important ceremony, taking the opportunity to graze the backs of her knuckles with his lips and watch her catch her breath in reaction. Feeling unaccountably pleased with himself despite the shock of the morning's news, he tucked her hand under his arm and led her into the next room, where a clatter of dinnerware marked the setting of the table. They sat as the soup and roast were served. In the short trip from her bedchamber, Alcyone had grown stiff and uncertain again, and now she ate with such extraordinary precision that he could almost hear the memory of her etiquette lessons echoing in her head. Attempting to break the tension, he cleared his throat, and her eyes flew up from her studious fixation on her plate. Her cheeks were stained faintly pink, and her eyes glittered darkly, and he realized that her awkwardness was not from their conversation moments ago but from her memory of the dinner they had shared the night before. Her half-roused awareness called up an instinctive response in his own body, and with the sudden flush of warmth came images flickering through his mind, too fast and disjointed to be called a fantasy—him taking her mouth with his, knocking their meal from the table, shoving up those pristine, ruffled skirts… Then he blinked, breaking the spell, and sighed. As delightful as that diversion would have been, he knew it would do nothing to put them on an easier footing with one another. Another woman he might seduce into domestic bliss, But not Alcyone. He cleared his throat deliberately, taking a swallow of his wine. "Have you been published, then?" he asked, keeping his voice pitched in a tone of mild curiosity. "In one of those journals, I mean." Alcyone looked surprised and—to Dumitru's hidden astonishment—flattered at the question. The pink in her cheeks darkened, and she smiled, the awareness in her eyes shifting to a sparkling delight. "Yes, indeed. Or rather, Alco Carter has. Five times in math, and a good half dozen for philosophy." She gave a self-deprecating smile. "I dare not attempt to predict what the journals and my correspondents would say if they knew me to be a woman—no more than a girl when I began sending in essays for consideration." She seemed to be in a mood to indulge his curiosity, so he asked, "Why both mathematics and philosophy?" She shrugged, her elaborate sleeves rustling at the movement. "Whyever not? It is only in recent years that mathematics, natural studies, and philosophy have become divorced. As knowledge advances, it is perhaps inevitable that men will be forced to specialize, yet I cannot help but think that this fragmentation of learning shall prove to be deleterious."

"How so?" Dumitru asked, unexpectedly interested by her enthusiasm. "To start, the purity of numbers fosters logic and rational thought. If maths become utterly divorced from humanistic endeavors, I foresee a creeping irrationality that would be impossible for rigorously trained minds to indulge in. And with specious reasoning, philosophy itself cannot help but become futile." She spoke with, such vigor that it was impossible not to be drawn in. And so he raised a skeptical eyebrow. "And what will happen to mathematics without philosophy?" "It will become irrelevant," she said succinctly. "And your extracomplex numbers are not irrelevant?" he challenged, unable to restrain himself. Alcyone gave him a beatific smile. "Of course not. They are quite relevant for something, I am sure. It's only that no one yet knows what they are good for." Strangely enough, she seemed to relax when he challenged her, as if she were on familiar and very comfortable ground. It was bizarre, fascinating, and obscurely titillating, for her vivaciousness made her extraordinarily attractive in a manner that made him feel slightly voyeuristic because of its unconsciousness. Experimentally, he tried another angle to see what reaction it would elicit from her. "You seem to give human nature little credit if you put so much weight on training." "The ignorance, misery, and stupidity of the great mass of humanity that has existed up until this date does little to inspire confidence," she returned in a clipped voice, her irritation aimed at unnamed ancestors rather than him. Her eyes danced in contrast to her words, her entire body radiating animation. "Superstition, tradition, and emotion determine the course of most men's lives. Rational thought must be trained and cultivated." Dumitru smiled slowly. "I imagine that you are not popular with certain other philosophers." She looked gave him a startled look, then giggled—actually giggled, a tinkling girlish sound. "I have my detractors," she admitted. "But I have fierce supporters, as well." He leaned back in his chair. "Yes, I could see that. You are a woman of strong opinions. Strong opinions often elicit strong responses." "Precisely," she agreed, returning his smile with one that made him want to kiss her right then. Instead, Dumitru allowed the conversation to lapse into silence as they finished their soup and started upon the roast. Dumitru let his mind paint lurid pictures of their previous night—which would surely be matched and more by the night to come—while he pretended to be focused upon his meal. What an amazing, strange, unnatural woman he found himself yoked to—most feminine and alive when engaged in unfeminine pursuits, most charming when discussing things that should have been out of her ken. His father would have frowned and chastised her like a daughter, would have taken away her books and ordered her to keep her mind on more suitable topics. His grandfather would have had an enormous row with her, unable to tolerate the presence of anyone who did not share his views exactly and dared express her doubts. But Dumitru was neither his father nor his grandfather, and so he found himself mentally recategorizing Alcyone, moving her from the circumscribed realm of conventional womanhood to something entirely other. Shaking off those thoughts, he broke the silence. "On a more mundane note, how have you enjoyed your first day as a countess?" "I must admit that I have been too cowardly to stick my nose outside these apartments." Alcy looked

slightly sheepish. Dumitru couldn't help a chuckle. "And that from a woman who does battle with hoary philosophers? Fie, wife!" She smiled, as he had meant her to. "But I speak the languages of the philosophers with whom I debate, and I am more comfortable with esoteric arguments than with taking over the administration of a large household. I feel like a Roman governor on the eve of Rome's fall, sent out to a distant province and very uncertain of my welcome." "I hadn't thought that you would be taking charge of the residence, or I would have wade arrangements," he admitted. "An interpreter, at least. I am not much used to taking note of such matters." Alcy looked suddenly alarmed. "I do not mean to presume—" He cut her off gently, before she could plunge into agonies of self-recrimination. "It is no presumption at all. That is what a wife does, isn't it? Run her husband's house? It was my own thoughtlessness that has prevented you from taking your rightful place. Tomorrow, I will have the priest sent to you—he speaks perfect Greek, even if his German leaves much to be desired—and he will act as a translator as you say whatever it is you need to say to the servants." "Of course," she said, but she sounded far from excited by the prospect. "Is there a problem?" Dumitru asked. "What? No. Of course not," she said quickly. "I greatly value clean rooms and good meals." She stopped, and the air of something left unsaid was palpable about her. God forbid this woman ever have to keep a secret, Dumitru thought. She could be unreadable, but when she was fair bursting to talk, her expression gave her away in an instant. He could not imagine how she might handle his secondary occupation, since his very trade was lies, secrets, and carefully spun half-truths. "Then what is it?" he prompted aloud. She paused for a long moment, as if trying to decide if she should answer at all. Finally, she said, "To be honest, I do not much care about how my rooms come to be cleaned and my meals to be cooked. If you wish me to oversee the household, I will. I know how. It is what every girl of means is raised to do. But if things will continue to run smoothly without my interference—well, I would rather not interfere. I don't gain much enjoyment out of housewifery. I prefer that everything happen with as little effort on my part as possible." He grinned. "Especially since your pages of formulae are so much more fascinating." She smiled back shyly, as if she were uncertain of his approval. "Precisely," she agreed. "Well, I don't see why you must take up those duties, then," he said. "Old Stana Bucătaru is more than competent as a housekeeper, and the decisions she doesn't make are handled well enough by my steward Petro Volynroskyj. However, ignoring the housekeeping will not solve the language problem." "Of course," Alcyone said readily. "I am most eager to learn the local tongue, Rumanian or whatever it is called." "Wallachian," Dumitru corrected. "I have a facility for languages, but I am not a good teacher. Our priest Father Alecse, however, is excellent. He was my tutor before I went to France."

"I would like to work with him," she said with spirit that could only be sincere. "He has a very kindly face." Dumitru snorted with laughter. "He looks like an old bear!" "Not his eyes," Alcyone argued. "They are very good-natured." "Perhaps I have too many memories of the switchings I got from him, but he still scares me a little," Dumitru said in a half whisper of mock confidence. "No doubt you deserved them." She spoke with an air of prim superiority, but her eyes sparkled with mischief. "Well, as far as that goes, he never gave me a whipping that my father shouldn't have," Dumitru admitted, leaning back in his chair. "But it doesn't make me any more eager to visit him in his parlor, where he used to switch us. Is it settled then?" he asked, returning to the main question. "Yes," she said. She hesitated, eating a few more bites before she spoke again, with such precision that he knew she was picking her words with excruciating care. "I do have a few ideas for our accommodations that I would like to discuss with you, if you do not mind too terribly." "Certainly not," he said, even as he suspected that he would. "I would like to write my agent in Geneva to order a more… a set of furniture more to my tastes for my room. I mean, I would like to spend a part of my bridal portion improving my chamber, if you are not too attached to it as it is." Dumitru's bitterness about Volynroskyj's revelations that morning dropped over his mood like a black shroud. To think that just hours ago he was considering how he would indulge his wife by doing the exact same thing! But he scarcely had the money now for such a purpose even if he were willing to ignore his other obligations, and with the acknowledgement of his inability came the realization that he had been looking forward to the change for his own sake. "It is rather an odd old collection of things, isn't it?" Dumitru observed as neutrally as he could manage. "Go ahead. You can refurnish this chamber however you like, as well," he added, as if as an afterthought. "You truly don't mind?" she asked, looking around the shabby room. "The furnishings aren't important to your family?" "It is fine," Dumitru said, biting back a response that the room's antiquated state was due to penury, not sentiment. "The best of the furnishings can be moved to rooms where age and ostentation matter more than comfort, and the ones that have neither historical value nor family significance can be given to Stana Bucătaru. She always knows who most needs any surplus." He paused, weighing his dignity against his wistful desire for comfort. "As long as you are redecorating, you might wish to invest in a modern stove for each room, too. I use braziers in my bedchamber during winter, and the fireplace in this room smokes fiercely. Yours is the only one that provides much warmth. I am used to the inconveniences, but you would suffer for it." He kept his voice offhand, as if watering eyes and frozen feet were matters of utter indifference to him. "I see," she said, her tone suggesting that the possibility of ineffective fireplaces had never occurred to her. "If you do not mind such an alteration to the fabric of the structure, I would also like to hire some men to divide my room into more manageable spaces. I hesitated to bring it up, but since you mentioned stoves…" She gave him an apologetic look. "I do not want you to think that I do not appreciate it. It is far larger than any bedroom I have ever enjoyed. But I would like to have my own study, with a separate

bedchamber and dressing room." He smiled at her despite the irrational resentment that formed a hard knot deep in his stomach. "A study instead of a sitting room. I should have guessed." Alcyone blushed slightly. "I have no brothers or sisters, so I was rather spoilt by being permitted to stay in the nursery and change it to suit my needs as well as having the schoolroom to myself. The day nursery became my sitting room, the night nursery my bedroom, and the nurse's room my dressing room. As I grew older, I turned the schoolroom into my study for my own pursuits as well as the place for my formal lessons." "Then why not have all four here as well?" Dumitru found himself saying. "The other room on this level"— he nodded to the closed door on the wall that did not separate the drawing room from their bedrooms— "was my grandfather's study, but it hasn't been used in thirteen years. The old study, the cabinet, is just off the great hall and is much more accessible, and so that's what we returned to as soon as my grandfather died. But Grandfather liked that his was difficult to reach—he claimed the climb encouraged people to figure things out for themselves instead of pestering him about every little detail." Alcyone smiled. "He must have been an interesting man. Thank you. I would love to use it. And will I need to install a stove there as well?" "Undoubtedly," Dumitru said, even as he suddenly wondered how much of the money he had been counting on to build his canal would be devoted to the remodeling project. What was wrong with him? One moment, he was encouraging her to spend more and more—the next, he was resenting her for desires that, considering her background and expectations, were eminently reasonable. ."I brought my year's pocket money as well—two hundred pounds," she continued blithely. "I had it converted to Austrian thaler in Vienna, the Maria Theresa type. Frau Bauer, my mother's and Aunt Rachel's cousin, assured me that they would be in circulation here. Anyhow, they should be more than adequate for the alterations to my room. All I will need are two partitions and two doors, after all." "Indeed," Dumitru agreed, making the inevitable comparison to his own resources. Though he had a gross income of nearly 12,000 English pounds a year, his disposable income averaged only two thousand, and that was with excruciatingly careful management and his secret trade in information. When his father had been alive, three hundred pounds had been Dumitru's entire year's stipend for living in Paris. "What is the weekly rate for the laborers here?" Alcyone was saying. "In England, a pound each would be more than sufficient for such work." Dumitru considered offering to simply reassign some of his regular servants to her construction project. But he had few enough to spare, and plenty of his peasants needed the money she might otherwise spend upon dresses and other frivolities. Conversely, he could overcharge her, and it was unlikely that she'd ever know, but he knew what a sudden, unjustified influx of money could do to a closed local market, and he had no desire to cause a spike in inflation. So he merely said, "I will have the needed men hired on, and I will give you the bill when they need to be paid. Wages here are less than a fourth of those in England." The entire topic of money was darkening his mood again, and so with a mental shake of his head, he forced his mind onto other things. His duties this afternoon, for instance. He must return to the new terraces to see how far construction had come. And the spring wheat would be ripe in only a few weeks,

so there ought to be estimates for the success of the various strains he'd imported. He looked out the windows across the countryside as his mind ticked down the list of things still to be done before the sun set. His lands looked so peaceful from here, so static. And yet he had, in a very fundamental way, thrown the whole of the one thousand four hundred square miles that was his domain into utter chaos. But what else could he have done? Watched his people's way of life, his way of life, continue to become more and more irrelevant until they were passed by the modern world and thrown back into the dark ages? No. His path was the only way they could survive, and nothing—not even this brilliant, naive woman who had stumbled into their world—was more important than that. And yet, strangely enough, this woman was already important enough that he must remind himself of that fact. "Come out to the fields with me this afternoon," he found himself saying to cut short his thoughts. "You should become known to my people, and you should get to know the castle and the nearby land." Alcyone's eyes widened in surprise, but she agreed promptly enough. "I suppose I must come out of hiding sooner or later, and sooner is better than later." "Excellent." A glance down at her plate showed that it was as empty as his, and so he stood. "If you would like to change into your riding habit?" "Of course," she agreed quickly, standing as well. "It will only take me a minute." As she left the room, he couldn't help but think how much more pleasant his afternoon ride was going to be with her by his side.

Chapter Eight

Dumitru's quick tour of the castle left Alcy feeling divided. The residence—as he called the central keep and the three wings that sprawled from it—was spacious and even, in parts, romantic, but romance was juxtaposed with mundanity with such frequency that she could not quite become entranced. Below the count's private suite on the top level of the keep were two floors of bedrooms for children and guests. The ground floor served as the hub of the residence, and from it radiated the kitchen wing with the servants' rooms above; the great hall with its pantry, buttery, and Dumitru's cabinet; and the house annex. The annex, Dumitru informed her, had served as the private apartments of his family from its construction in the 1600s until 1801, when his grandfather had inherited the estate and moved his family back into the keep. "Why is the chapel attached to the house annex?" Alcy asked, peering into the familiar dim hallway that ran down the center of the wing. "I thought such an arrangement was more medieval than Renaissance." Dumitru smiled, his eyes sparking with icy amusement. It struck her again how handsome he was, how the strangeness of his sable-streaked hair and slanting blue eyes added to his ageless, unearthly appeal. "Generally, it is, even though the Renaissance did not precisely influence us here," he agreed. "However, our frugal-minded ancestors had made do with an old wooden chapel in the bailey, which served the village as well as the castle until it burnt down, and so the wing's architect decided to make up for their lack of elegance of thought and have it included in the new addition. Thankfully, he had the foresight to build a side entrance so that the peasants would not tramp through the passageway every week in their muddy boots." Together, they stepped through the main doors of the keep and into a brilliant late summer day. Alcy

tipped her face into the breeze while making sure her bonnet kept it shaded from the sun. Dumitru identified the stables and barns that formed a courtyard in front of the keep. Both barns were so new that the walls glowed white with fresh lime, shingled roofs shining raw and golden in the sun. "For wintering livestock," Dumitru explained as a groom went to saddle their horses, looking at the buildings with such an expression of deep satisfaction that Alcy felt compelled to respond. "Oh," she said, not knowing what else to say. He looked at her, smiling crookedly. " 'Oh,'" he repeated. "You haven't the slightest idea what the significance of them is, have you?" Alcy bristled. "You haven't the slightest idea of the significance of adding a second cylinder to a Cornish engine design, have you?" she retorted automatically. Dumitru looked startled for a moment, and she bit her tongue, cursing her hasty reply. But his grin returned, and he just said, "Point taken." He looked back at the barns, gleaming in the early afternoon light as peasants slowly gathered around the perimeter of the courtyard, working in a way that Alcy recognized from her own pretences when she wished to be present in a place where she did not precisely have any business being at the moment. "This shall be the first year that we shall have harvested enough hay and silage to keep most of our livestock over the winter instead of being forced to slaughter half the herds." "Oh," Alcy said, this time with understanding. Just then, the groom brought out their horses—a tall, handsome bay for Dumitru and a delicate black mare for her, replacing the swaybacked mule she had ridden in on. She thought, rather ruefully as Dumitru boosted her into the saddle, that it was a shame that her riding ability could not be changed as easily as her mount had been. Until her first, terrifying ride through Hyde Park at the age of twelve, she had traveled only by her own two feet, the family carriage, or the train. Though she had long gotten over her fear of riding, she had never been comfortable or elegant on horseback, and Dumitru's almost inhuman grace as he swung onto his sleek mare only underscored her deficiency. Dumitru glanced around the stable yard and chuckled. "It seems you have gathered quite an audience." Alcy looked away from him. There were now dozens of peasants standing in or near the stable yard, and even as she watched, a few more wandered up. Most had given up any pretence of working and simply stood around, watching her covertly as small children openly gaped and whispered. "Shall I make you known to them?" he asked. Alcy swallowed against the sudden, fluttering nervousness in the pit of her stomach, her horse shifting restlessly under her at her sudden tension. "I suppose so," she agreed, keeping her voice unconcerned. Dumitru threw her a dazzling smile—meant to be reassuring?—and guided his mount to the nearest group on the perimeter of the yard. The names he said meant nothing to her—they might as well have been mere collections of syllables—but she smiled and nodded again and again until both her face and neck felt stiff. She stayed close to Dumitru, not that he was much of a shield, since he seemed to delight in introducing everyone to her. The peasants reacted with inordinate awe that made her feel like a rather ungainly and insufficient Una following the Redcrosse Knight straight out of legend. It wasn't until there was no one left for her to meet that Dumitru turned to her again. "Are you ready to see the fields?"

"But of course," she said, feeling slightly overwhelmed. "Then let's go." And with that, he turned his horse and rode between the bams and out of the stable yard, leaving her to follow after. Why did I agree to this? Alcy asked herself three hours later. That morning, she would have said that she would be happy if she saw no horse, mule, or camel for the next six weeks, yet here she was, following a man who seemed determined to examine every inch of his estates in person that very day. The riding, which was unpleasant enough with a saddle-bruised rump and stiff thighs that were sore for an entirely different, deeply embarrassing and embarrassingly arousing reason, was made dull as well as uncomfortable by frequent stops, during which Dumitru would speak to various dependents at length about matters that would doubtlessly be fascinating if only she could understand a word of what was being said. A moment's reflection back in the drawing room or even in the stable yard would have warned her against this enterprise, but she had not reflected. It was so easy to get swept up in anything Dumitru showed an interest in. In the brilliant light of day, he no longer seemed quite so mysterious and forbidding, and yet there was still a kind of power to him, one that had more to do with the light in his eyes and the fervency of his speech than the breadth of his shoulders or the strength of his jaw. He could not imagine that anyone would disagree with him, and usually, no one did. Watching the reactions of the men he spoke to, she could see his enthusiasm spreading like an infection to everyone who came in contact with him. Doubts and frowns faded and head shaking disappeared until hoary-bearded men nodded and laughed and beamed at what he said like charmed, delighted children. It was a kind of magic, she decided. And it seemed that no one was immune. Even if the effect wore off after only a short time, it was a powerful ability. The rolling golden fields of the valleys soon gave way to fruit-heavy orchards, tangled woods, and open pasturelands on the slopes. Alcy found herself making a dozen unaccustomed speculations about the land and its people, as real to her now, for the first time, as her father's great looms and the laborers who worked them. Dumitru's estate was like a great factory, but the machinery was the earth itself, raw material and finished product created in a single continuous process. And yet the land was more than a mere unit of production; it was also utterly and inescapably beautiful. On either side, the fields and trees embraced the road between them, and in front, the massive hulk of a larger mountain shouldered up through the earth, dominating the foreshortened horizon in a way that was sheltering rather than menacing, like an old stone giant standing benevolent guard. No wonder Dumitru seems to love his land so, Alcy thought, looking at the tall, proud back of the man on the horse in front of her. Just then, Dumitru went around another bend in the road and stopped. Alcy found herself facing a declivity where the lower slopes of the mountain met its steeper main bulk. Instead of giving way entirely to pasture and forest, though, the slope here had been stripped, and a series of retaining walls marched upward. Men worked, muddy to the waist, on the third and currently uppermost terrace, but when they saw Dumitru, they called out a respectful greeting and hurried down, scrambling over the rock walls to the roadside. The inevitable introductions took place, and then Alcy was ignored as Dumitru launched into some sort of intense discussion with the men. Finally, whatever they had been speaking about was settled, and Dumitru turned his mount away. He caught her looking at him. "You are bored," he said, the dancing light from the last joke he had shared with the men replaced with an expression of regret.

"Of course not," Alcy replied automatically. At his half-quirked eyebrow and disbelieving look, she amended, "Well, I am not very bored, or at least I'm sure I wouldn't be if I could understand what anyone was saying." Dumitru nodded toward the slope behind him as he guided his mount back toward the castle. "We were discussing the terraces." "Mmm," Alcy said, unenlightened. "Yes, I had assumed that." She let her horse fall in beside his. Dumitru shot her an amused glance, his pale eyes glinting. "Methods of building them, I mean. It is an experiment." When she said nothing more, he waved, encompassing all the surrounding mountains. "Severinor is seventy miles long at its longest point and twenty-five miles wide at its widest, and every acre of it is mountainous. Half the arable land once under plow has been allowed to go back to wilderness during the past two centuries, but much of that is in depopulated areas. Instead of moving the people, I wish to make better use of the most favorable slopes within a short walking distance of existing settlements, terracing some of them for grain fields while planting some of the steeper south-facing slopes with grapes and mulberries." "To support a bigger population?" Alcy guessed. Dumitru's grin was a wry twist of the lips. "To support this population better." "Oh." Alcy looked back at the terraces. "I must confess that I do not even know what these mountains are called." "Well, then, let me be the first to welcome you to the Transylvanian Alps," he said, waving an arm expansively. "Alps?" she echoed, looking at the peak that loomed behind them. It was treeless, it was true, and it had a picturesque angularity to it, but it was a hill compared to the descriptions she had read of the real Alps in Italy and Switzerland. "I know," he said, the early evening sun gilding the black-streaked hair that emerged from under his hat as he tipped his chin toward her. "It is a ridiculous name, isn't it? The peasants simply call them 'the mountains,' but that is not enough for a cartographer, one of whom probably named it out of the sheer vexation of having a blank space on his map and nothing to write in it." He gave her a sideways look, his expression of airy disapproval belied by the mischievous light in his eyes and the irresistible quirk of his mouth. Alcy smothered a shiver, suddenly reminded of the ache in her legs and exactly how that mouth had kissed her the night before, a thousand times and a thousand times too few. "And so they became the Alps," Dumitru continued, "for cartographers are not known for their poeticism or creativity. That sort of thing is generally discouraged in modern mapmaking." "Just in case one decides that 'there be dragons' is much more interesting than Dresden?" she asked, her voice slightly wobbly as she tried not to laugh. "Exactly," he said in exaggerated approval, not seeming to notice. Alcy realized that she was grinning at him like a fool, and she could not remember when she had last grinned. The startlement of that discovery knocked the smile off her face, but Dumitru was looking up at the sun where it balanced on the peak of the mountains behind them and didn't see. "We should make it back before sundown, but only just, at this rate," he said. "You don't mind a leisurely walk, do you?"

"Of course not," she said agreeably. She couldn't help a feeling of smugness at her recent amiability. She hadn't been even slightly unconventional or difficult for several hours, at least, and before lunch was entirely Dumitru's fault, anyhow, for surprising her at her books. They rode along in silence for a little while, Alcy enjoying the warmth of the sun against her back and the self-congratulatory feeling that came from not actually having done anything much to embarrass herself that day. Night was coming on swiftly, and the orange light of sunset bathed the gray curtain walls in a glow like flame. Chatter drifted through the small postern gate through which the road disappeared, which two men entered ahead of them as she watched, their mattocks riding high over their shoulders. "Where do all these people live?" she asked, struck by the realization that she had seen several hundred people but had still not laid eyes on anything approximating a village. "There are forty-six cottages in the bailey," Dumitru said, as if there were nothing unusual about this arrangement. "You must not have noticed them as we left, but you did seem rather overwhelmed with introductions." Alcy reddened slightly at being so transparent, but she said nothing. "The village moved in my great-grandfather's day, when several bands of Servian hajduk brigands grew bold and began crossing the Danube to plunder Wallachian lands." He gave her a sideways look. "As poor as we are, we are richer than those who live under Ottoman tax-farming. The Servians believe that preying upon the Ottoman caravans is a form of social protest, and so the peasantry shelters many of their bandits, idolizes them, and shares in their plunder." "Like Robin Hood," Alcy said. Dumitru laughed, but the sound did not have much humor. "The stories of your English Robin Hood did not include massacres and rapes, my dear wife. The hajduks are without mercy when they encounter a Turk, and it is a small thing to begin making excuses to treat foreigners the same. Well, at least the poor ones. The wealthy they ransom. The bands that crossed the Danube to steal from Wallachian peasants were unusual in their brazenness, but their actions are quite reconcilable with what the hajduks are in practice, if not in song. They are men to fear, not admire." They passed through the gate, and Alcy frowned as something else occurred to her. "Yesterday, the main gates were locked tight even though it was clear from my reception that you were expecting me, while today, even this postern stands open." "That was a nice touch, wasn't it?" Dumitru asked smugly. "You mean it was for effect?" Alcy didn't bother to hide her indignation. "You wanted to intimidate me?" If anything, he looked only more pleased with himself. "It worked, didn't it? Your resistance to our quick marriage was all but nonexistent. If you hadn't been so clever, I would have had you safely wedded and bedded days before you realized that I was not Benedek." With a shrug, he reined his horse to a stop in the middle of the stable yard and dismounted with an elegance that did nothing to improve Alcy's feelings toward him. "You—you cad!" she exclaimed, resorting to English in her affront. She did not feel that her position was helped by her need for his steadying hand as she dismounted. Dumitru was smiling at her and looking far more handsome than he had any right to, and she was suddenly and intensely aware of how very close he was, how very near his wide, strong chest and his deliciously wicked mouth. But she tamped down the instinctive sweet pang that thrilled through her body and fixed him with her best glare. "What is so funny?"

His smile widening, he said, "You are. You are more irate about my attempt to frighten you than you are by my posing as another man to trick you into marrying me." Alcy blinked. "Well, yes," she admitted. He began leading his horse toward the stable, and she followed, her mount stepping willingly beside her, its ears cocked forward in anticipation of a rub down and a warm stall. "Put like that, it does seem rather droll. But you tricked me because you felt you must, and whatever I think of that choice, I know that scaring me was sneaky and unkind without any great reason to even partly justify it." Dumitru stopped in the corridor down the center of the stable in front of an empty stall and looked at her over the horse's back. "Might I mention that you look especially beautiful when you are trying to put up a brave front?" he said, giving her a look of such overdone seduction that she giggled even as her mid-section tightened in reaction. Without waiting for an answer, he bent out of sight to unbuckle the saddle's girth. "You may mention it, but I will not believe it," Alcy replied, smiling at the side of his horse. "I turn quite pale and sallow, and I have been told that my jaw clenches in an unattractive way." "You truly are beyond ordinary flattery, aren't you?" came Dumitru's voice, muffled slightly as he worked at the girth. "I am quite at a loss as to what to do with a woman like you." At those words, images of a dozen highly inappropriate solutions rushed into Alcy's mind, and she caught herself just in time to keep from blurting out one or two of the most arresting. She ignored the sizzle of heat that ran quickly across her skin and said the first decent thing that came to her mind. "You are the first man I have ever met who has found my contrariness anything but at best a personal flaw to be gently corrected and at worst an intolerable trait in a female." Dumitru straightened and looked at her directly, something in his expression, so still and yet so fierce, making her heart beat fast and her belly clench with a small, wonderful thrill. "Who am I to take the thorn from the rose?" His gaze grew even more piercing. Alcy found herself stepping automatically toward him, so that she stood only inches from the horse that separated them. "Perhaps I am a little perverse," he continued, "for I seem to take pleasure in getting pricked." "I do not mean to be difficult, and yet it seems that I am always arguing with everyone," Alcy said, a trifle breathlessly. "The fastest way to ignite my curiosity about what is upon the roof is to order me down into the cellar." "Contrary woman, indeed," he murmured, his eyes narrowing with suppressed mirth—and something more. "Certainly," Alcy agreed, standing frozen for a long moment. Dumitru's eyes flicked to the side, and Alcy looked away from him to see a groom enter the stable. She suppressed a bitter pang of disappointment, but Dumitru just gave her a dark smile and said, "Follow me." Feeling like a goodwife in the thrall of a faerie king, she obeyed.

Chapter Nine

They had made it as far as the stable yard when Dumitru's impatience overtook him and he grabbed Alcyone's wrist. "Hurry," he urged, pulling her toward the keep. She sped up to a run. "What's wrong?" By the time she finished those words, they were standing in the center of the ground floor hub as Dumitru hesitated, looking at the long staircase leading up to their rooms. Her eyes were enormous in her pink-tinged face, her unknowing alarm making the fire that burned within him leap up suddenly, sharply. Too far, he decided, and he turned away from the stairs and tugged her toward the nearest room where he was certain they would not be disturbed. "Nothing's wrong," he said tightly as she hurried along beside him. "Nothing at all." Then they were inside his cabinet. Dumitru shut the door and pushed Alcyone against it in the same movement, his mouth coming down over hers, which was half open in surprise. She reacted instantly. Her hands locked behind his head, holding him against her as she leaned away from the door, pressing against him, her slick mouth moving eagerly under his, begging for more of him even as it returned his passion in full measure. His groin tightened suddenly, almost painfully, and his involuntary groan was answered with a shiver that went through her entire body. Oh, God. He lost himself in her, plummeting into the sensations her body offered him, her taste, her scent, her body, everything that he wanted to devour, to consume, to possess. Finally, though, he had to catch his breath, and he broke off with almost a physical wrench. "Well," Alcyone said, panting a little as she leaned against the door, "if that is what you wanted, why didn't you say so?" "Jesu," he swore, staring at her. It must be a sin for a woman to look that enticing. Her hat, like his, had been knocked to the ground, and her hair was tumbled wantonly, half escaping its pins and combs. Her cheeks were flushed bright pink, and the rest of her skin had grown even more palely perfect except for around her glittering eyes, which were shadowed with desire. He pulled off his gloves to touch her face with the backs of his knuckles. Her gaze never leaving his, she yanked off her own kidskin gloves and dropped them to the floor, where they lay beside the riding crop that she had dropped when he had kissed her. He brushed his hand back across her cheek until it met her disordered hair, and he found himself pulling out a comb automatically. He captured a second one, then a third, and then her hands joined his, hunting through the thick locks for the invisible pins. Her coiffure unraveled half a foot before arresting for a moment, and then all at once, it came undone completely in a glorious jet-black cascade that fell to her knees, the last surviving pins quickly falling victim to her dexterity. She shook it out, and one long lock fell over her shoulder. "Amazing," he breathed, reaching out to twist it around his hand. "Even after last night, I could not have imagined—" He broke off, not knowing what he meant to say. He kissed her again instead, and his body seemed to become a single blue-hot blade of flame, so sharp that he thought he might cut himself into a thousand pieces. He freed himself from her hair and pulled at the dragging skirt of her riding habit. The loop to hold it off the ground was still fastened around her wrist, but she grabbed double fistfuls of the material and hauled it up. Her petticoats and chemise went, too, and he fumbled with the buttons of his fly even as she kissed him again.

Then he was free. Urgently, he pulled her into his arms, lifting her up, and sensing what he wanted, she wrapped her legs around his hips. Her skirts slid in the way momentarily, and he all but snarled in frustration as she gave a gasping laugh against his mouth, helping him to battle the cumbersome layers. And then he met flesh, found her opening, and was inside her, a stab of glorious agony shooting through him as a simultaneous shudder shook her. "I am so close," she said in husky amazement. "Dumitru—" She didn't have to say anything else. Dumitru thrust into her again, and then again, his teeth gritted against the sensations that assaulted him. "Hold on," he ground out, and he reached between them, shoving aside her sliding skirts to find that sensitive spot at the top of her opening. Her breath caught, then went from rhythmical to ragged, then to animal pants, whimpers turning to groans as she heated around him. Finally, after a time that was almost too long for him to bear, her arms and legs went rigid around him as her inner muscles tightened and loosened in a rhythm that pushed him over the edge and into sudden, dazzling completion. Finally, spent and winded, he stopped. He pulled away from her, and she reluctantly unwrapped her legs from his hips and stood, her skirts sliding down in now-creased folds to the floor as he buttoned his fly again. "My… my goodness," she said in English, her eyes wide. Then she blushed suddenly and dramatically, her entire face turning from pinked porcelain to brilliant red. "My leg…" she said softly, almost at a whisper, in German again, her tone split between startlement and humiliation. Realization dawned, and Dumitru cast around for something appropriate. "I can give you my coat—" "Oh, no, I can't ruin that," she said, blushing even harder. She turned her back, and after some rustling of her skirts, she turned back around to face him. "I never really thought that it would be so… messy," she said. "But enjoyable," she added quickly, as if afraid she would insult him. "Very pleasurable, in fact." "Ecstatic?" he offered, hiding a smile. She shot him a look, colored with lingering desire, that let him know that she realized she was being teased, but she pretended to consider it. Somehow, he thought that she did not often have opportunities for such silliness. "Yes, I think it could properly be called that. But we must do it again, or I cannot be certain." Dumitru chuckled darkly. "I would love nothing more to indulge you, but we have a guest for dinner tonight, and we wouldn't want him to come looking for us when we didn't appear at the table." Alcy blushed again, and he discovered that he enjoyed making her do that. "No, we certainly wouldn't want that. Who is it?" "Petro Volynroskyj, my steward. He has just returned from a long journey, or you would have seen him at our wedding," he said. "Are you ready to go above?" "Oh, no!" She lifted a hand to her magnificent hair, her eyes widening in horror as she realized the state it must be in. "I cannot possibly repair this without a brush and comb. And a mirror. You must send Celeste to me—" "Are you ashamed to be my wife?" "Of course not, but—"

"Then smooth your hair with your hands, put your hat back on, and walk proudly at my side," he ordered. "It is too glorious to hide." She shot him a look that, coming from someone he knew better, he would have thought swore revenge, but she did as he said—more or less, stuffing her hair back into her hat before she screwed it firmly onto her head and opened the door. He put one hand on her waist to guide her out and frowned. "I have noticed that my hands truly can span your waist. The expression is usually a poetic exaggeration." "But aren't I the epitome of fashionable beauty?" Alcyone said, her words tinged with old bitterness. "Some women are sweet conversationalists or have delightful talents of the voice or on the piano or are clever dancers. I am beautiful. It is the only praiseworthy thing about me. Do you blame me for cultivating it?" "I would argue with you about your talents, but I doubt you would pay me much heed. But you must know you are risking your health with this foolish tight lacing," he said, his frown deepening. "I am never ill," she said dismissively. "No one except you has found my waist measurement a matter for rebuke. Even my dear papa is pleased when I look so pretty and show his goods off to the best effect." "He used you as a living mannequin?" Dumitru tried to keep his shock out of his voice. "Of course not," she replied swiftly, giving him a sideways look as she started up the stairs. "Papa is a brilliant man in his way, when it comes to imports, exports, ledger books, and production capacity, but he is not terribly reflective. He saw how lovely his cloth looked on me, and he was happy to think of all the grand people I would meet who might order it from him even as he hoped I would be seen as their equal, not a glorified shop girl. He never realized how foolish that wish was, how bourgeois he really is in his core." Dumitru just shook his head. "Regardless of whether it is considered the ideal, you cannot be capable of vigorous activity, caged in as you are." Alcy smiled dryly. "And do you think I would be capable of it otherwise, encumbered with four to ten petticoats and skirts that sweep the ground? The way sleeves are constructed now, women are scarcely able to adjust their own bonnets. We are dressed to adorn a parlor and look interestingly pale, not climb mountains or stride about the countryside, corset or no. I go for a long daily constitutional, and that is enough for me." Dumitru's irritation softened somewhat at her rather strained attempt at humor. "You may have noticed a dearth of parlors to sit in here and a positive abundance of countryside to stride about. If you are not willing to make changes for your health, consider it my demand that in light of your new situation you alter your clothing to suit your surroundings." Alcyone shot him an indignant look. "By what right do you have to make such a demand?" "By the most natural right in the world: the right of being your husband," he said dryly. "If I were the type of woman who could be ordered around by a husband, I would have been married four seasons ago," she retorted. Despite her tart words, when they reached their drawing room, she gave him a last kiss in full view of her lady's maid and then said shyly, "Do you really think my hair is glorious?" He pulled off her hat, releasing it to tumble down to her knees, to her maid's transparent shock—and

approval. "Absolutely," he said. "How interesting," was all she remarked, and when she turned back into her room, she walked with a little twitch that sent her skirts swaying. Dumitru was waiting in the drawing room with Volynroskyj when Alcyone finally emerged for dinner. He had intended to watch his friend's reaction—and give him a discreet kick if it were too enthusiastic—but her appearance swept all extraneous thoughts from his mind. Alcyone wore a velvet dress of the deepest red, its design unusual in an age of crepes and crisp silks but, Dumitru was certain, still on the very edge of fashion. The drapes and pleats of the night before were replaced with lines that would have been severe if they had not been so graceful, the simplicity of the bodice making him excruciatingly aware of the shape beneath and the skirt defying the current niched style to fall smoothly from the waist, gathering folds in its descent. The medieval and Renaissance references of modern fashion were reinforced with self-conscious motifs. Aged gold embroidery, too fine and delicate to be ostentatious, coyly echoed her curves in imitation of ancient designs, and her tight sleeves were slashed and puffed at the elbow before flaring out at the wrists to expose bare skin beneath: bare, except for the extravagant bracelets of emerald and ruby—surely they couldn't be real emerald and ruby—that clasped her fine wrists. An equally incredible necklace began at her neck and looped across her décolletage until the lowest pendant rested against the edge of her bodice, somehow making that fashionably modest expanse of skin seem twice as revealing. But what truly arrested his attention was her hair. Instead of being contained against the back of her head, as it had been that morning, it now descended from a crown of braids in a series of twists and loops and plaits until it reached the middle of her back, managing to make her look like she was still in dishabille even though she was most exquisitely dressed. Alcyone sailed into the middle of room with a beatific smile on her glowing face, and Dumitru wanted to kiss her and scold her and take her right back into her room and shut the door and stay in there with her for the next three days. Dumitru became aware of Volynroskyj swearing very softly in Ukrainian next to him, and he had the presence of mind to give him a discreet elbow in the ribs before stepping forward and taking both Alcyone's hands in his own. "Alcyone," he said solemnly, "allow me to introduce my steward and friend, Herr Petro Volynroskyj." "Herr Volynroskyj," she said, disengaging her hand to extend it to Volynroskyj, "I am so pleased to meet you." Volynroskyj treated her with his most dashing smile which, to Dumitru's secret gratification, seemed to amuse her rather than dazzle her and bowed over her hand. "My dearest Countess von Severinor, I cannot tell you how pleased I am to make your acquaintance." "I am sure, however, that you will do your best to try," she returned swiftly—automatically, Dumitru was certain, for he saw her surprise before she papered over it with a smile. Volynroskyj just laughed, shaking his head as he released her hand. "I see that Dumitru has his hooks well and truly into you. I suppose I have no hope of convincing you to run away with me instead." Dumitru relaxed fractionally. Now that Volynroskyj was taking it all in jest, there was no danger of him doing just that. Not that Volynroskyj had ever seemed susceptible to feminine charms, but Dumitru was not, perhaps, entirely rational where his wife was concerned.

"None whatsoever," Alcyone replied promptly, shifting her gaze to Dumitru. "I should at least escort you to the table, since it is in the worst taste for a man to take his own wife," Volynroskyj declared, extending his arm. "Of course," she replied, and she demurely took hold of it, her skirts swishing in unconscious provocation with every step. Dumitru's eyes dropped automatically to her waist. Her tiny waist. He frowned, and under the cover of pushing in her chair, he whispered, "I thought I told you to loosen your corset." She gave him a languid look. "Yes, you did," she murmured back, "but as all my dresses are sewn for a waist of sixteen inches, I will be unable to comply with your request until I buy a new wardrobe." Dumitru made a grunt of acknowledgement, irritated at her avoidance of his order yet unwilling to suggest that she spend the vast sum—at least a thousand pounds, he was sure—to have all her dresses replaced at a stroke. She gave him a smug little smile as if she could read his mind and turned to Volynroskyj, whom she asked brightly about his journey, leaving him unsure whether he wanted to kiss her for her spirit or shake her for her contrariness. Dumitru sat, and Volynroskyj dropped the pretense of flirtation and entertained them instead with a long string of diverting anecdotes from his trip, though he discreetly refrained from mentioning where exactly it was that he had been and what had been his purpose there. His stories lasted until the fish and soup were cleared away, and he gave Dumitru a hidden, sardonic glance as the roast was brought, in mute reference to the sudden extravagance of his usually frugal table. Dumitru ignored him. Alcy need never know that a hearty stew had been the whole of their dinner many nights before she came to Severinor. Dumitru served his wife a thick slice of lamb, clearing his throat and turning the conversation back to her. "What did you think of your mount this afternoon?" Alcy looked up at the question as Dumitru set her plate in front of her. She could not tell from his expression what kind of answer he wanted or expected. "I am no judge of horseflesh, but I enjoyed riding her well enough," she replied diffidently, calling the black mare to mind. "She is steady, intelligent, and responsive, but any more than that, I cannot say." "Then she is yours." He smiled at her, and she could not help but compare him to Herr Volynroskyj, who sat beside him. The other man—younger? she could not be sure—had a certain charm in common with her husband, and he was certainly handsome in a golden-ringlet way, and yet she could not shake the feeling that the steward was somehow flat by comparison, that a bright intelligence lurked behind his charm but with none of Dumitru's complications, none of his depths of light and shadows. She had met men like Herr Volynroskyj, and she knew them well—charming, condescending, conscientious in their own way but easily bored with anything that did not have a strong enough link to their own vanity. "We do not have many diversions here, but with a mount, you will at least have the opportunity to take exercise every day," Dumitru continued. "Are you trying to make your point about vigorous exercise and tight lacing?" Alcyone retorted automatically. Herr Volynroskyj cleared his throat slightly, and her face flamed at her indiscretion. She braced herself for her husband's rebuke. Dumitru, however, acted as if nothing was awry. "I would never dare to attempt to convince you of anything," he replied solemnly, "if for no other reason than that you would keep to the opposite view out of principle."

Alcy smiled. "Most likely so. What is the horse's name?" Dumitru paused. "To be honest, I can't seem to recall what I put in the breed book. The grooms have their own nicknames for each horse, which is what I usually call the ones I don't ride, but if you would like to name her, there's no reason not to." "Since she is to be mine, I think I'd like that," said Alcy. She thought for a moment. She didn't know the horse well enough to give it a name based upon any aspect of its personality, and as far as physical characteristics went, the most obvious was the color if its coat. Blackie was the name of a cart horse, and all of the usual names for black riding horses were far too melodramatic for her tastes and generally hinted broadly at fierceness, which she already knew the horse was not. "Then how about Raisin?" she suggested finally. She said the name in English, and Herr Volynroskyj frowned, looking puzzled. Dumitru chuckled, the sound sending a small shiver across her skin. "Wonderfully apt and yet so very inappropriate to the future mother of equine aristocrats." "It does sound rather like a rotund pony's name, doesn't it?" she asked, quite pleased with herself. "I think it's perfect. Dark yet sweet, and rejecting ostentation." "I am certain I don't have that name in the breed book." His eyes were laughing even though his mouth had no hint of a smile. "Don't worry," she said primly. "I am sure Raisin doesn't mind what you call her." They lapsed into a comfortable silence until Herr Volynroskyj broke it with a question for Dumitru. "Do you intend to oversee the harvest from the castle this year?" Dumitru looked reflectively at Alcyone. "Yes. I think matters are well in hand this year, though I'll need to go around to all the villages again in the spring." "Does the land need such attention?" Alcy asked hesitantly, genuinely curious yet afraid he would think her question foolish. "I thought nobles had stewards—like Mr. Volynroskyj—to see to such matters. My father scarcely even thinks of the management of his new estate." "Your father is not attempting to revolutionize the local way of life," Dumitru said with a glint of humor in his eyes that made her stomach feel a little fluttery. "The shepherds need my reassurances to be persuaded to take up farming once again, the farmers need my reassurances that my new methods will improve their lives, not destroy it, and the boyars need my reassurances that I am not turning them into tradesmen, since they would rather starve themselves and their peasants before being reduced to the ignominy of considering such things as markets and efficiency and income. It is all the more difficult since my grandfather tried to introduce the Townshend system of crop rotation and failed." "Is it working now?" Alcy asked. "The harvests are now the largest on record," Herr Volynroskyj replied. "But you should have seen Severinor squabbling with the peasant women about adding pulses to their porridge and supplementing their millet with maize." "I can imagine," Alcy said. Her father always came home in a frightful mood whenever some new machinery was installed in one of his factories because the workers resented any change no matter how much it improved their lot and had to be convinced that the new way was as good as the old. How much more resistant such an ossified medieval society must be! She glanced uncertainly at Herr Volynroskyj, wondering if she would embarrass her husband by asking

her next question. But Herr Volynroskyj was the steward, and so he must have been knowledgeable of Dumitru's intentions concerning her and of his motivations—and needs. "Is that why you wanted my money?" she asked Dumitru almost shyly. "To fund this modernization?" "Your fortune will enable me to build a canal from the northern end of Severinor to join the Bucătaru River, which flows into the Danube near Orŝova," Dumitru said bluntly. "When it is completed, we will be able to get our produce to market in Vienna quickly and inexpensively. I had the course plotted by an experienced canal surveyor, but I had no means to fund the excavation until now. Until it is completed, we are using Bactrian camels." He grimaced. "They have been used in the south for centuries, and they do quite well here in caravans, better than donkeys, but they are very inefficient when compared to a canal." "That would explain my unorthodox luggage transport!" Alcy exclaimed. "I wondered whether camels were usual for the region—for that matter, I hadn't even known that camels could be so dark and shaggy—but I hadn't dared to ask." "I want you to know that I did not undertake… waylaying you lightly," he said solemnly. "I'd tried every way short of surrendering the autonomy of my state to raise the capital." "Could you surrender it?" Alcy asked hesitantly. At Dumitru's expression, she added hurriedly, "Not that I think you should, but I wonder who might be interested, so to speak." "Who isn't?" Dumitru countered. "Russia, Austria, and, of course, Turkey have the most at stake, but even France would like a little vassal state to push its interests in the area. Four centuries ago, Ottoman Turkey brought stability to a region that was in chaos from the disintegration of the thousand-year Byzantine Empire, but in time stability turned to stagnation and corruption, and now it, too, is dying. There has been and there will continue to be riot and revolution, but no one knows when or where or how. Between the Ottoman requirement for its bureaucrats to be Moslem and the Phanariot Greek monopoly in the areas open to Christians, there are few native Christian families of any eminence in Turkey-in-Europe to be natural points of concentration for revolt. So predicting which peasant knez in Servia or minor boyar in Wallachia will step into the role of revolutionary general is impossible." "But your family is eminent," Alcy pointed out, not certain where all this was going. Dumitru's smile was without humor. "Hence the spies and diplomats I mentioned last night. We've managed to keep our lands and our heads through a happy accident of geography and by being practical enough to pay lip service to whomever claimed the greatest part of our territory at the moment." His expression was stern, even angry. "My grandfather nearly destroyed us when he became inflamed with the rhetoric of revolution, putting his faith in Russia's promises and gambling everything upon a rebellion that had been orchestrated by the Greeks to free themselves, not Wallachia. Only his death during the war saved us. The Great Powers of Europe may have decided to make Turkey their chessboard, but I'll be damned if I am going to play the part of a pawn." Alcy could think of nothing to say in reply to that, and so they fell into a tense silence. After a minute, Herr Volynroskyj cracked a joke, and then he kept them entertained with tales of outrageous exploits until long after the cheese and fruit had been taken away and Alcy, her head light with a touch too much claret, began to exchange slightly indiscreet looks and meaningful smiles with Dumitru. "Ah!" Herr Volynroskyj finally exclaimed, looking between the two of them. "I know when I am not wanted. I will leave you two lovebirds alone now. Madame, comtesse, princesse"—he swept an extravagant bow that made Alcy, in her tipsy state, giggle slightly—"I bid you good night and farewell, for

on the morn my merciless master is sending me away on business yet again. Adieu, all!" And with that, he left. Dumitru stood and bolted the door with a very final clunk. He turned back around and smiled faintly as he caught Alcy's eye. She smiled back, feeling suddenly warm, her senses buzzing with far more than wine. "So," she said, her voice a little husky, "we're alone." "Again," he agreed, closing the distance between them. "Finally," she added, tilting her face up toward his. He bent to kiss her, and in the second before their lips met, she whispered, "I'm glad." And she meant it more than she could have dreamt possible only two days before.

Chapter Ten

Two weeks later, Alcy was still more content than she had ever expected to be. They had fallen into a comfortable routine by the third day, for she accommodated her schedule to the inflexible hours that Severinor demanded of its master. She woke with Dumitru at dawn, though often enough they did not rise from their bed until half an hour after, and then they breakfasted together. Afterward, they parted until lunch, Dumitru to see after his endless rounds of duties and Alcy to pursue her studies and her correspondence. Alcy's first task was to compose an excruciatingly difficult letter to her parents, telling them, as best as she was able, what had transpired and trying to convince them of her happiness. Her mother would understand, she was sure, and her father would be bewildered but willing to forgive her rather more quickly than he might have otherwise since she had traded a baron for a count and prince. She also wrote to the friends, relatives, and various mathematicians and philosophers with whom she corresponded, informing them of how to send their letters to a particular address in Vienna where mail was collected by a boat captain and taken to Orŝova and thence to Castle Severinor twice each month. That isolation was the only piece of her new life that was wholly unsatisfying to Alcy, for she was accustomed to being abreast of everything that was happening in the world, in her fields of interest, and in her relatives' lives. Writing to Gretchen Roth was almost as painful as composing the letter to her parents, for she missed her old governess badly, their relationship having long ago turned from that of student and teacher to bosom friends. The only person notably absent from her list of usual correspondents was Ezekiel Macgregor, to whom she had begun writing in childhood and had continued with a blatant disregard for propriety as a young woman. She did not miss the irony of the situation that though it was finally quite appropriate for her, as a married woman, to write to the bachelor, she could not bring herself to do so. Not after their last meeting, which had ended so badly and had left Alcy feeling furious and betrayed and more than pleased to jump at her father's hesitant suggestion of finding a husband for her on the other side of the Continent. In addition to her usual occupations, Alcy began learning Wallachian under the tutelage of Father Alecse and took every opportunity to practice upon the locals, who seemed rather disconcerted that such a fine

lady would have difficulty, at first, asking for a cup of tea. Dumitru always returned for luncheon, which they usually took alone since Petro Volynroskyj had disappeared as quickly as he had arrived—on business, Dumitru said, and explained no more. Alcy looked forward to those leisurely conversations, though she soon learned that, despite brief sparks of interest, Dumitru was largely indifferent to her mathematical endeavors. Instead, she brought up philosophy, the renovations, the sunny corner of the bailey she had claimed as a rose garden for next year, her progress in learning Wallachian, and Celeste's latest skirmish with his valet. And Dumitru spoke of his land and his people, the topic that dominated his mind above all else. Alcy learned a great deal about agriculture, the native semi-itinerant pastoralism, and his people's way of life. After discovering that all the peasants were illiterate, she became a tireless campaigner for their education, and she even managed to convince Dumitru—eventually—that reading and writing would not be wasted even upon the peasant girls. Dumitru, she came to realize, was full of contradictions and inconsistencies, the product of the clash of two very different worlds. One world encompassed the ancient, half-Oriental society in which he had been raised, with all its attendant values. The other consisted of the ideals of modernism, of the Enlightenment, of liberalism and progressivism in the West. He seemed to hold these two worlds in his head in separate bubbles, as if they would explode if they came too close to one another. So it was that he could accept Alcy's unconventionalism and her learning, but at the same time, he could argue against the peasant women needing to know more than what it took to please their husbands, raise their children, and keep their houses and yards. Alcy hid her frustration in those moments and strove to be even more sensible, more reasonable, and work him around slowly to her point of view. She had a better husband and a better life than she deserved, she told herself. Of course she was happy. How could she be otherwise? Twice in those two weeks they had guests. First, a boyar couple came to visit, ostensibly to see their count's new bride but more likely, in Alcy's mind, to enjoy a nobleman's table at someone else's expense. They were obviously poor but probably would have sooner starved to death than relinquish one iota of their noble privilege and lifestyle. They rode in a rattling, faded carriage drawn by four thin and badly matched horses; they were waited upon by half a dozen surly servants; and the wife's dresses had a Parisian cut but were made of cheap cloth. They had clearly intended to stay as long as they were tolerated, but Alcy took an instant dislike to their airy pretensions and threadbare pretences, and as Dumitru had always found them trying, he was only too happy to hint heavily that they should be on their way after they had spent only one night. "If they had any idea my father was in trade, I'm sure they would have spit on me," Alcy said after they had left. Dumitru just laughed. "Only because their son did not marry you first, love. They are exactly as conservative as it suits them to be." Their second guest was much more interesting to Alcy, but unfortunately, she spoke with him only as long as it took Dumitru to make a curt and reluctant introduction. On the eleventh day after their marriage, Dumitru and Alcy returned from their afternoon ride to discover a newly arrived traveler in the stable yard. Dumitru frowned and stiffened at the sight of the black-haired man, but the dusty traveler smiled and sketched a bow to them both. "My dear count," he said in German, his small, intelligent eyes glittering. "I had heard that you were wed, but I had not expected to have the pleasure of meeting your bride. If her temperament is half so sweet as her face, you might just be the luckiest man alive."

"You needn't be envious, for I can assure you it isn't," Alcy retorted automatically. Instead of being insulted, the man burst out laughing. "Brilliant! She has stolen my heart." For once, Dumitru did not smile. "Countess," he said with formal stiffness, "may I present Nikolai Ivanovich. He is one of the diplomats I told you about." "Pleased to meet you," Alcy said. She gave Dumitru an inquiring look. "I hope to see you at supper." "I am afraid that will be impossible," Dumitru said chillingly. In less than a minute, he had herded the Russian into his cabinet, and Alcy did not see him again before he left the next morning. When she ventured to broach the subject with Dumitru that night, he said, "The less you have to do with such as him, the safer it will be for both of us." And Alcy did not press further. They went out riding together most afternoons after their luncheon, when Dumitru's duties did not call him elsewhere and when Alcy did not have a sudden idea she simply had to work out on paper. If Alcy needed movement to think and Dumitru was otherwise occupied, she went out in the company of an armed groom. Though it had been five years since either the Servian hajduks or any native bandits had caused problems, Dumitru insisted that she have a guard, just in case, and since the groom never interfered with where she wanted to go, she acquiesced to the sensible precaution. It was after such a ride that Alcy entered the residence one afternoon and crossed the ground floor hub of the keep only to hear an unfamiliar, thundering voice that made her stop in her tracks. "Where is my wife?" Alcy stood frozen at the foot of the stairs. The man spoke in German, but even without that clue to his nobility, the words and tone were enough to identify him as someone used to giving orders. And she could think of only one man who would come to Castle Severinor to demand a misplaced wife. She turned to look down the passageway between the pantry and Dumitru's cabinet and into the great hall. Sure enough, two men stood there in profile to her, facing one another: Dumitru and a fair-haired stranger. Alcy held her breath, wanting to see how the scene played out. If one of them caught the merest flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, she would be caught. She craved an arras to hide behind, like Polonius in Queen Gertrude's chamber, but the bare stone walls offered nothing, and she would have to cross the room in full sight of both men to find a hidden corner. At least she had an excellent view. She took full advantage of it to study the golden-haired stranger as the men glared at one another. He was as tall as Dumitru but with a poet's slenderness next to Dumitru's athletic bulk, a surprising source for the reverberating voice that had burst from him a moment before. Even in profile, she could pick out the pretty, boyish features that were immortalized in the locket she still kept in her bedchamber. Benedek János. Of course. "You stole her away, you baseborn spy!" Benedek declared, the words resonating through the room. He stood stiff and proud, a picture of self-righteous indignation. "I know what you want—to extort my secrets from me, to trade my plans for her safety. Never!" His voice crescendoed impressively. "Though I had come to love her in our correspondence, I love my first wife, my first mother, my motherland even more. And nothing can make me betray her." The last words were soft, sad, as if he were regretting the necessity of Alcy's horrible demise. He still had not noticed her, though Dumitru flashed her a quick, knowing look. Alcy did not move.

"She is my wife now, János," Dumitru said. "I want nothing at all from you, for there are no conditions under which I would give her back." "She is besotted with me," the self-styled baron declared in a lofty tone. "She recognizes my superior soul. If she is your wife now, it is only because you coerced her. I will not hold that against her. Woman's weakness is both her greatest virtue and her fatal flaw. Without a man of strength to depend upon, she cannot be held accountable for being led astray." Dumitru folded his arms across his chest, the action more thoughtful than defensive. They made a strange picture together, her husband and the man who should have been. They both had flowing, too-long hair and clean-shaven faces, but there the resemblance ended. Benedek glowed with fire and youth and earnestness, but Dumitru exuded a kind of ancient, emotionless patience, cold quicksilver to counter the other man's hot rhetoric, as if he saw the great cosmic joke and realized it was on them both. Alcy had been dazzled by Benedek even through his letters, and he was even more dazzling in person, but next to Dumitru, he had a kind of tinfoil brilliance to his shine, thin and ultimately meaningless. "She married me when she learned what a fraud you are, pretending to the title of baron and making her promises you can't keep," Dumitru retorted. Alcy realized that he was deliberately baiting Benedek, trying to enrage him so that he would display his worst qualities before her. Why would he feel compelled to do such a thing? Didn't he know that she was satisfied with her choice? It occurred to her then, suddenly and jokingly, that this would be her first chance since she had arrived to try to escape her marriage, if she wanted to—and it might just be her last. Dumitru would know that as well as she: hence the performance in which Benedek János was unwittingly taking part. He did not trust her, did not trust himself to have won her. The man put on a superior look. "I need no emperor to tell me I am a baron. My heritage is proof enough of my nobility. I have no empty promises—one might make wrong assumptions from what I wrote, but I have been strictly honest in my dealings. Anyhow, I don't believe any of this. She would not forget me so easily. She came here to marry me, and by God, she shall!" Had he been so vain, so pompous in his letters? Alcy did not think so, but now she could scarcely bring their words to mind. Dumitru, Dumitru, why must you do this to all of us? she asked silently. She felt degraded to be an observer in this farce. It was time to end it now. "I do not think so," she called out, advancing upon them. Benedek's head whipped around, his eyes widening and his mouth falling open at the sight of her. She allowed herself a small measure of satisfaction despite the bitterness of the situation. She knew exactly how she looked, with her cheeks pinked from riding in the immaculate gold-trimmed habit that had been sewn to precisely display her figure. Dumitru's jaw stayed shut, but his eyes heated with admiring triumph before he hid his reaction under a bland smile. Alcy treated them both to a cool glare as she stopped a dozen feet away. "I am here, as you see," she said. Her voice sounded remarkably steady in her own ears. She turned to Benedek. "There is no need to concern yourself about me any further, sir. My husband tells the truth. I chose him. My dowry is no longer available." And, in a tone that was full of contempt for Benedek, Dumitru, and the entire scene, she said, "Go home," and turned her back, walking slowly from the room with the dignity of a queen even though she wanted to do nothing as much as run away. Once Alcyone made her dramatic appearance, it took moments to send Benedek packing. After the

young popinjay's display and his former betrothed's unambiguous rejection, he was only too eager to take his tattered pride and escape. Dumitru waited just long enough to ensure that the man was well gone, and then he went upstairs in search of his wife. He had won, and yet there was a discordant note in his internal clarion of triumph, and he knew that somehow, something was wrong. The muffled sounds of movement behind the slightly open door told him that she was in his grandfather's old study, which was now her own. He had never liked the room, and even though he knew there were few remnants of the stern old man still in it, he hesitated before pushing open the door and entering. Alcyone was weeping. Dumitru froze at the door, shock and fear hitting him like a bullet to the gut. She had collapsed on the chair behind the desk, slumping forward into her crossed arms to sob against the desktop. What happened? he thought in bewilderment. She had sent Benedek away. Did she—could she—regret it? "Alcyone—" he called softly. She started and jerked upright at his voice, sniffing and dashing away her tears quickly. Then, as if realizing the futility of that action, she laughed, a tearing, despairing, hiccoughing sound that seemed to reach inside Dumitru and squeeze the air out of his lungs. "I didn't—I don't love him, if that's what you're thinking," she said unsteadily. "No," he said quietly. "I did not think that you did. When you looked at him, I knew there was no love there." And despite his momentary fears, he told the truth. Alcyone said nothing for a long moment, did not even look at him, the only sound in the stillness her ragged, shuddering breath as she fought to regain control. Her silence hurt him worse than the most violent recriminations. Dumitru wanted to take her up in his arms, to hold her against him, but he knew she would not accept his touch now. He had never seen her so guarded, not even on their wedding day when she had tried so hard to be something she was not. Her hunched shoulders warned him away. Even so, it was all he could do to force himself to keep his distance. "But until that moment, when you saw us together—did you know that I did not love him before then?" she finally asked, looking up. Rawness was her armor now, nakedness her defense. "No," Dumitru admitted, the truth of the word almost choking on his pride on the way out. "I had hoped, but I did not know, and even after, I was afraid that you would decide to leave me." He brought a chair around the desk and sat in it, and she turned to face him squarely, whether to fend him off or to look more fully at him, he couldn't tell. "Is that why you are crying?" he ventured, not even certain in his own mind what exactly that question meant. "No. Yes." She stopped, looking down at her small, white hands as they twisted her gloves in her lap. "You didn't trust me. You had no faith in me—in us, in what we have. And so you made him say all those terrible things, turning it into a farce and making us all into fools, because you wanted him to hurt me— because you wanted to hurt me…" Dumitru rocked back from those words as if they were a lash across his face. "I did not want to hurt you," he said tightly. "Didn't you?" She gave him a quick, uninterpretable look. "I doubt you would have fared much better if your situations had been reversed. 'Why do you want my wife?'" The words were a clear imitation of Benedek's rolling tones. " 'Because I need her money to buy sheep and dig a big ditch.'" Her attempt at Dumitru's voice was biting. "Marrying me to fund a revolution at least has the romance of idealism."

She paused and closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them again, they were shimmering with tears. "If I had loved him, or even if I had merely wanted to depend upon his chivalry to escape from here, you might have broken my heart, to have seen what a pretentious, selfish man he was." "Your heart belongs to me," Dumitru ground out. The words escaped before he even had a chance to think them. Alcy looked startled, and he shut his mouth hard. How could he tell her what icy rage had passed over him to have another man enter his castle, his home to claim her? How could he explain the sudden feeling of alienation he had when he saw her standing there, staring at Benedek as if she had just seen a vision? There was no love in her gaze, true, but something in her unguarded amazement cut him to the quick. His plans for pushing the man off with a curse and a threat were impossible to go through with then, in front of her, and his mind had filled with pictures of her running to the man, begging him to take her away from Severinor and the husband who had chosen her. Those fears were ridiculous, he knew, but that did not prevent the tightening in his chest and the knotting of his stomach even now, at the memory. "I was afraid," he admitted finally, quietly. "I know how senseless it was, but looking at him, I thought that maybe what we had wasn't enough for you, that you would want to leave me…" He trailed off. "It was a cruel thing to do," she said quietly. There was no accusation in her voice; she was merely stating a fact. "Yes, it was." He hesitated. "I am sorry." Was he? Now, yes, but if he might have really lost her, not even her dowry—he had not been thinking of pounds and thaler in that moment—but her… Alcyone gave an unsteady laugh. Even in tears she was beautiful, her skin turned a fragile, translucent porcelain and her eyes an impossibly luminous green. "God preserve us, Dumitru, please give me a little faith." The words were like the twisting of a knife. "Of course," he said, but his mind traitorously turned to the two great secrets he kept from her—his plans for her dowry, and his second, less legitimate occupation that Benedek had so unfortunately referred to. She does not need to know, he told himself. He was a good husband. Her father would surely not have kept the money from him had he known that she would be marrying a man who would take care of her. What possible need could a wife have for money of her own unless her husband was a beast? And as for the other, well… She should be protected from the games he played with empires, for one day it might catch up with him, and she must be an innocent then. It was bad enough that Nikolai Ivanovich Budarin had heard of her existence, for the mere presence of family was a weakness that the Russian spy and others would not fail to attempt to exploit. After a moment, Alcyone lifted a hand to a lock of his hair where it lay on his shoulder. She twisted it around her finger. "Did you change your appearance in imitation of the baron?" she asked. "In order to fool me, I mean." Dumitru passed a hand self-consciously over his cleanshaven chin. "Yes, actually. I keep meaning to go back to my old beard and short hair, but I had forgotten how much a beard itches as it is growing in, and I never remember to tell Guillaume to trim my hair when I dress." She ran a hand lightly over his jaw. "You can cut your hair short, if you wish, but I like your face smooth," she said, almost shyly. Dumitru smiled. "Not because it reminds you of Benedek?" he teased. "Because it reminds me of you," she said seriously, "when I first met you."

Then she smiled back at him, and Dumitru knew with a profound sense of relief that everything was going to be fine—just as long as both his secrets stayed safe.

Chapter Eleven

A week and a half after Benedek's appearance, the harvest arrived in its annual burst of frenetic activity. Most of the year, the peasants tended to be deliberate, thoughtful, even plodding sorts, but Dumitru had decided long ago, during the first harvest he had witnessed at his grandfather's knee as a child of no more than four, that the steady pace of the other eleven and a half months merely balanced out the frantic race to get the spring wheat safely in the barns. For the last several weeks, he and old Radu, long considered by the men of the village to be the farmer wisest in the ways of the earth, the weather, and the fates, had been watching the ripening gold chase the last tinges of green from the fields. Then Radu had come to his cabinet with a great show—as Dumitru had quietly prearranged—to "have a moment with the young count" while the rest of the village waited outside the residence doors, from which he had emerged to make the official announcement that at dawn the next day, the harvest would begin. The exuberance of that bountiful year stood in stark contrast to some of the lean, joyless harvests Dumitru remembered in his youth, when the grim specter of famine overshadowed the fleeting satisfaction of temporary sufficiency. For a while, at least, the "young count" was elevated to the status of one of God's own saints, though Dumitru knew from experience that as soon as everything was safely stored away, the effect would wear off and any additional innovations would be regarded with the same stubborn suspicion the first ones were. For now, though, the castle spilled out into the countryside. Dumitru's usual cook staff was augmented by half a dozen additional assistants, and they undertook to feed the entire populace from the residence's kitchen so that everyone else could help in the fields. Men reaped the grain) women bound the sheaves, and small children were pressed into service to glean behind the reapers, throw stones at marauding crows, or when they were too young for either duty, to keep watch over the infants whom their mothers left in the shade of the most convenient tree as they worked. The sky shone a brilliant blue the entire week it took to finish reaping the record harvest. The rain even held off throughout the four days more it took for the shocks to dry in the fields, though everyone watched the increasingly cloudy sky warily and old men muttered about their weather aches. Dumitru was more grateful for good weather than usual, for the peasants had been reserving final judgment about his wife: Though the consensus was that she was too beautiful to be an ordinary woman, half had suspected that she was an angelic being while the other half were just as certain that she was a witch. The harvest, though, decided the issue for them, and the few who still thought she was a witch concluded that she must be a white one. Many of the peasants didn't bother to return to the village in those hectic days, choosing instead to sleep in the fields so that they could steal another half hour of sleep from the too-brief night. Even if he could have shared their rough beds, Alcyone's presence was more than enough to entice him back to his own. As the count, it was not fitting for Dumitru to labor or sleep beside his men, but he rose before dawn to reach the fields when they did and did not cease from visiting with each group, encouraging the adults and flattering the children, until dusk. He ate near them though not with them, and they worked even harder when he'd been by, knowing his care for them and his pride in their efforts. Perhaps, he thought, this would be the year that would finally convince them that the new ways were as good as the old. Perhaps

this harvest would be the watershed event in the history of his small revolution, after which all his plans would become much easier. The harvest gave him no time to devote to his spy games, but his own agents and the nations he dealt with had learned that years ago and sent no one to him during that month. The first two days, he scarcely even saw his wife, and despite the unforgiving pace of his day, he missed their afternoons together. But to his pleasure, when luncheon arrived from the kitchens on the third day, Alcyone accompanied it, carrying his meal and hers in Raisin's saddlebags. He smiled at her wearily as she gave him his food while the other women from the kitchens unloaded the camels' panniers for the peasants. "Father Alecse said that I should not be seen loitering around the fields like a common woman during the harvest, but the cook thought it would be the mark of a dutiful wife to bring you your meal myself," she said, smiling back at him. "I just happened to pack my own as well." "If you choose your proprieties carefully enough, you can use them to justify practically anything you wish," Dumitru commented. Her smile broadened. "As I learned long ago." They took their luncheon companionably on a blanket Alcyone primly spread in the shade of a tree, and every day after, he looked forward to her presence as the sun began to get high. Dumitru found himself thinking more and more often how dreary his days must have been before she had come into his life, but he already seemed to be forgetting what it had been like without her. "Damnation!" Alcy snarled, staring at the paper in front of her. Somehow, she had lost track again. Her neatly written formulas were now a meaningless jumble, and she had no idea how she had gotten off, for she could not keep them all straight in her head at once. It was as awkward as trying to multiply with Roman numerals. Wait. She blinked at the mess in front of her. That was it—exactly the source of her problem. Mere notation was causing her to stumble as her pure ideas were frustrated by the cumbersome way she was expressing them. If she could simply devise a different form of representation… The door burst open, and Alcy jerked her head around as Celeste came into her study. "I heard a ruckus in the stable yard, and I went to find out what it was," the maid said breathlessly. "Herr Volynroskyj is back!" Alcy rose immediately, smiling. "Does the count know?" "I don't think so—at least, I didn't see him," Celeste replied. "Good!" Even during the chaos of the harvest, Alcy could tell that Dumitru was preoccupied by the steward's long absence—he was sure to be pleased with the man's safe return, and she wanted to see his expression when she told him that he was here. More selfishly, Alcy was sure Herr Volynroskyj would be bursting with stories from his trip, and she did not wish to risk missing the first, freshest telling. Alcy hurried down the stairs to the ground-floor hub of the keep. She was about to plunge into the stable yard when she realized that she heard voices speaking German close by. She hesitated as she recognized Dumitru's—and the other surely must be Herr Volynroskyj's. Her first reaction was disappointment that she wouldn't be able to tell Dumitru of the steward's arrival. Her second was a small pang of hurt that her husband hadn't come to tell her about it. After all, she

should be expected to care about Herr Volynroskyj's return; Dumitru could have at least allowed her to greet the man before closeting himself with him. Yet what did she expect? Herr Volynroskyj was as much an employee as he was a friend to Dumitru—it wasn't as if she had been denied the opportunity to welcome one of the local boyar families, though she had not found that privilege very pleasant the one time she had chance to exercise it. Still feeling unaccountably injured, Alcy followed the voices to Dumitru's cabinet door. It was shut tight, and so she could not make out individual words through the muffling wood until she stood directly in front of it. She had raised her hand to knock when something in Herr Volynroskyj's tone made her pause. "It can be managed," he was saying. "He must have sworn affidavits, witnessed and certified, from both her and you blessing the transfer." Her. Alcy was the only woman in Severinor who possibly might have legal business away from the district. Who could "he" possibly refer to, though? Her agent? Why would Dumitru have any business with him? Staring at the door, she slowly lowered her hand. "That will be no problem." Dumitru's voice was coolly confident, and Alcy's stomach clenched with foreboding. There was a palpable silence, and then Herr Volynroskyj said, "You could at least try to bring the subject up in a delicate way. I doubt any wife would be pleased with her husband taking such measures, much less a foreigner with odd ideas about roles suitable for a woman. And surely she would have an interest in improving your lands, as they are now hers as well—" "No." Dumitru cut him off. "I must not be tied to my wife's apron strings. I cannot run to her for approval for every project, nor can I have her hold me accountable for every farthing that I spend, like some cursed moneylender." Her bridal portion. He was talking about taking the part of her dowry that was hers alone and securing it to himself. Alcy put a hand to her churning stomach. He had married her for her money, after all, some distant part of her brain whispered. Why should she be surprised that he would try to take control of it all? "This is a mistake," Herr Volynroskyj said softly. "I can feel it." "When have you ever cared about anything but money?" Dumitru returned. "One would be half inclined to think that you are suffering from romantic notions of marriage." Herr Volynroskyj snorted. "Heaven forbid. Old friend, I am thinking only of you. You are shackled to her, yet you risk turning her against you." Enough. Alcy stumbled back from the door. Dumitru made some reply, but she did not hear it—she wasn't even listening anymore. Her breath rasped in her ears, drowning everything else out. My portion. She had earned that money through many hours of labor and sleepless, thought-hounded nights, poring over the machinery blueprints, calculating and recalculating and tweaking and redesigning, not because she loved engineering but because she thought that using her facility with numbers in such a way might make up for all her other failings in her father's eyes. She had been the most significant author of the revolutionary new plans that had brought Carter Manufactories such unprecedented success, and a portion of those profits had been secured to her upon her marriage in recognition of that fact, to allow her the only kind of control over her own life that a woman could possibly have and still be married. But now her husband, the man whom she had entrusted with her future, wanted to steal that small independence from her. She thought of all the affection he had shown her, the tenderness, even, and she wanted to vomit. He had deceived her, and worst of all, she had wanted to be deceived, to believe in the brilliant, lovely lie.

But no longer. It was all over now. It must be. She turned and recrossed the ground floor of the keep, stepping as carefully as if she were walking on knives and taking deep, steadying breaths. It took all her self-control to keep from dashing up the long flight of stairs to her rooms, sobbing. But she would not give the servants cause for alarm—she would not do anything to make them go to their master in concern. For she wanted to be long gone by the time he realized that she was never coming back. Even so, her vision was so blurred with tears when she reached the top of the stairs that she had to try the doorknob to the drawing room three times before it turned and pushed correctly. Celeste gave her wide-eyed look of alarm when she stumbled into her sitting room. "Madame! What has happened?" she exclaimed. She rose quickly, her knitting sliding to her feet. At the sight of Celeste's familiar, concerned face, Alcy felt as if she had been emptied out, like a cup that was knocked over by the force of the liquid flowing too quickly into it, and suddenly, she could feel nothing at all. "Help me pack," Alcy ordered, her voice flat and terrible in her ears. "Nothing more than the absolute essentials. Then go down to the kitchen and get enough traveling fare for one person for a week and a half, but do not let anyone see you." "Why?" Celeste's eyes grew round with fear. "Because he has betrayed me, Celeste," Alcy replied, ignoring the tear that trickled down her cheek. It did not seem to belong to her, as if it had come from some other Alcy in some other life; she still felt nothing except a great and enveloping emptiness. "I overheard him talking to Herr Volynroskyj, confessing all. He has tricked me into believing that he is kind while he plotted to steal the money my father set aside in my name, so that I will be truly dependent upon him in every sense of the word." And she had believed him, had taken every lying word into her heart and had treasured it. "Oh, madame," Celeste breathed. "Oh, madame." Her expression stricken, she fluttered uselessly for a moment. But no words could paper over this breach, nor could a warm bath and hot cocoa make everything all right again, so she soon threw herself into their work. Alcy took off her wedding ring, and feeling both freed and strangely naked, she shoved it in a drawer of her dressing table. As she dug through her wardrobes, she felt a surge of black amusement at the quantity of useless clothes that she owned. Dinner dresses and ball gowns, morning and afternoon dresses, dresses for teas and carriage rides and operas. But among them all, she did not own a single gown suitable for the occasion of running away from her husband. She put on one of her riding habits, the gold-trimmed one, and folded the other and put it in the bottom of her sack. She added three extra warm petticoats, her cloak, and her thickest shawl, for the nights had turned frosty within a week after the harvest. Blankets were an obvious addition, and she made room for her hardest-wearing carriage dress and simple jet jewelry as well; she would need to look presentable when she arrived in Orŝova, let alone Geneva. Candles, a tinderbox, sewing things, hair brushes and pins, five pairs of thick wool stockings, two pairs of extra gloves—they all joined the growing pile inside the sack. Alcy remembered Dumitru's stories of hajduk bandits and wavered for a moment before plundering his bedchamber for a large tasseled dagger and the pistol that he kept in his dresser. She wasn't sure she could figure out how to shoot the gun, but its weight felt reassuring in her hand. She stared at her books and notes for a long moment before she could force herself to make the decision to leave them all behind,

but she had Celeste conceal the most important papers under the mattress in case Dumitru decided to wreak his vengeance upon them. With the sack full and tied, there was nothing left for Alcy to do but send Celeste to the kitchens and sit and wait for her return. Not knowing what else to do, Alcy sank numbly upon the great, curtained bed that dominated its center. A bed with no associations, for she had not even spent one night in it since arriving in Severinor. That thought led inevitably to a hundred memories—Dumitru kissing her, holding her, loving her. Her mind bolted from them, for memories they were, belonging to the past and with no connection to her future. Her future. What was to become of her? She could not know. Everything rested upon her getting to Geneva, but beyond that, her life was a blank wall. Annulment, London, Leeds—they all seemed so impossible that her thoughts revolted from them. She set her mind to working feverishly on the present instead—how she would get to Orŝova, how to find someone there who understood German or at least Wallachian, how to provide for Celeste, how long it would take to get to Geneva. Under it all, though, was one thought, echoing relentlessly, like the endless, merciless movement of a piston, driven by the pressure of the magnitude of her husband's act— He betrayed me, he betrayed me, he betrayed me… Alcy wrapped her arms around her middle hard, squeezing the returning wave of pain into a small, hard knot of hurt. She had read that both coal and diamond were made of the same material, only the diamond had been subjected to such incredible forces that its nature had been transformed. That was what was happening to her. Her soft, malleable flesh was changing, forming a dazzling, hard, and cutting core, winter cold to suck away the heat of her pain and anger. And still the litany resounded inside her skull, cracking against it, deafening her: He betrayed me. Alcy did not know how much later it was when she heard the door open. It seemed like both an instant and an eternity. She came to herself to discover that she was lying on her back on the bed, wrung out, hollowed out, with the knot of pain inside her throbbing like a small star. She pushed up hurriedly to find Celeste in the doorway, with her arms full of packages and her expression full of pity. "Madame—" she said with a break in her own voice, making an abortive movement in Alcy's direction. Alcy knew that the maid wanted to hug her, to hold her like a mother, a nurse, or a friend. But etiquette forbade a maid from taking such a liberty, and Alcy was pathetically glad of the stricture. She was not a diamond after all but the most fragile of crystals, and it would take only a breath for her to shatter. "Please," she said, both an apology for the impossibility of their situation for allowing any such contact and an appeal against trying, "please wrap everything in my spare cloak." "Where will you go?" the maid asked quietly, casting her eyes down as she did what she was told. "West first, and then south," Alcy said immediately. "I must hit the Danube at some point, and then I can follow it upstream to Orŝova, where I can hire a boat. I must go quickly to Geneva and stop my—my husband"—she stumbled a little on that word—"from thieving my bridal portion. I would take you with me, but you cannot ride…" Celeste nodded at that bald truth. "I would come with you if you asked, but I would slow you and would be miserable. Do not concern yourself about me. I can delay the count, and I do not think I will be mistreated here after you are gone." "I will send someone for you as soon as I reach Geneva," Alcy promised.

Celeste smiled, and Alcy saw the sadness in it. "I know you will, madame." Alcy's guilt was not entirely assuaged. "I might be able to spare a little pocket money—" "No, madame," Celeste said firmly. "You will need it yourself. I cannot take a farthing from you. It is no good to me here, and I could not live with knowing that what I accepted from you might be your downfall." Alcy took both the maid's hands in her own and squeezed them. "You are a good woman, Celeste Mathieu," she whispered, her throat tightening. "It is a simple thing to be good when I have a mistress who is so easy to love," Celeste returned firmly. "Madame," she added belatedly. Alcy swallowed hard against the tears that threatened to choke her. "If only others thought so, too." The next hour was an agony. Celeste and Alcy took turns smuggling supplies to the empty smokehouse, where Alcy transferred everything to the panniers Celeste had obtained from the tack room. As soon as her things were packed, Alcy wandered into the stables as if on a whim and told the groom on duty that Raisin had seemed restive the afternoon before and declared her intention of taking the horse for an extra ride within the confines of the bailey. He didn't seem to think her plans odd, and so she left with Raisin and his good wishes. Then, in the pungent light that filtered through the cracks in the smokehouse walls, she strapped the bulging panniers onto her little black mare. The five minutes it took to ride from the smokehouse door, through the castle gates, and into the woods were the most nerve-wracking of her life, but no one challenged her—no one even seemed to notice her. She slipped away from Castle Severinor and everything it stood for as easily as waking from a dream. Alcy turned Raisin west and gave the horse her head, allowing her to choose among the rabbit trails and sheep tracks, hoping without much confidence to confound pursuit by neither keeping to man-made trails nor blundering through the brush. She blanked her mind, focusing only upon the rocks and trees, and yet, deep inside her, she could feel the cold void growing, growing, threatening to suck her into its core. Good, she thought savagely, let it take me. And that was the last thought she had for a very long time.

Chapter Twelve

Still chuckling over Volynroskyj's last crack, Dumitru stepped into the drawing room and held the door open for his friend. Volynroskyj gave a low whistle of admiration. "It hardly looks the same. I thought you said your wife is not the domestic sort." Dumitru shrugged, casting a look around the room. "It is not my wife but her lady's maid who has done all this." As soon as she had discovered the house annex, Celeste had plundered it of all of its best furnishings—"Until the furniture comes from Geneva," Alcy had explained. Under his grandfather's austere regime, anything that looked too suspiciously comfortable had been banished downstairs, but Celeste's thorough hunt had uncovered a mass of furniture that was, if not precisely coordinated or

stylish, quite serviceable .and pleasantly homey. Volynroskyj let out a short bark of laughter. "Is she married? A room like this makes the most dedicated bachelor question the wisdom of his lifestyle." "No, and she's French, too," Dumitru said dryly. "I seem to recall that you have a fondness for French women." Volynroskyj gave a toothy grin. "You recall correctly, though the particular French women I was most interested in were attractive first for their money and only second for their personal qualities." Dumitru had expected Alcyone to pop out of her study as soon as she heard their voices, but there was no sign of her. The study door opened at his touch; the room was empty, nor could he tell how recently the ever-shifting chaos of her piles had been disturbed. He frowned and crossed to her chamber door. It was shut fast, and so he turned the handle, pushed— —and nothing happened. It was bolted against him. Disbelieving, he tried it again. The door rattled against the lock, but it did not open. He stared at the ancient, resinous pine for a moment, frozen in amazement, then he rapped upon it with more than a little irritation. "Qui est-ce?" Celeste called softly through the wood. "Where is my wife?" Dumitru snapped, not bothering to reply. Who else would be knocking on her door at this time of day? "Madame feels a touch out of sorts," Celeste responded primly, her tone still hushed. "She wishes to be alone for a time so that she may recover in peace." "If she is feeling ill, I should attend to her," Dumitru said, a spike of concern going through him. "She doesn't need anything; she is asleep, sir. Do let her rest. If you keep this up, you shall wake her for certain." The last comment seemed touched with a strange kind of pleasure. Dumitru hesitated. Celeste didn't sound quite like her normal self: There was a note in her voice that was almost… unfriendly. But that was ridiculous. "Well," he said, dismissing the thought, "will I see her at supper?" "Oh, I am sure she will be feeling better by then, sir!" The bright certainty of Celeste's reply brushed away Dumitru's doubts, and so with only a slight lingering feeling of unease, he sat to share his luncheon with Volynroskyj. After the meal was over and the steward had left, Dumitru stared at Alcyone's door a moment longer. But no sounds emerged from within, no more than they had at any point during the meal. And so he left the room silently, going down the stairs to tend to the duties that were forever calling him. Dumitru invited Volynroskyj back upstairs for supper, for he knew that Alcyone would want to take a meal with him if she were up and about. But the drawing room was dark when they arrived, and her study was once again empty. Dumitru crossed to his wife's bedroom door, and this time, he knocked without hesitation. "Hush!" came Celeste's low voice. "Is that you, sir?"

"Of course it is me," Dumitru said. "Is the countess awake?" "She was for half an hour, sir, but now she's gone to sleep again," the maid said unhelpfully. Dumitru frowned at the note of satisfaction in the maid's voice. "Is she that ill, then? Is she feverish? Has she taken a chill?" "Oh, no, sir." Celeste's reply was immediate. "Except for her weariness and a slight headache, she says she is perfectly well. She has suffered like this before, and she's never the worse for the wear. It is because she pushes herself too hard over her books and writing. She gets a slight nervous strain." Dumitru exchanged a look with Volynroskyj, who shrugged. It was true that he and Alcyone had been married less than two months; he could not know everything about her in that time, yet such behavior seemed unlike her. Something else might be wrong—something far more serious than Celeste wanted him to believe. Or else… Dumitru knew of one reason a woman might feel tired and sickly without being ill. He felt a strange flutter in the pit of his stomach. Could it be? Could she be carrying his child and feel the effects of it so soon? Alcyone had said that she didn't much care for babies, but he had never given much thought to the matter. For him, an heir had always been an assumed adjunct of his title, and yet it had been merely an abstraction in his mind, never a baby, a person, a son. Dumitru stifled those speculations as idle and premature. Most likely, she had caught a cold or something of that sort. Whatever the case, he would give her until after the meal, and then he would go in, whether she wanted to see him or not. Supper was subdued, for Dumitru was preoccupied with thoughts of his Alcyone and Volynroskyj respected his mood. Once again, not a sound came from behind her door, but as soon as the plates were cleared away, Dumitru stood and crossed over to her door as Volynroskyj watched from the table. He knocked. "I would see my wife," he said stiffly to the old pine. "She is still sleeping, sir." Celeste's reply was in the same low tone she had been using all day. "Good," Dumitru said. "Then I shall not disturb her when I look in on her." The maid said swiftly, "She will be quite fine in the morning, I assure you." Was there a hint of nervousness in her voice? Dumitru's unsettled feeling from early that day returned in full force. "I will be the judge of that. Open the door," he ordered. Celeste paltered. "Madame told me very specifically not to let—" "And I am telling you very specifically to open it before I knock it down," Dumitru snapped, his patience at an end. There was a long silence, and then Dumitru heard footsteps going up to the door. The bolt slid back— —and Dumitru shoved the door open before Celeste could change her mind, catching the woman's shoulder with the edge and knocking her back a step. Ignoring the maid's cry, he snatched her dimmed oil lamp from the table and strode through the sitting room and into the darkened bedroom, the sputtering flame throwing up long shadows as Volynroskyj and Celeste followed behind.

The curtains were shut tight around the bed. He grabbed them and pulled them back with a single tug. "Alcyone—" he began, but he broke off as the dim light of the lamp revealed the counterpane drawn up neatly over the empty mattress. She wasn't there. For an instant, the scene seemed to him to be something out of a farce, as if it were being acted out on a great stage to the delight of some vast and hidden audience. Then a horrible thought rose swiftly, inevitably in his mind, one he had not entertained since the day she had sent Benedek packing with her last words burning in his ears. "Where is she?" he demanded, turning on Celeste. "I don't know," the little maid said, her eyes wide, though whether with surprise or fear of him, he couldn't say. "She was here an hour ago. She must have stepped out while I was down in the kitchens." Now she was babbling, and Dumitru did not believe a word. He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her toward him, bringing her within inches of his face as he glared down at her. "And made up the bed herself before she left? I don't think so. Where is she?" "Oh! You are hurting me, you brute!" she sputtered, her face red and her cap askew. "Not yet, I'm not. Now answer me: Where. Is. She?" Dumitru repeated through gritted teeth. "Perhaps she's gone down to see the day's progress on the beds for her rose garden," Celeste said quickly. "In the dark? When you said she was abed?" Not bothering to hide his scorn, he tightened his hold slightly, and the woman winced. "I don't know!" she yelped. "There. Are you happy? She left, but I am neither a mind reader or a far-seer, so I cannot tell you where she is now." Dumitru released her so abruptly that she stumbled back. "What do you mean?" he demanded, even though a sinking, sick part of him was certain he already knew. "She heard you two plotting to steal her money, and so she left," Celeste said, rubbing her arm and glaring at him. "She's gone back to England." She had done it. She had left him. Dumitru felt like shouting, like hitting something, like ripping the bed to pieces for its failure to contain his wife. Instead, he stood there, frozen, staring at Celeste. Idiot female, a part of him snarled. Oh, God, Alcyone! another wailed. Through it all, though, ran a terrible thread of fear, as sharp and thin as the edge of a knife. She had left, disappeared into the wilderness, a pampered urban woman with no notion of how to survive its dangers, natural and human both. If she did not fall into a ravine, there were plenty out there who were willing to give her a push. "Did she go by herself?" he asked when he could finally speak. His words were precise and frosty, betraying nothing of the maelstrom that whirled within him. "I can only assume so," Celeste said huffily. "On horseback," he added flatly. "Well, she certainly did not fly!" she shot back with a derisive snort. Dumitru looked at Volynroskyj. "We are leaving," he said tightly. "Now."

"It's pitch black outside!" the Ukrainian said. "We could break our necks out there." "I know," Dumitru said. "And so could she. We are leaving." He turned and stalked out of the room before Volynroskyj had a chance to protest again. Raisin stumbled slightly, and Alcy jerked in the saddle, coming to herself abruptly. She looked up from the patch of ground directly in front of her horse's hooves that she'd been staring at. She recognized nothing, or rather, there was nothing for her to recognize, for rocks and trees and bushes were nothing more than rocks and trees and bushes to her. Buildings and roads were constructed things with human characteristics for her to hang an identification upon, but even after two months of daily rides, the forest remained nothing more to her than an undifferentiated tangle of growth. She knew she was going the right way, though, because every time Raisin entered a clearing, Alcy felt the setting sun on her face even though she often couldn't see it beyond the nearest trees, and she could turn to see her shadow streaming behind her. I'm going home, she told herself firmly every time she turned back to see that shadow and correct her direction. She shut away the small, broken part of her that insisted that home lay behind her, growing more distant with every step. That could never be home; it was nothing more than a lovely picture embroidered on a tissue of lies. She clamped down upon that thought and dropped it into the void inside her. She was strong and hollow, like an empty arch that stretched from Rumania all the way back to England. She must be strong, for she had a very long and dangerous way to go. As the minutes ticked by, the shadow behind her grew longer, and the sunlight grew dimmer and cooler as the sun slid closer to the horizon. Alcy had to find a campsite before nightfall, one with water for herself and Raisin and with good grazing, for she had only managed to pack a few small measures of oats in the panniers. But as the minutes passed, they brought no sign of a place to stop. Alcy began to feel the first real stirrings of fear, trickling out from the emptiness to make her stomach tighten and her palms sweat inside her gloves. How much farther would it be to the next stream? Could she afford to ride on and hope to find one? If she waited too long to make camp, the sun would set, and then she would be forced to stop where she was or risk her neck and Raisin's legs, and then Raisin would not even have grass to eat. But if she didn't find a stream, she had only two canteens of water to share between herself and the horse, and that surely would not be enough for Raisin after a long day of riding. She thought of the stream they had found and followed early that afternoon, splashing down its length a quarter mile to hide their scent before plunging into the underbrush again. She could have camped there, and then they would have had plenty of water to drink and wash with. Should she turn back? Surely it was too late for that. What was she thinking, trying to run away by herself? If she wasn't a good lady, she made an even worse forester, and in this case, her ignorance might kill her. Dumitru's stories of bandits began to run through her mind, every act of barbarity gaining a new and terrible significance. Dumitru… Even the thought of his name burned her. Dumitru, Dumitru, why did you do it? The void inside her collapsed upon itself, ejecting all the anger, hurt, and sorrow back into her mind. Alcy gasped back a sob and bit her bottom lip hard, telling herself that the tears she had to blink away were from the pain. Suddenly, the sound of trickling water cut through her thoughts, washing them away in the realization that Raisin had found a stream. The horse was walking with her ears perked forward, her nostrils flaring in anticipation. "Good girl," Alcy said, weak with relief. "Good girl."

The horse shouldered through the underbrush and emerged on the stream bank, lowering her head and guzzling the water greedily. Alcy let her drink her fill before guiding her up the streambed in search of a nearby clearing. The colors ran from the forest with the coming of the night, the sun simply sliding quickly below the horizon and pulling all the light with it with no intermediary blaze of sunset. The trees around her were vague gray shapes in the gloaming when Alcy finally found a place to stop. She slid off the saddle, her stiff legs almost collapsing under her when she hit the ground. She grabbed the stirrup to steady herself. She had not realized how tired she had become during her long ride—she had not, in fact, felt much of anything. But now exhaustion washed over her, and she blinked against its numbing wave. She had never ridden so long and hard in her life. Alcy realized how easy the six-day trip to Severinor had been, with their late starts, leisurely pace, and frequent stops. Good, she told herself. That means I can reach Orŝ ova that much more quickly. And yet the idea of arriving there filled her with foreboding. What was she thinking? Where was she going? After Geneva, what would become of the rest of her life? Pushing aside those thoughts, she heaved off Raisin's panniers, stumbling under the weight of the saddle. She groomed the horse awkwardly and used the lead rope to tie her to a tree trunk within reach of the water and a wide circle of grass. Her ridiculous, impractical riding habit interfered with every step, hindering her arms when she slipped the skirt's loop over her wrist and twisting around her ankles whenever she let it drag behind her on the ground. I didn't know how right I was when I told Dumitru that ladies were meant to be ornamental, she thought. Then, immediately, Oh, sweet God, must every thought come back to him? With a cry of frustration, she dug through the panniers until she found the knife she had stolen from his room, and she slashed at the dragging skirt savagely, as if she could cut herself off from him as easily as the steel parted the fabric. She used the pieces to form a rough sash and threaded the dagger's sheath upon it before tying it around her waist. Feeling vaguely comforted at the unfamiliar weight at her hip, she made a nest of blankets as a cold moon rose behind her and forced herself to choke down a piece of dry bread and a hunk of cheese. She had never felt so alone, so exposed in her life. Where is he? she found herself unable to keep from wondering, the deliberate depersonalization of the pronoun doing nothing to lessen the significance of the question. Had he discovered that she was missing yet? Surely, surely he must have by now, if not before. Was he angry? Had he cursed her, written her out of his life? That possibility hurt, even as Alcy cursed herself for the stupidity of the sentiment. Was he, as she thought would be most likely, chasing her even now? One childish, spiteful, injured corner of her mind whispered, Is he sorry? But Alcy knew Dumitru, knew him better than she knew practically anyone despite his deceit. He would not be sorry. He would be furious and self-righteous, and he might even be hurt and a little bewildered, but he would not be sorry. She doubted that he had ever been truly sorry for anything in his life. He would be chasing her down, she was certain of it, but it would not be to beg her forgiveness. No, he would take her back to Severinor as a war prize and keep her locked in his tower for the rest of her natural life, so that she could never shame him and anger him again. As Raisin chomped the late-season grasses, Alcy shivered and looked up at the cold, crystalline sky that stretched above her into eternity, thousands of distant suns glittering indifferently upon the small clearing where she sat. She had never seen such a sky, for she had always been indoors or in a fog-clouded city or blinded by the light of a campfire at night. She had read Galileo's and Kepler's works upon the mechanics of the planets in their orbits about the sun, and she had studied Newton's calculations of the interaction of moon and tide, yet never before had she looked up and seen the raw, wild nothingness that had inspired the ancients to create the twin arts of mathematics and astronomy so long ago. Somehow,

that one observation seemed to sum up the entirety of her life up until that moment. But no more, she swore. No more. Like one of those revolving spheres, her thoughts centered again, inevitably, upon Dumitru: upon not only his betrayal but his smile, his kisses, his mind and his body and his spirit and his wit until everything was wrapped up in a single white-hot agony that was too much to bear. Alcy desperately craved contact with some living creature, anything at all, and she knew she could not sleep in her state of mind despite the waves of exhaustion that battered her. So she untied Raisin's lead rope and held it in one stiff hand as she sat in the center of the clearing with her cloak and three blankets wrapped around her, watching her breath mist phantom-white in the silver moonlight, thinking of Dumitru, and not crying. Not crying—it seemed so simple in those words, the absence of an action, and yet it took every bit of her will to keep tears at bay. The stars wheeled slowly in the sucking void overhead as she not-cried, the moon rising and shrinking in its arc, her face growing numb with cold until it hardly seemed like hers anymore. And it was that other face, surely not hers, that finally closed its eyes in sleep with a freezing tear glistening upon its cheek. Torches lit in the stable yard, darkening the shadows beyond the ring of flame. Horses, men, and dogs seethed in the orange light, excitement running through them like a fever as the rest of the village gathered along the perimeter, whispering and pointing. The young count has lost his new wife. The young countess has run away. Why, why, why? Dumitru sat in stiff-backed fury upon Bey, leaving the shouting to Volynroskyj as the search party was assembled. His fear for Alcyone had not evaporated, but it was now subsumed in rage over the humiliation of the spectacle she was subjecting him to. He imagined he could already hear his people's sniggers, their laughter at his expense. The young count, they called him, in a tone of voice that indicated that his youthful whimsies must be indulged. He had won their respect through six laborious years—and how much had he just lost through Alcyone's single, reckless, stupid action of defiance? To add insult to injury, she had even stolen his favorite pistol; he had been forced to take his grandfather's.—the one with which he had ridden into battle when he had been shot down. Bad luck, the superstitious, Wallachian part of him warned, but he ignored it. He railed against Alcyone in the silence of his mind, calling her every vile name he knew of. Under everything, a corner of his mind he had never heard from before whispered, And what would you have done in her place? But he shoved it aside as he had his superstitious imaginings and let the beast rule, for he needed its fury and its certainties. Finally, Volynroskyj nodded to him. All was ready. He gave the order to leave. The search party rode out en masse through the wide front gates and out onto the road where old Radu remembered seeing Alcyone shortly before noon. There, the hounds were given Raisin's blanket to scent upon and then were released, the horsemen following after. The dogs were white darts against the black earth, scattering in a dozen directions, weaving and pausing then gathering into a single mass of roiling pale backs and plunging ahead, their belling cutting through the crackle and rustle and conversation of the men's progress. Down the road they went, and then west, into the underbrush, following no paths Dumitru could see in the darkness. Again and again the hounds paused, milling and sniffing, and again and again they gathered together and surged forward, deeper into the wilderness. The men held their torches high, but there was nothing to see

but trees and undergrowth. Still they pressed on, into the darkness. "Perhaps they are following a hare," Volynroskyj said after a while. "No," Dumitru said grimly. "She must be avoiding the trails." "Would she have that much sense?" Volynroskyj asked skeptically. "She doesn't have the sense to confuse her trail," Dumitru pointed out. "Don't worry. We will find her soon." "I am not the one who is worried," the steward said, but softly. Dumitru spoke too soon. The hounds stopped again, this time for several minutes while the kennel keeper shouted orders and waved the blanket in front of them. He even tried the petticoat that Dumitru had secured, in case Alcyone had lost her mount. But after several minutes, the man came to speak to Dumitru, frowning. "The hounds have lost the scent at a stream, Count von Severinor," he said. "They've searched both banks for a hundred lengths up- and downstream both—the countess must have ridden along it for some distance. Bogdan will be able to find her tracks when dawn comes, but if we try now, we risk destroying them." "Fine," Dumitru said, even though it wasn't. He raised his voice. "Dismount and see to your horses. We are spending the night here!" Within minutes, the men had spread their bedrolls upon the ground and were gathered around a leaping campfire. Dumitru considered insisting upon a cold camp, but even if Alcyone were close enough to see the fire, she could do nothing now but flounder around in the darkness or sit tight until morning, neither of which would hinder his search come dawn. Dumitru spread his blankets a distance away from the other men, and, ignoring his glare that was illuminated by the camp-fire, Volynroskyj dropped his own next to them. "This is an adventure you could not have expected," the Ukrainian quipped blithely. "Quite," Dumitru said, not bothering to temper the coldness of his response. "Are you certain you want to be doing this?" Volynroskyj continued, taking no notice. "Certainly." Dumitru frowned into the darkness. "I only mean that I can't see any possible advantage for you." Volynroskyj's expression was shrewd. "I am certain I can reach Geneva before anyone she sends can do so, and there is a very good chance that I can convince the bank director that her claim is illegitimate. The entirety of her fortune would be secured to you—at least for long enough that you may do anything you like with it. You would be rid of the burden of a troublesome wife and, after a few legal formalities, free to marry again. As it is, I cannot see how this hunt shall produce anything except embarrassment for you, whether you catch her or not. There is no honor in losing one's wife nor in chasing her down again. I advised you for the peace of your house to give up your scheme for securing her money to yourself. Since you refused to consider that option, I now advise you to give her up instead." "You are, as usual, quite right," Dumitru said curtly. "But I am still going after her." Volynroskyj muttered a curse. "You're a love-smitten fool."

Dumitru's laugh was hollow. "God forefend. If I loved her, I would be damned indeed." Volynroskyj merely responded with another curse, and then he wrapped up in his blankets, turned his back, and pretended to go to sleep, leaving Dumitru alone with his dark thoughts and his injured pride. It was a very long time indeed before sleep slipped up and pulled him away from the turmoil of his mind into even more tumultuous dreams. Raisin's snort woke Alcyone with a start that transformed immediately to a wince. She was lying slumped on the ground, the edge of her corset digging into her abdomen, every limb stiff from the frozen earth that sucked the heat from her body. She knew rationally that it was the other way around—that her heat was pouring into the ground—but it felt as if she were being drained. She shivered violently: Continued shivering, she realized, for she must have been shivering in her sleep, too. She blinked up at the sky, its great blue bowl unmarked by even thinnest clouds. The sun was already midway up in its climb. What time was it? She scrabbled for her pocket watch, pinned in its usual place upon her bodice. Nearly ten. She had lost more than two hours of light. With a noise of frustration, she turned to find Raisin. The horse was standing at the edge of the clearing, her lead rope and reins dangling at her feet. Alcy's heart beat fast in a chest suddenly too tight to hold it. The rope must have slipped from her fingers in the night. Now, there was nothing to keep Raisin from simply walking away. "Come here, Raisin," she croaked, stumbling to her feet and fighting down panic even as the inevitable scenario played out in her mind. Raisin running away, and Alcy trying to traverse the forest on foot, only to be caught by Dumitru or bandits or dying lost and alone in the wilderness… "Raisin, come here, girl!" The horse's ears perked up, and she took one step toward Alcy before stopping, her attitude a display of mild, insouciant curiosity. "Come on, now!" Alcy urged. Raisin stepped closer, swishing her tail. "There's a good girl, Raisin!" But Raisin had stopped again, and all of Alcy's coaxing did nothing to urge her into motion. The horse was only twenty feet away now, and Alcy had to stifle the urge to run at her and lunge for the dangling reins, despite the risk of spooking her into flight. After a moment of staring at the horse, Alcy had an inspiration. She fussed with her skirts as if pulling a sugar lump from a pocket and then cupped her hand enticingly. "Come on, girl!" Raisin's nostrils flared, and she stepped forward—one step, two, and then she was walking obediently forward to Alcy's side. When she was close enough, Alcy grabbed the lead rope. Giddy with relief, she showered the horse with praise, fussing over her and rubbing her to make up for pretending to have a treat. Alcy mechanically ate a few bites of bread with the reins looped over her arm. Then, after several false starts, she saddled the horse and got her loaded again. The saddle was heavier than she had expected or remembered from her weary-numb state the night before, much bulkier than the English style, not that she had ever carried one of those, either. It took two tries to get it onto Raisin's back; the first time, she knocked the saddle pad off, and she had to walk around to the horse's other side to retrieve it. It was with a sense of triumph that she tightened the girth, and with another that she swung into the saddle in the way that she had learned to do only a few weeks before. She hooked her leg over the leaping head of

the sidesaddle and thought, I can do this. I can make it. But she did not know whether that made her want to laugh, weep, or scream.

Chapter Thirteen

"We're not going to find her before nightfall," Volynroskyj predicted, eyeing the sun where it squatted, briefly visible, upon a ridge of mountains. "I know," Dumitru said. Much of his anger had worn off during the long ride, for it was hard to maintain a hot fury through hours of tedium. His determination, however, never wavered. He was going to find his wife, and he was going to bring her home again, though he wasn't certain in his own mind why it was so important for him to do this. His head throbbed with too little sleep. He didn't want to think about it now, and so he shut those thoughts away and focused upon riding. "The men only brought enough food for two days," Volynroskyj added. They were riding slightly behind the rest of the group as they followed the dogs through the underbrush. In daylight, Dumitru could see the deer paths and rabbit trails Alcyone was following, though the only pattern to her choice seemed to be that they always led west. "I know," Dumitru repeated. He frowned, an expression that was beginning to come to him as naturally as his smile once had. "I will send them—and you—back in the morning. You can watch after Severinor while I am gone, and Bogdan and I will take extra supplies and go on alone." Bogdan was Dumitru's best tracker, skilled at reporting the movements of groups of men, whether single bandits, entire caravans, or small armies. He had been able to follow Alcy's trail easily even when the dogs had dissolved into a milling mass of confusion. "If that is what you wish," Volynroskyj said. "The Ottomans will roar with laughter when they hear of this." "Well, then, don't tell them," Dumitru snapped. Volynroskyj shrugged, and they rode on in silence. On the afternoon of the third day, Alcy reached the Danube. A great, muddy river hundreds of yards across, it slid placidly through the wilderness on its journey to the distant Black Sea. When Raisin pushed through the surrounding brush and emerged upon the bank, her stomach sank a little, for she had hoped against reason that she would reach the river at Orŝova. She had no way now of knowing whether she might be upstream or down from the little town, nor could she clearly recall how far the next settlement was from it upriver. She led Raisin onto a protruding sandbar and dismounted, looping the reins around her wrist before kneeling at the river's side, pulling off her gloves, and splashing the icy water across her face. It numbed her nose and cheeks and smelled of fish and mud, but she didn't care. She was filthy and exhausted, and the cold water revived her slightly and at least gave her the illusion of washing. Her body hurt from the merciless constriction of her corset, which she had worn without respite for three days. She dared not loosen it, though, for once she did, she would not be able to tighten it sufficiently to fasten any of her

dresses without help, and she would have to look presentable when she rode into a town, looking to hire quarters on a boat upstream and, please God, a maidservant to get her out of this contraption so that she could wash—in hot water—and sleep comfortably in a bed. After a moment, Alcy stood again and dug through the panniers for her stash of food. Her legs no longer shook when she dismounted, though they still ached from the unaccustomed exercise. Her stomach hurt with a hunger that had almost become a part of her, but she was so terrified of running out of provisions that she could not make herself choke down more than a few bites of food any time she stopped. She did so now as Raisin drank, and then pulled out a curry comb and fussed over the horse while she rested, feeling stupid and useless but not knowing what else to do. She had found a saddle sore on Raisin's back after she had dismounted the night before and burst into tears. Somehow, she had put the saddle on wrong despite trying so hard to remember exactly how the grooms did it, and Raisin had suffered for her incompetence. She had groomed her mount until her arms were leaden weights that would no longer move, and then she had sat down, hugged herself, and cried harder—for Raisin, for herself, but most of all, for Dumitru—and it had been late into the night before her sobs had lessened to the point that she could make her bed, eat a few mouthfuls of bread, and try to go to sleep. Today, she simply felt numb, dead to everything but the dull pain and exhaustion that had become her companions. And so it was that when she heard the noise in the underbrush, she did not jump as she had the day before at every rabbit, wren, goat, and deer. She just looked around, and even when she caught the first flash of color, the significance of it did not immediately dawn upon her. And then meaning hit her with a swift and awful chill—it was not a deer this time but a man, a man on horseback. She was already scrambling for the pommel when the riders pushed into view. Dumitru. His appearance was like a vision from a dream and a knife in the gut. Behind him emerged another man, one she vaguely recognized from the castle, but her attention was riveted upon her husband. No. Oh, no, no, no! Without even thinking, she swung into the saddle and threw her leg astride. The neck of the sandbar met the bank only half a dozen yards from where Dumitru now stood, having pulled his horse to a stop in surprise at the sight of her, and so Alcy kicked Raisin into an instant canter facing the only direction that was open to her—straight into the Danube. Within two bounds, frigid water splashed up around Raisin's hocks, then around her hindquarters, and then she was swimming, Alcy submerged to her waist in the brown river. Her thighs stung with cold for an instant and then went as numb as her feet. She turned around just long enough to see the other man pull up his horse as Dumitru urged Bey into the river in a great splash that sent sheets of water in every direction. Droplets sprayed her cheek. Too close. God, he is too close! But there was no turning back now. The dark, silty water swirled up past Alcy's waist, tugging on her heavy skirts and trying to drag both her and Raisin under. The current pushed them farther downstream, the river's placid surface hiding steady, implacable strength beneath. Though her legs were quickly past feeling pain, she knew that she was losing heat fast even through her layered clothes. Have I already killed us both? she thought suddenly, wildly, staring at the far bank that now seemed as distant as another world. How far could a horse swim? She didn't know, but the burden of her water-soaked body and baggage could do nothing but hinder her mount. She groped under the muddy water for the knife tied at her waist. Finding its enameled pommel, she pulled it out and twisted around, groping for the panniers' straps. The water was so cold that her fingers turned stiff and clumsy almost instantly, but finally, she found a strap and grabbed it, and she sawed hard at the thick leather.

"Alcyone!" Dumitru's voice came ringing across the water. She looked up from her work to see him swimming beside his horse with one hand on the saddle, his legs churning the water behind him. His hair was soaked and clung to his head, more black than silver, and his expression was terrible to behold, a marble carving of Jovian fury. Her heart stuttered even as her traitorous eyes feasted upon him. God, but she had starved for the sight of him. "Alcyone, turn back!" he shouted. "You will kill us all!" But his tone held more anger than fear, so Alcy took courage as the first strap parted under the knife and she set to work on the second. "If you don't want to die, you had better go back, then, but I'm not going to follow," she shouted back at him. All the rage and frustration and hurt of the past three days boiled up to pour into her words, and she did not try to keep them back. "When I wash up on the shore, you can steal the clothes off my body, too!" "Don't be an idiot!" he snapped. The second strap parted, and the panniers sank swiftly away. "And I was going to say the same to you," she shot back. Already, he was gaining. She thrust the knife back into its sheath and turned her back to him. Grasping the pommel with both hands, she swung her right leg over and slipped her left foot from the stirrup, sliding down Raisin's side and into the river. The freezing water hit her chest like a hammer blow, squeezing the air out of her suddenly too-tight lungs. So cold. She forced herself to breathe in once, twice, and by the third time, the feeling receded even as she began to shiver uncontrollably. She grabbed a corner of the saddle pad to keep herself above the surface of the water and started to kick. Her layered skirts tangled with every movement, wrapping around her legs and dragging them down so that she could not keep up with Raisin, her corset refusing to expand to give her body the oxygen it needed. She fought vertigo and the pull of the river, clinging with frozen fingers to the saddle pad she couldn't feel anymore as Raisin hauled her behind. Soon, numbness receded and her legs were ablaze with pain; within minutes, she was exhausted and cold beyond all experience. She didn't have the strength to climb back onto the saddle even if she had been willing to make the surrender that act entailed. I will make it. I must make it. She blanked her mind to everything except the distant shore that slid slowly by as they crawled agonizingly closer, swimming on fury and pain and raw determination as the last dregs of her strength were spent. Idiot woman, Dumitru snarled silently. She floundered through the water in front of him, her horse swimming strongly but hampered by the long skirts that alternately ballooned and dragged as Alcy kicked. Her head was barely above the surface of the water, and as he watched, it sank a fraction of an inch lower, sending a spear of fear through him that was at odds with the heartless anger he had decided was all that he felt. Grimly, he swam harder, his arm aching from the awkward position as he grasped the saddle, his legs like two lead weights in the frigid water. He gained on her, but in inches. After an eternity, he was close enough to reach out and touch her surging skirts. He forced his exhausted limbs into greater efforts for the time that it took him to swim around to Bey's right side so that he would be next to Alcyone when they drew even. Minutes passed while he kicked doggedly on, but she didn't even seem to notice him approaching until he put a hand on her shoulder. She started and shot him a glare filled with such venom that his gut lurched. Under her bonnet, her face was so pale that it was translucent, tendrils of damp hair clinging to her forehead and the sides of her face. Her green eyes glittered angrily, her bloodless lips press together, and yet she was still so beautiful

that she made him ache with the travesty of it all. "Alcy—" She turned her head away, a mute dismissal. The opposite shore was far closer than where they had come, so he set his jaw and continued swimming, keeping pace with her now, ready to reach out and snatch her from the water if she lost her tenuous hold on Raisin's saddle and slid in. But Alcyone did not flag even as her face got paler, her expression more and more drawn. Finally, the horses touched bottom, first his and then hers. They heaved themselves up the muddy bank, blowing but still steady, and Dumitru forced his unresponsive legs to take his weight and keep pace. Alcy took the first two steps with Raisin, then lost her grip on the saddle and fell into waist-deep water, her head disappearing' under the river's surface. Dumitru lunged for her, but she emerged again before he had closed the distance between them, mud running off her in brown rivulets as she brandished a knife. Pointing it at him, she stumbled out of the water and onto the shore. "Alcy, don't be ridiculous," he snapped as he approached—but cautiously, for she had an expression he had never seen on her face before, a cold, blank mask that hid all trace of humanity behind it. "No," she said. Her bonnet had washed away when she fell, her hair tumbling down in one long, wet braid to her waist. "For once in my life, I am being utterly reasonable." "You are threatening me with a knife!" he retorted, still scarcely believing that this could be happening. "My own knife," he added as the sun caught the enameled designs on its pommel. How his Parisian friends would have laughed at this story, he thought bitterly. It should have been hilarious, if only there were something funny about it. "I am not going to kill you," Alcyone said, as if he were being stupid. "But threatening you with a sharp object might just be the only way to get you to listen to me. God knows you have done precious little of that up until now. I heard what you said to Herr Volynroskyj. About my money." "I know," Dumitru said, with more than a touch of exasperation. "I thought you cared for me," she said softly. "I thought we had something between us, a trust, a friendship, if nothing more." "We do," he said, his anger returning. "At least, we did until you took it into your head to run away to spite me." At that, Alcyone's mask shattered, her face tightening convulsively in anger and pain. "You were plotting to steal from me! I knew well enough that you married me for my money, but you got half of it. Why couldn't you leave what was mine alone? Damn it, Dumitru, I am your wife." "And I am your husband, for God's sake!" Dumitru snapped. "What use does a wife have for money kept from her husband?" "Perhaps she might have a use if she were marrying a stranger who might, just might, have questionable motivations and intentions," Alcy responded tightly. "Didn't it occur to you that you might simply ask?" "It was not a matter for discussion," Dumitru declared. "I'm your husband, not your child. I am not meant to dangle from your purse strings, dependent upon your every whim." "Then you should not have married me, you beggar count," Alcy shot back.

It was a stupid, petty insult, and yet at that, Dumitru's strained temper snapped, and only the knife she held kept him from charging over and shaking some sense back into her. "I am your husband, Alcyone. Doesn't that mean anything to you?" he snarled at her. "Certainly," she said, the word steeped in bitterness. "Two are made one flesh—only you believe the one flesh is yours." "Damn you and your stubbornness, I didn't come here because I wanted my leg back!" he exploded. "I want you. I love you, Alcy." The words came out in the midst of his fury, unanticipated, undeliberated, thoughtless. And yet he knew they were true with a soul-shaking certainty, that his unrecognized love was the reason he had embarked upon this farce of a journey against all sense, against all pride. Volynroskyj had been right, no matter how firmly Dumitru had denied it. The realization astonished and frightened him, dousing his anger with an abruptness that nothing else could have, but Alcyone scarcely blinked. "You love my money," she said dismissively. "Me, you are only fond of." "Damn you, Alcy," he said before she could add anything else. "When you arrived, I had expected a meaningless marriage with someone I would probably dislike. But you were everything I had not expected—strong, intelligent, beautiful—" "Beautiful?" She laughed, an ugly, barking sound, his knife still pointed unwaveringly at his chest. He eyed it. He could rush her, and… and face a very good possibility of getting skewered before he could wrestle it from her grasp. He held his ground. "My dear sweet God… You came to get me because I am beautiful? Do you have one ounce, even one grain of blessed sense?" Her voice climbed higher, and she backed away from him, step by step. He did not follow, for she was crying now, hysterically and without any semblance of control He had never seen her so angry, had never imagined that she could be so upset. "I hate that word! If I weren't beautiful, my parents never would have decided that I must marry a nobleman. I never would have been subjected to the ignominy of four years of balls and dinners even though it became clear after the first that I would catch no admirers except the usual impoverished and desperate younger sons. I would have married some young engineer named Josiah or Silas with the balance of meekness, inventiveness, and vision that my father values in his employees, and he would be so grateful to have been given Mr. Carter's daughter and the addition of his name to Carter Manufactories that he would have allowed me to indulge my every whim. Even Ezekiel would have been better than you! Instead, because I am beautiful"—she spat the word—"I have been exiled to this medieval wasteland and married to a foreign, heretical barbarian who conspires to steal my only independence!" "Alcy, it isn't like that—" Dumitru began, the violence of her reaction chilling him. "You just said yourself that it is. It always is. Every terrible thing that has ever happened to me has been because I am beautiful." She grew eerily calm all of a sudden, a new and terrible light dawning in her eyes. Reaching up with her free hand, she jerked her fallen braid over her shoulder. She grasped it at the base and looked at him through her tears. "But it doesn't have to be that way. Beauty is not without remedy. If you love me because I am beautiful, then maybe you'll forget me when I not." And with that, she turned the knife and began to saw quite calmly at her hair. He ran for her, but she finished slicing through it and dropped the braid to the ground disdainfully. Then with an expression of fierce exultation, she turned the knife toward her own face. He lunged, and the impact of their bodies sent the knife flying from her hand. They hit the dirt hard, and

Dumitru felt the breath rush out of her body as he landed on top of her. Her calm was shattered in an instant, and she pounded him with her fists, weeping and kicking. He grabbed at her hands and gritted his teeth when one hit his nose with enough force to make his eyes water. But the outcome was inevitable, and it was over in seconds. He caught one wrist and then the other and pinned them to the ground, holding her legs immobile with his body weight, and gradually, her weeping lost its hysterical edge until she was simply lying under him with her eyes closed, boneless with sheer exhaustion, tears running silently out from under her eyelids and down her face. And that was the most terrible thing of all. "Come on, Alcy," he said, his voice unaccountably hoarse. "We'll let the horses rest for a while, and then we're going home." "They think they're going home!" The words were in Servian, but they registered immediately. Dumitru jerked his head around to see a ragged line of men standing at the edge of the tree line, half mounted on scrubby little ponies and the rest on foot. They burst out laughing as he watched, as if the statement were a fine joke. "Who are they?" Alcyone whispered. He looked down to see her eyes huge and frightened in her pale face. "Hajduks," he said shortly. Hajduks. Alcy had not thought she had enough energy left for fear, but she was wrong. The rough men, bristling with weapons, grinned openly at her, eyeing her in a way that made her all too aware of how Dumitru lay on top of her, her sodden skirts hiked up to her knees from their struggle so that they clung to her thighs. She thought of the knife, now lying a dozen feet away from them, and the pistol that had been lost with her panniers, which would have been useless anyway after having been soaked in the river. She met Dumitru's eyes and saw in them an invitation of solidarity—the two of them together against the hajduks, in spirit if not in action. She turned her face away. She was wealthy; however much the bandits postured, they would ransom her unharmed. Dumitru had said as much himself. If he overcame them, he offered her only a lifetime of imprisonment instead. She would rather be ransomed. "Get up." One of the hajduks spoke in German, the first words she could understand. Dumitru obeyed slowly, warily, and Alcy scrambled unsteadily to her feet as soon as he pushed off her, taking the opportunity to get closer to the knife and put distance between her and both him and the bandits. But Bey and Raisin had wandered some distance away, and so she was left standing alone at the edge of the water with nowhere to go but in, where she knew she would drown within moments. Looking at the still-grinning hajduks, she suffered a twinge of uncertainty. How could Dumitru know that they ransomed all rich Christians? The ones they didn't might simply disappear, never to be heard of again. Suddenly, she was not sure that drowning might not be better than the fate that awaited her at their hands. One of the hajduks must have read her thoughts, for he called out something in the language the first had spoken, and the man in the fur hat, the one who had spoken in German, translated: "Step away from the river." Wishing she dared to grab the knife, she did as she was told. "State your names and your business here," the man continued arrogantly, "and give us a good reason not

to kill you both." This was it. Her only chance to free herself from Dumitru and ensure good treatment at the hands of the hajduks. She took a deep breath, her heart beating hard. "My name is Alcyone Carter, and I am a lady of England. This man has abducted me in order to force me to marry him so that he may extort my dowry from my father, who is very wealthy. My father will be deeply grateful for my safe return with my virtue intact"—her voice wavered slightly on those words, and she prayed it would be credited to maidenly delicacy rather than the abject cowardice it really was— "and I know that his compensation will be commensurate with his gratitude." The man in the fur hat burst out laughing, and as soon as he had translated her reply back into his native tongue, the others joined him, roaring with hilarity and injecting their own, incomprehensible comments that provoked further gales. Alcy risked a quick glance sideways, and Dumitru met her eyes. His face was as white as his shirt, and for the first time since she had laid eyes upon him, it was expressionless, absolutely and entirely blank. The hajduks broke off suddenly, and Alcy looked back to find one of them, their captain if his larger, less shaggy pony and finer clothes were any indication, surveying them both with a suddenly speculative expression. "And what do you have to say for yourself?" the fur-hatted translator said for him. "I am Gavril Popescu," Dumitru said, with every appearance of resentment. "I am a boyar. My overlord will ransom me." Alcy was aware of the hajduks' gazes on her, but she made no reaction to this announcement. If he thought it was safer to pretend to be someone else, she would say nothing to betray him unless he tried to interfere with her plans. The captain muttered something vicious-sounding in his own tongue, and Dumitru replied in the same language, instantly and fluently, his tone dripping with contempt. Alcy looked back at the captain in sudden fear, but he was smiling. "It may be as you say, then," the translator relayed. "But if you are lying, it shall go hard for you both. We will take you to the knez. You shall be his problem then, and he can decide what we will do with you." The captain nodded at two of his men, and they stepped forward, grinning, with lengths of rope in their hands. In short order, Alcy was relieved of her pocket watch and Dumitru of a brace of dripping, useless pistols and the contents of his pockets—they did not seem to consider that Alcy might be carrying anything else of value—and Alcy's and Dumitru's hands were tied behind them. They were hoisted onto their captured mounts, a hajduk taking each of their sets of reins as they were led along hidden tracks away from the river. It's over, Alcy told herself. They will keep me until my father sends a ransom, and then I and my bridal portion shall be on our way back to England. But somehow, she couldn't quite make herself believe it.

Chapter Fourteen

Exhaustion pressed down upon Alcy, the chilly air turning her soaking clothes clammy and frigid, stealing

the heat from her body until she was shivering uncontrollably. Yet under the smothering weight of her weariness, she watched the hajduks and their progress with preternatural alertness, as if her physical impotence had imbued her senses with strange powers. Every object seemed to have sharp edges that cut the air, colors shining with unnatural brilliance. She could see each individual hair of the beard of the man who led her horse; she could hear the separate syllables of the incomprehensible language the men spoke among themselves, each ringing in her ears with distinct clarity. And yet it helped not one whit, for as the men rode slowly or walked along, all she could do was follow behind, trussed like a game bird for the table. She dared not look at Dumitru. Even the thought of him still called up something hysterical inside her. He said he loved her. Loved her! As if he had any idea about what love was. Even as he justified his trickery, his theft, his betrayal, he had the nerve to claim that he loved her. Was he foolish enough to think that saying that would suddenly make everything all better? Or had he meant it, in some twisted way— did he somehow manage to believe in both his love and the tightness of his actions, keeping them in the separate bubbles where he placed the contradictions of his life so that they did not interfere with each other? She didn't want to think about it. It hurt too much. And she didn't need to, for if everything went well, she would soon be free of him forever. And if it didn't… She flinched a little as the hajduks burst into an especially raucous fit of laughter. If it didn't, she might not have to think of anything ever again. They rode through thick woods, for how long, Alcy had no idea. In England or France, every large waterway was surrounded by settlements and farms for leagues around, but here, there was only wilderness. Gradually, trees gave way to pasture and, eventually, to land under the plow, surrounding a small, derelict village. There seemed something vaguely wrong to her English eyes about the village, and as they drew nearer, she realized what it was. There were no more than a dozen structures altogether, but each one was enormous in a hovellike way. Room was appended to room with wings shooting off lean-tos resting against additions, each portion slumping against the next so that the various parts of the buildings did not so much stand as exist in a suspended state of falling in upon themselves. The structures formed a rough ring, in the center of which was a clear area of trampled earth beside a collection of large pens crowded with swine. Though there were no windows, a multitude of doorways faced in every direction, and they grew crowded with curious faces as the hajduks rode into the clearing and pulled to a stop. "Get down," the man in the fur hat ordered. Even though his hands were bound behind him, Dumitru swung his leg over his mount and simply slid to the ground, catching himself without even a stumble. Alcy slid her leg over the leaping head and sat, tottering, on the edge of the saddle, knowing that if she tried to repeat Dumitru's performance, she'd end up sprawled in the dirt. The captain. laughed and strode up to her, grabbing her around the waist, lifting her down, and planting a brazen kiss on her mouth before letting her go. Alcy reeled back, having jerked away the second his mouth came close to hers. She set her jaw in fury, glaring at the hajduk even as her heart raced with horror and fear. He only laughed harder, making a comment to his comrades that changed their grins into chuckles, too. She wanted to wipe her mouth, but her tied hands let her do nothing but raise her chin in mute dismissal of the man's impudent assault, as if she were a lady cutting someone distasteful in Hyde Park, not a half-drowned, shivering, terrified wreck of a woman. She risked a glance at Dumitru, who stared balefully at the bandit captain.

Just then, a middle-aged woman with the air of a matriarch popped her head out of the doorway of the nearest structure and said something sharp to the hajduks, whose chuckles suddenly turned slightly self-conscious. At a word from their captain, all but two turned to plundering Dumitru's saddlebags, the remaining pair taking charge of Alcy and Dumitru and pushing them toward the doorway where the matriarch stood. Alcy was intensely aware of the weight of the coins in the pocket that lay against her thigh, and she was suddenly glad of the precaution she had taken during one of her rest breaks the day before of slipping the other half of her money into her corset cover. Dumitru's stomach was tight with unease. He tested the bonds around his wrists until the skin was raw and his shoulders ached, but they would not give. Helpless. He was completely helpless. Alcyone—God curse her, Alcy walked pale and determined beside him, her head held proudly and an angry white line around her lips. When he looked at her, she flinched and jerked her gaze away, raising her chin slightly. She thought the hajduks were merely a means to be rid of him—and for her, they just might be. The stakes were much higher for him, though. As long as they didn't figure out who he was, Volynroskyj would recognize "Gavril Popescu" and after a few unpleasant days would send an appropriate ransom. Dumitru wasn't willing to give Alcyone up, not after coming so far for her—not after his realization that day—but if he tried to insist upon ransoming her, too, he knew she would reveal his deception in an instant. And then anything might happen. It was better to keep his silence for now and send his men to get her from a safe distance, either as representatives of Popescu or his overlord or as men sent by her father. Women scattered from the doorway as the hajduks and their prisoners passed through. Dumitru blinked in the sudden dimness, the slight warmth he'd enjoyed from the sun cut off abruptly in the chill interior. He had no chance to adjust his vision as they were shoved forward. He had the impression of a succession of dark, damp, close rooms, his feet scuffing on the mud floors as dogs and chickens dodged out of their path. Eventually, they were hustled into another windowless room, bigger than the ones they had already passed through but still no more than twenty feet on the longest side. A wave of warmth hit him from the fire that roared on the central hearth, filling the room with smoke that did not immediately find an exit in the hole in the roof directly above. Despite the precariousness of his situation, Dumitru could not help but be grateful for the room's warmth, which thawed his bones and made his clothing start to steam. The damp walls exuded the musty smell of old manure, which mingled with the wood smoke to burn his throat and eyes. The floor beneath his feet was stone here, not dirt, and under the soot, the walls and ceiling had been lime-washed within living memory. It was a room of importance. And that did not bode well. A fat man with an enormous, bristling beard sat before the fire in the room's only chair, his hands folded complacently over his belly. Over his native shirt and short trousers, he wore a coat that had once come from Austria or France, hanging open on either side of his enormous belly. Three men stood behind him, wearing the expensive English suits now in fashion among the budding elite east of Austria. If that hadn't been enough of a warning as to their identities, their identical expressions of lofty abstraction on their startlingly young faces told him exactly what they were—the idealistic sons of wealthy men who had picked up the language of nationhood and grandeur in France while conveniently forgetting the legacy of the guillotine. Revolutionaries, here to try to stir up the knez with their talk of nationhood and destiny. Damn. This wasn't good. Dumitru's appearance was distinctive, and if anyone here had heard of what the Count of Severinor looked like, it would be those men. Other men, all peasants, stood near the walls or lounged upon the benches that lined the walls, their eyes bright as they surveyed the prisoners. A growing number of kerchiefed women with carefully averted faces moved among them, their curiosity overcoming their distrust of strangers.

The captain approached the fat man—the knez, surely—and spoke softly to him, the hajduk's attitude one of a lord granting a boon. The man's eyes widened, then narrowed, and then he snorted, whether with interest or disbelief, Dumitru couldn't say. Dumitru kept most of his attention on the three young gentlemen. The knez was a typical village leader, a predictable, known quantity. The revolutionaries, though, could do anything. "What do you have to say for yourselves?" the knez intoned in Servian. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this unprecedented opportunity to stretch his power. "Why don't you ask her?" Dumitru returned, nodding at Alcy, who was looking between him and the knez with an expression of incomprehension. She was going to have her say, anyhow, and so there was no point in him giving them a story until she spoke. The captain muttered something to the knez. Looking slightly annoyed, the man repeated, "What do you have to say for yourselves?"—this time in understandable but heavily accented German. Alcyone lifted her chin a fraction higher, and Dumitru prepared himself for a virtuoso performance, for she had now had time to refine her story. He was not disappointed. "I am Fräulein Alcyone Carter," she began loftily, "and I came to Hungary in good faith with the intention of wedding a man to whom I was betrothed by my father. Instead, my servants and I were waylaid by this man"—she jerked her chin at him—"who has tried to force me to wed him in hopes of extorting my dowry from my father even though I assured him that my father will not reward any mistreatment of me." Her expression changed from offended virtue to that of humility. "I tried to flee but was caught once again, and I was praying to God for deliverance when your men came to rescue me. I know that my father will feel most grateful and generous if you help me escape this monster and return me safely to his house once again." It was brilliant. Dumitru wanted to laugh. She called upon God, cast herself as an obedient daughter and the hajduks as heroes, and promised a reward for helping her while threatening nothing for harming her. If not for fear of attracting undue attention to himself, he might have applauded. "Have you nothing to add?" the knez demanded of Dumitru. He shrugged, his aching shoulders protesting the motion. It was best to keep his answers short. "Who would believe me if I contradicted her? I am Gavril Popescu, and my overlord will pay my ransom." The hajduk captain cleared his throat and addressed the knez and the room at large, retelling the story of their capture in detail and portraying Alcy's self-mutilation of her hair as an act of desperate, womanly virtue to stave off Dumitru's lustful intent. The men and women around the room listened with universally rapt expressions, and Dumitru had to keep himself from smiling bitterly. There were few things the Servians loved more than a stirring account of virtue, sacrifice, and bravery. In the awed chatter that followed the conclusion of the tale, he knew that Alcyone, at least, had secured her safety. "Who is your overlord?" The cultured German cut through the babble, and the room settled into an expectant silence. Dumitru looked at the tall revolutionary who had spoken. "Count von Severinor." However uncertain the reception for a man of Severinor was, he could give no other answer, for no one outside of his county would ransom a man by the name he had given. A shorter gentleman looked at Dumitru closely, frowning, and he got his compatriot's attention with a quiet clearing of his throat. The three gentlemen turned their backs to the room to consult with the knez as

the fascinated peasants looked on. Dumitru felt sick. They knew. They had to know… The knez turned back, frowning. "These men seem to think that you are the spy count yourself. I would not credit such a wily man with making a mistake of this magnitude…" He peered closer at Dumitru, his eyes flickering between his hair and his face. "But I think they must be right." His expression darkened with annoyance. Dumitru considered protesting, but he knew it was useless. His appearance was too distinctive. "I want nothing to do with you. If Prince Obrenović finds out that you were here, it will be my head, even if I present him with yours." "We want him," the tallest revolutionary announced. "Take him, but only if you tell no one he has been here," the knez said. "I want him gone, and quickly." "He is ours," the hajduk captain growled, his hand on the pistol at his waist. "If he is a count, his ransom will be all the greater." "You don't want the kind of ransom that dealing with him would bring," the knez countered. "A fair price. We must have a fair price," the captain insisted. The gentlemen consulted again, and then the tallest one said, "We will escort them together for a way, and our brothers will bring you a ransom." "What of me?" Alcy asked in a frightened voice. The tall gentleman shrugged. "You must come, too. You are part of the story." Alcy looked like she wanted to protest, but she swallowed it back. Dumitru didn't feel like arguing. He felt like laughing out of sheer bitter frustration. He had been so close to getting away with his masquerade, but it was his foul luck to run into the only men within fifty miles who might have unmasked him. Whatever the revolutionaries wanted of him, Dumitru was certain that he would find out soon and equally certain that he wouldn't like it. In a state of bewilderment, Alcy was led to a small bedroom deep within the warren of the structure. It held four large bedsteads, which left almost no floor space. Yet the entire room was soon filled, bedsteads and all, with more than a dozen women come to stare at her in a way that seemed more curious than impolite. They helped her out of her clothing—including, blessed release, her corset, which was the object of much horrified interest and scrutiny among them. Thankfully, they did not notice the extra weight of the thaler hidden between the corset and its cover, but they did exclaim in delight over the money they discovered in her pocket, passing that garment around with wide eyes and awed voices until it was confiscated by the matriarch Alcy had seen in the doorway when they had arrived. Somehow, she suspected that the hajduks were not going to be told of that discovery, nor would she ever see it again. Alcy's tattered clothes were taken away—to be dried in front of a fire, the matriarch explained in thick German—and several of the women plundered their possessions to come up with something she could wear in the interim. The fabrics were rough and thick, the cut of everything unfamiliar. Alcy donned the layers of clothing, and one of the women, scarcely more than a girl, showed her how the vest fastened over the blouse, functioning somewhat like a pair of stays that went over her clothing instead of under. She felt barbaric, alienated from her usual self. The women brought her a head kerchief like theirs, their firm motions leaving no doubt in her mind that decent women did not go bareheaded here any more than in Istanbul, and the shoes felt heavy and unwieldy compared to the neat little boots she had taken off.

As soon as she was dressed, the women produced a chunk of barley bread and a bowl of garlic-flavored pottage. Alcy had never eaten anything so bland in her life. Even her nursery-room porridge had been seasoned with cinnamon. Despite her sudden awareness of how hungry she was, she had to force herself to swallow more than a few bites, and she told herself that it was only natural for one who was accustomed to such refined foods. But she knew, deep down, that lack of hunger had a very different cause than the plain fare. In the back of her mind, she could still see Dumitru's face as she was led away, his wide grin false but heartbreaking, breathtaking under his bleak, hopeless eyes. She set down the spoon. Oh, God, Dumitru, what is going to happen to us now? She could not regret running away from Severinor, not after what Dumitru had done, and she told herself that anything that happened to him would be his own fault for not letting her go. But she could not help but wonder what her flight had set into motion. Would she ever be ransomed? Would he? What else could those men want with them? Only time would tell. As it was, though, she was far too frightened to eat, whether her fear was for herself, for Dumitru, or for something less tangible than their physical well-being, she didn't know. She assured her fascinated audience in slow, careful German that their food was wonderful but she couldn't possibly hold another bite. The women reacted in consternation until one of them said something in rapid Servian in the tone of someone who had just made a realization, making motions as if she were squeezing her waist. Alcy smothered a tired smile that she would think that her corset could cause her lack of appetite, but after that, the women's concern changed to demonstrations of exaggerated sympathy. Just then, a girl appeared in the doorway, pushing aside the length of fabric that served in lieu of a door, and said something excitedly. The other women gave cries of pleasure, and they surged out of the room, pulling Alcy with them. Whatever the revolutionaries might have planned for him, the local peasants treated Dumitru well enough. He was given clothes to replace those they took away to dry, though no shoes—to guard against his escape, he guessed. And then he was locked in a shed with a pile of blankets for an unknown period of time—one hour? two?—before the door opened and the revolutionaries entered, one holding a lamp while the other two kept their hands on their pistols. No faith, Dumitru thought dryly. "Good evening, Count von Severinor. You may call me… Lazar," the tallest man intoned, naming the heroic martyred prince of the epic battle of Kosovo Polje. "You may call me a horse's arse for all I care," Dumitru replied, sitting back against the wall. "Just tell me what you want." The men looked nonplussed. "I know you are a man of status in Wallachia," their speaker said, looking slightly testy now. "Of great influence. Of great discretion and intelligence." He sounded regretfully doubtful about the last in light of Dumitru's most recent reply. "I have influence when it suits me," Dumitru said shortly. "I do not know yet that it does." Another of the men, smaller and fair-haired, was scowling. "You aren't in a position to make choices." The tall man held up his hand. "Forgive him. My brother has a hasty tongue, but he is tormented by the

suffering of our country in bondage to Prince Obrenović's corrupt regime." "Prince Obrenović is a Christian and a Servian," Dumitru returned. The tall man's face clouded. "He abuses his people, and he takes his power from the sultan and allows Turkish troops to be stationed on our sacred soil." "And what do you think I can do about it?" Dumitru asked wearily. He was in no mood for games. "If you did not think I could help your schemes, you would have no interest in me." The tall man spread his hands. "You are Count von Severinor. Your family has a heroic and patriotic history, which you have continued through espionage." "My grandfather was the only patriot, and he died for it," Dumitru said dismissively. "My only cause is the integrity of my own county." "So you say," the man said doubtfully. "But the truth is a very mutable thing. You are well known among certain circles in Servia for your brave and secret fight. If you throw in your lot with us and tell the Servian people about how others gain the support of Russia and Austria to fight against the Turks and their satraps—then they will have the faith to believe they are not the only nation seeking to break from its captivity." "Greece broke away a decade ago," Dumitru pointed out bluntly. "If anything would do it, that should." "And so the Servians are afraid they are the only ones still fighting," the man said in tone of great patience. "Then you wish me to ride around with you and announce that I have declared war on the sultan and Prince Obrenović, both?" Dumitru asked skeptically. "Not precisely that," the man prevaricated. "You are insane." Dumitru made the pronouncement flatly, folding his arms over his chest. "When the people unite—" the blond man began impatiently. "When the people unite, they will be unarmed and poor," Dumitru snapped. "When the people unite, Russia or Austria will offer help that comes with the price of your souls, which they will still more than likely not deliver, France will do nothing and say whatever suits it at the moment, and Britain will feed weapons and money to Istanbul to block the insurrection. When the people unite, the land will be thrown again into chaos, a quarter of your people will be dead, and all to no purpose." He stood, and the men shifted uneasily, gripping their weapons tighter. "I will not be a part of this." "If you will not be a revolutionary, then you will be a sacrifice," the blond man snapped. "As proof of our continuing loyalty to the prince, we will give you to him to buy us a few more months or years to prepare. You can say what you like about us to him—he will not believe you over the sons of his own country." "I do not care," Dumitru said. "We'll see if you still feel that way when daylight comes," the tall man said, putting a pacifying hand on the shoulder of his compatriot. At his nod, all three of them turned and left. Dumitru sat down as the door shut behind them, but almost immediately, it opened again, and two of the hajduks ordered him out of the shed. He emerged to discover that the open area among the houses had been transformed.

A great bonfire roared in the middle of the space with a huge boar already roasting on a spit over it, and benches and trestles had been set up in a wide circle around it. Raisin and Bey stood in places of honor at one corner, along with the hajduks' other spoils, spread upon a blanket to better display them. Only a small fraction of the booty would go directly to peasants, in the form of gifts from the hajduk captain to the knez and from the ordinary men to any family members they might have among the locals. But trade between the hajduks and the peasants meant that most of it would eventually find its way into the village, anyhow, which was ample reason to celebrate. As Dumitru watched, a group of musicians gathered to one side, their instruments a queer mixture of old and new, East and West, and women brought out jugs from which emerged the strong smell of alcohol. Two of the hajduks escorted him to the bench nearest the horses—which were, he was disappointed to note, securely tied to the fence of one of the pigpens—and ordered him to sit. Having no other option, he obeyed, and they bound his hands again, in front of him this time but no looser than before. The revolutionaries were nowhere in sight. Just then, a stream of women burst from the biggest of the houses, and Dumitru's breath caught at the sight of one of them. Alcyone. She wore the same peasant clothes as the rest of the women, her ravaged hair hidden by a long kerchief, but on her, the plain garments might as well have been royal robes. The others were laughing and talking among themselves, but she walked, silent and imperturbable, in their midst, her face as still as an unruffled pool of water. She looked up and caught his eye, and the faintest flush stained her cheeks before she broke away and cast her gaze firmly upon the ground in front of her. The women did not seem to notice. She, at least, avoided the ignominy of being placed among the booty, for the women seated her with them on their side of the fire as the celebration began with the sudden blaring, tooting, and strumming of various instruments. The women burst into laughter. The young ones ran into the empty space between the fire and the benches, grabbing at each other's arms until they had haphazardly formed a line. They danced in a blend of strength and coquetry while matrons sang and clapped on the sidelines, their children clinging to their skirts, and young men grinned as the older ones watched their daughters sharply to make sure that they did not smile too particularly at any one man or kick up their skirts to show too much leg. The first song had hardly ended when the next began. "A men's dance!" one young buck declared, and the men surged forward as the women retreated in a giggling mass, hajduks and farmers both. The men's dance was one of sheer prowess and competition. They held their hands at shoulder level, stepped and scuffed and leapt, shouting together whenever the singers reached a certain point in the chorus. Dumitru could see Alcy on the sidelines, watching with wide eyes. To her, the display must be wildly exotic, the music Oriental and the dancing strange and perhaps a little frightening. Even with that distraction, though, he saw how her gaze slid over to him whenever she thought he would not notice, her expression veiled and unreadable. After several songs, the pig was pronounced ready, and fat loaves of barley bread were produced to go along with it. The hajduk captain presented him with a choice portion and a crack about giving thanks to the source of their sudden fortune. Dumitru ignored the remark and ate, for there was nothing else for him to do. He looked up from his meal at a sudden, good-natured burst of laughter to see Alcy being pulled into the dance line by half a dozen girls. She protested weakly, but the music had started and the women on either side of her began dancing, and so there was nothing for her to do but to try to follow along. For a full minute, she frowned at their feet as they stepped, crossed, and hopped, getting lost every time they shuffled one direction and did not follow it with a parallel movement to the other. After a while, though,

she seemed to catch on to the dance's rightward progress and its use of an odd number of half measures that gave it its winding, shifting quality. She looked up shyly as the men roared their approval, making comments that would have surely wiped the tentative smile off her face if she had understood them. And then she met Dumitru's eyes, and for an instant, she stumbled. But immediately, she straightened a little, and her smile became brittle-bright and her gaze distant as she danced through the rest of the song with her feet suddenly flashing confidently among her skirts. Oh, Alcy, Dumitru thought with a mixture of resignation and despair, his heart aching for a reason he could not quite understand. The young women pulled her into their line again and again, and Alcy danced, her face growing a little paler and her steps a little slower with every song. Finally, she tripped and nearly fell, and the girls left her in peace after that. When the space next to her on the bench was vacated during the next women's dance, she lay down and stared at the fire glassily. She was asleep before the song was over, and Dumitru envied her rest. Eventually the feast came to an end, and Dumitru was untied and taken away as the rest of the booty was removed. He walked barefoot over the cold ground back to the shed, which was barred behind him with a dull, final thud. No escape, he thought, and in his exhaustion, he was not entirely sure exactly what he meant. Alcy woke briefly to the sensation of being carried. Dumitru? she wondered muzzily. But as soon as she had that thought, she realized that the chest she was resting against was ample and female and smelled vaguely of garlic. It was the matriarch—the woman she now knew was the knez's wife. She didn't have the energy to protest this treatment, so she allowed herself to be set on one of the beds, not even resisting when two of the girls who had followed the knez's wife bent and tugged off her shoes. In a moment, she was tucked between the blankets, sandwiched between two of the three other robust peasant girls who shared the bed. Her last, half-numb, half-despairing thought before sleep dragged her back under was, I don't know what's to become of either of us now.

Chapter Fifteen

Dumitru dozed on and off in his saddle, lured into sleep by the weariness that had caught up to him after his uncomfortable night and by the promised escape from the dull throbbing in his arms, which were tied behind him once again. The nag he now rode upon had nothing like Bey's smooth and graceful step, but it was sure-footed enough: Thoughts of the theft of his horse pained him more than the ride did. Alcy had looked at him, once, as if she wanted to say something, but he turned his head away. He had said he loved her, and more amazingly, he had meant it. Yet it changed nothing. Alcyone was still stubbornly bent upon eluding him at all costs, and he was just as determined that he would save both her and himself and return them, intact, to Severinor. The captives were escorted by the three revolutionaries and a reduced band of half a dozen hajduks, all mounted and all in high spirits in anticipation of their payment. The gentlemen rode quietly, but the bandits told outrageous stories of physical prowess and sexual conquest, hooted at ridiculous jokes, traded crude insults, and generally congratulated themselves as if they had the sultan himself and not some rogue Rumanian noble in their grasp. Dumitru ignored them, glad that the sheltered Alcyone could not

understand what they said. The men rode, they stopped, they rode, they ate—he tried not to guess what would happen next, tried not to estimate the number of miles they had gone, the distance they had left to go, for despite his determination, he was afraid that their next destination might be their last. They stopped for the night beside a stream. Dumitru was unbound and allowed to eat and drink for the first time since setting off that morning, though one of the brigands kept a pistol trained unnervingly at his chest. Alcyone, on the other hand, had not been bound at all, though she had done no more at their noon meal than nibble at the food the hajduks had given her. The men must have seen enough of her horsemanship to know she was not going to be able to gallop away, even if her horse had been capable of it. As it was, though, the rawboned, shaggy pony looked ridiculous with Raisin's magnificent if still damp sidesaddle on her back. Alcy chose a seat opposite the campfire from Dumitru and as far from the hajduks and revolutionaries as they allowed. The ravaged ends of her hair curled around her face as she alternately picked at her food and stared fixedly into the flames. Dumitru ached every time he looked at her, and he didn't know whether that pain had its root in anger, lust, loss, or something far more complicated. After supper, the hajduks laid out two pallets for their captives a mere arm's length apart. Dumitru wondered if it was a joke on their part, and if so, upon whom, him or his supposed victim. He lay down upon his pallet without comment or reaction, but Alcy looked at hers with an expression of impotent frustration. The hajduk captain made a rude suggestion, and as the men roared, his translator called out in German, "Fräulein, if you think that our blankets would be warmer than sleeping alone—" "No," she snapped. To her credit, she didn't change color or bother to glare at the bandits as they erupted into even louder hoots of laughter. She merely lay down stiffly, not even looking at them as she pulled the blankets over her. Stiffly—back in her ridiculously tiny-waisted corset, no doubt, for she, like he, was in her own clothing again. It was the riding habit she had worn when she had arrived in Severinor, he realized with a small start as he stared at her back. It was scarcely recognizable now. Its fashionable train had been sawn off roughly at ankle level—by his knife, he guessed—and the silk was so stained with river water and mud that it was more brown than gray. Some of the gold braid now dangled from it pathetically, torn loose from the bodice, and there was a rent under her arm where she had forced the low-set sleeves to stretch past their capacity. She looked pitiable, a shadow of the immaculate debutante that she had appeared when he first laid eyes upon her, even as frightened and travel-worn as she'd seemed then. She radiated such a sense of strength that he had not realized how the trip had marked her, had not thought about how brutal it must have been on a woman of her background, nor had he considered how terrified she must be even now under her expression of stony disdain. Despite himself, he felt the first stirrings of pity. "You needn't suffer all night long for the sake of your modesty," he found himself saying softly, in English to guard against eavesdroppers among the bandits or revolutionaries. "What?" She turned to face him—automatically, or so it seemed to Dumitru, for her eyes dropped away from his instantly, and her face grew drawn. "I will help you to tighten that contraption in the morning if you would like to be more comfortable tonight." "No." The response was swift, neither scornful nor dismissive but still adamant.

Dumitru frowned at her, unable to see her down-turned eyes and finding himself looking at the thick, black fringe of her lashes instead. "I have touched places far more intimate than your corset laces, Alcyone." "No," she repeated, her tone not changing. "Everything is different, now." Her voice broke on the last word, and as if that display of weakness were a crack through which all her doubts could escape, she added, "What is going to happen to us?" She looked at him then, and the fear in her eyes made his gut clench. "What is going to happen to you? Those men looked so pleased when they found out who you were, and it scared me—" Dumitru cut her off. "I don't know," he said flatly. The Servian prince made the revolutionaries look like infants in the great game of politics, and though he would undoubtedly find a neighboring ruler a useful tool, Dumitru had no idea what shape his imprisonment and employment would take. He could have offered Alcy empty reassurances, but he did not think she deserved them—either their comfort or their dishonesty. She was silent then, though she did not drop her shadowed, luminous eyes. After a few moments, she turned away again, and he did not touch her even though he saw her shoulders shaking with her smothered sobs—was not even sure that he wanted to. Instead, he stared beyond her at the fire until it died down into coals, until his restless dreams crept up and slid him into sleep. The next morning, more men in English suits joined those who already rode with them and paid the hajduks to go away. Dumitru told Alcy that the men in suits were revolutionaries, and something about the way he said the word frightened her. He also told her where they were being taken—to Prince Obrenović's mansion in Belgrade. The prince was cunning and ruthless, Dumitru said, eager to exploit any opportunity for his own aggrandizement. He had used the chaos of revolution to force the sultan to recognize him as the ruler of the Belgrade pashalik, the first Christian Servian to have enjoyed the title of prince in more than four hundred years, and he had sent the sultan the head of the great Servian revolutionary hero Karadjordje in thanks. Out of that ample fodder, Alcy spent hours fabricating terrible futures for them both, but as the day wore on and gave way to night, she fell into an exhausted trance. Never had she ridden so hard and so far. She had thought that she had pushed herself during her flight, but she knew now that she hadn't even understood the concept then. A blanket of weariness smothered her mind, doing nothing to lessen the ache of leaden weariness that seemed to drag her down, a counterpoint to the sharper pain of muscles protesting abuse they had never before suffered. The revolutionaries muttered occasionally to one another, but Alcy could not even catch enough of it to determine whether it was a language she knew. She tried to distract herself with her maths, worrying at the problem of notation: If the properties of extracomplex numbers can be described by equations that are within the set of all real numbers of a given dimension, perhaps there is a way to separate each dimension and deal with it apart from the others. After all, a group of interacting forces can be broken down into two or three orthagonal components and calculated separately and simply. Why not extracomplex numbers, too? But she got to that point and could go no further. Impossible lines darted and collided in her mind and dissolved into nonsense. The full moon rode high in the sky, seeming to cast as many false shadows as it dispelled. Her exhaustion wove the black-and-silver thread of the path, the swaying horses in front of her, and the rolling ground beneath her feet into a single nonsensical, monstrous tapestry that seemed to

draw her deeper and deeper within its shifting pattern with every passing mile. She felt herself falling—and awoke with a start just in time to catch her balance. They had stopped. She looked around with amazement, for instead of the depths of the trackless wilderness, she found herself in what looked very much like an inn yard, bordered on one side by the stables and on another by the inn itself and, most forebodingly, on the other two by high stone walls. The gate was shut tight. There was no escape. A child of indeterminate age and sex scampered out of the inn door and spoke quickly with the men, taking the reins of two of their horses as they dismounted. Soon, more children appeared. At a nod from their captors, Dumitru swung down, and Alcy eased painfully off the saddle, trying to ignore the ill-concealed amusement on the Servians' faces. She touched the ground—and her legs simply collapsed. Dumitru was there before she hit the dirt, his strong arms saving her from a humiliating tumble. They felt so achingly good, so familiar around her. Even after his pursuit of her, the ducking in the river, and two long days' rides, he still smelled like himself to her, warm and masculine and safe. For an insane instant, all she wanted was to bury her face in his chest and wish the world away. But too much had changed since the last time she had leaned against him like that. "Thank you," she whispered instead. She wanted to pull back but knew she didn't dare, for her legs wobbled under her dangerously. "You have been unbound since the hajduks left. Why didn't you try to flee?" If she had expected noble words, her hopes were soon dashed. "Didn't you notice my mount?" he asked. "I would not have got far." "I see," she said, stifling her automatic disappointment under a firm application of pragmatism. Of course. That was how it must be between them now, after what he had done to her and she to him. And it was a good thing, because now that she knew the truth, she did not want to go back to how it used to be. By the time they made it to the inn door, her legs were working again, but she did not have the strength to pull away. The interior looked like the public room of any coach stop east of France, and sure enough, there was an inevitable private parlor tucked away in the corner. Two of their captors stood impatiently in the doorway, the others following close behind Dumitru and her in case—What? Dumitru grabbed the poker from the common room's fireplace and began to lay about him? But Dumitru did not release her arm or make any attempt to leap the tables but walked calmly toward the parlor beside her, Alcy taking three unsteady hobbles for every one of his strides. She froze as they stepped inside. The room was from a different world from the rough wilderness surrounding them. The green wallpaper, the red-and-green carpet—actual carpet, the strips sewn carefully together and cut to fit the room—the mahogany furniture covered with red upholstery, the ridiculous little tables covered with ball-fringed cloths populated with china shepherdesses: It was a copy of England so familiar that Alcy wanted to burst into tears from homesickness. She escaped from Dumitru instead and sank numbly on the nearest chaise, staring about her with hungry eyes. One of the men spoke briefly to Dumitru, who replied, and even though it was in German, she was suddenly unable to make her brain understand any of it. Dumitru flopped into a chair, the light of the nearest lamp falling full on his face. Alcy saw for the first time the haggard shadows under his eyes, the rough beard that was already sprouting from his chin, jet black in contrast to his streaked silver hair. It made him look more dangerous but, frighteningly, no less handsome. The room didn't seem to want to hold still… With a final word to Dumitru, the revolutionaries left, shutting the door behind them with the snick of a bolt sliding home.

At that, Alcy stumbled to her feet, jerked out of her shock, and lunged at the door. "Stop!" she cried. Or at least she tried to, for as she took a step, she felt as if she were floating away and falling at once, and blackness rushed up and swallowed her in a single gulp. Alcy ran for the door, but she took only two shambling steps before every trace of color drained from her face, and she fell to the floor with a sickening thud. Dumitru was on his feet in an instant, scooping her up from the ground before he had time to fully encompass what had just happened. He was startled by how little she weighed. Her head lolled limply against his arm, and he saw the dangerous sallowness of her skin, the dark rings around her eyes, the loss of the hint of plumpness that had once been in her cheeks. He set her gently on the chaise, and her eyes fluttered open almost immediately. "I think I fell," she muttered, still looking dazed. "You fainted," Dumitru retorted, his chest feeling strangely tight. "How much have you eaten in the past four days?" "I don't know. A little…" she said vaguely, blinking at him. "I was scared," she added after a moment, as if it were an explanation. "I don't care how frightened you are. You must eat." He went to the door and tried the knob. Locked, of course. He banged on it. "The lady needs food and the attentions of a maid!" he shouted in Servian. There was no reply. After a moment, he returned to her side. There was something infinitely pathetic about her lying there, with such a raw, confused look on her face, as if all the betrayals of her life where somehow poured into that moment. She looked so small and vulnerable, and it shook him, for he had gotten so used to the indomitable, the angry, the impassioned Alcy that he had not realized that the same mind that was so quick and cutting was also young and as sensitive to hurt as anyone else's. She closed her eyelids, the black fringe of her lashes blending in to the purple of the fragile skin under her eyes. Her need for shelter was painful to him, and yet she was determined to thrust herself outside of his protection no matter what the cost. "I can't believe they did that," she muttered, frowning at the door. "Did what?" Dumitru asked. "They think you're my would-be rapist, and they left me locked in here alone with you," she said, seeming faintly incredulous despite her lingering befuddlement. "Maybe it would suit their purposes best if I did force you to marry me," he said dryly. "By whatever means. They are revolutionaries, Alcyone. Visionaries. One small girl is an easy sacrifice for such a great cause." "I don't think I care for their vision," Alcy said weakly. "Neither do I. The Ottomans and the prince may be vicious, but they are no better, in their own way. They believe that the tree of nationhood is watered with the blood of men—their own, someone else's, it scarcely matters as long as the deaths are sufficiently heroic." He gave her a long look. "You might be one of the most intelligent women—one of the most intelligent people—in Europe, but you know little of real people or the real world." "Don't I?" she asked, growing even paler and more still.

"No, you don't," he insisted. "The real world is not neat theories and. lofty journals read in the spacious, warm rooms of a spoiled rich girl. It's found on the streets and in the poorhouses and in suffocating, pitiful little backwaters that you have never even imagined, where men chase stupid dreams with prices no one should have to pay." "Like Severinor?" Her question was acid-laced, but Dumitru did not rise to her bait. "Exactly like Severinor," he said. "Or even in your father's factories. The money I want to make my people's lives better is yours, you say. But what earned it besides the sweat of the poor workers' backs, their hands twisted from working your father's spools, their spines bent from their unrelenting labor?" "What earned it?" she repeated, rising a little from the chaise. "What earned it? My father was well-off when he inherited the factories from his father, but it was I and no other who truly made him rich. My father hired a young engineer from the University of Edinburgh to improve his machinery. He found, in my hero-worshipping twelve-year-old self, a curiosity—and, perhaps, a vehicle to future fortune. He cultivated me. I pored over his drawings, his diagrams, and his schematics. And I improved them, taking the realm of pure maths and pure physics and making them serve commercial ends to improve both safety and production, so much so that my father's income doubled the year after they were put into service, and accidents were halved. There are no twisted hands at my father's mills, and our riches are no more of a theft than your own rents from your people." She bit her lip, glaring at him, and after a moment, she burst out, "Why does my having some small power over my own existence threaten you? Why is it an unbearable horror to you for some semblance of mutuality to be introduced into our marriage?" "It is not your power over yourself that is unbearable," Dumitru retorted. "It is your power over me and my lands." Yet inside, he was shaken. He had made many assumptions about this woman, his wife, and he wondered for the first time how many of them would prove, in the end, to be false. She had declared herself to be useless—or, more specifically, had claimed that the purpose of women was to be useless— and now, as if unconscious of the contradiction, she revealed that she had been anything but. He wondered suddenly, for the first time, what else she had done—what else she might be able to do. "And how small it is compared to your man-given authority over me," she said quietly, the disdain in her voice biting into him. "Women are weak, and men like us that way, with tiny waists and cumbersome skirts and minds shut out of the glorious light of knowledge, and so we become what we must, allowing even our innermost thoughts and desires to be shaped by those of our masters. You may not like my sixteen-inch waist, but what would you have said if I had left off corsets all together, if I traded my skirts for trousers and my sidesaddle for riding astride? If I am to wear a corset to be beautiful, then by God, I will be beautiful, and no one will be able to find fault with my unwomanliness in that regard. But do you honestly think that I am pleased at things as they are, that I cannot help but hate myself and the world, both, for refusing to come into an alignment that makes it possible for one such as I to survive?" Dumitru was silent for a long moment, the vehemence of her words sending a shock through him. He had been certain that her flight from him was out of spite and greed, for the idea of her power had only occurred to him as far as its negative affects upon him, not as something she might treasure as dearly as he for its own sake and with as much justification. If he dreaded his wife's caprice, how much more would she fear her husband's? There was a noise of the bolt sliding back, and then the door opened. A revolutionary came in with a tray that had two bowls on it, looking highly disgruntled, one of the children who had taken their horses at his heels. "Here's some food," he said ungraciously, putting it on the table with enough force to cause thick, brown soup to slop over the sides of the bowls. "Be kind to the girl, or it will be your heads."

"Are we going to get rooms?" Alcy asked, sitting fully upright. "Be glad you are getting supper," the man said with a glare at Dumitru. "The lady will need clothes to sleep in," Dumitru said calmly. The man simply snorted, then turned and marched out, leaving the child behind him. Alcy looked at the stew for a moment, then raised her eyes to Dumitru's face. "You called for this, didn't you?" "Yes. You need to eat." He smiled slightly. "And I am hungry, too." Alcy's smile in return was small and tentative, but it made him feel better than he had in a long time. They might not be united, but they had at least reached a truce. They ate in silence, Alcy devouring the hot soup as fast as he did, her frightening pallor being slowly replaced by an approximation of her normal color. Dumitru sent the child for blankets, clean clothes, and water for bathing. She returned quickly with everything, and he did not fail to note that the door was not locked behind her. "Tell me," he said in Servian, "what is there to keep me from taking you hostage and using you to secure our freedom?" "My father, sitting outside the door with a gun," the girl replied boldly. "He does not trust you." "He shouldn't," Dumitru agreed. Though he would not have hurt a child, now even the possibility of bluffing their way out was closed to them. "Father said I must go now," the girl added. "He said that if you want anything else, you can get it in the morning." And with that, she left, taking their dinner tray with her. Alcy looked at the door with an expression of resignation as the bolt shot home. "She isn't coming back, is she?" "Not tonight," Dumitru said. "But I haven't washed or changed," Alcy said weakly. "Then I will just have to help you. Come here and turn around." Looking like she wanted to protest, Alcy obeyed, bending her neck so that the loose, ragged ends of her hair fell over her shoulders and out of the way. Dumitru unbuttoned her dress slowly, following the line of her spine from her neck to her waist. He tried to blank his mind, but memories of many other nights that he had done this for her rose up, cutting across his thoughts with threads of desire. The fabric under his hands was stiff with river water, but in his mind, it was still soft and supple, and the hair that fell on either side of her face still cascaded in ebony waves to her waist. "Do you truly hate being beautiful?" he asked. "Sometimes," she admitted softly. "And sometimes I hate the world for putting so much stock in beauty. And sometimes I hate myself because I do not deserve to be beautiful, and yet I cherish my beauty anyway because I have nothing else in me that the world values." Dumitru's hands stilled, resting against the small of her back. "That isn't true. You said yourself that you redesigned your father's machines—"

"I did not say I could not do worthwhile things," she interrupted. "But though the product of my labor has value, the fact that I have done it is seen as an unfortunate accident, and it is no credit to me." She laughed, but the sound had a catch in it that was more like a sob. "You are not the only one who holds contradictions in their safe little bubbles so that they do not interfere with one another." Dumitru did not understand what she meant, and so he simply began to untie her petticoat laces, one by one. "I think it is a credit to you," he said quietly. "On the night we wed, I sensed you might be one who could believe that." She paused. "That is why I agreed." He turned her to face him—he could not help himself. And then he kissed her hard. She resisted, but only for the space of a breath. Then she went boneless in his arms, opening her lips to him as she whimpered—with desire, with fear. Her hands clung to his open coat, her body pressed against his as if she could absorb his strength through her skin, and her mouth was hot and desperate under his. Need pounded through his body, shoving the veil of exhaustion aside, and he found the laces of her corset automatically. Alcy pushed away, stumbling a little as she lurched back. "No," she said, her voice husky but clear. "Not now." Not anymore, she meant. He stood for a moment, lust still surging through his veins to pool in his groin, but finally, he nodded. She turned her back to him again—warily, this time—and he loosened her corset with dreadful efficiency. She stepped away, looking at him. "I want to wash now." "I'm not stopping you," Dumitru said. "Would you please turn around?" she asked stiffly. It would make it easier for both of them, his sense told him, and yet everything within him rebelled. "I am your husband, Alcyone," he said. "My indulgence can only be pushed so far." She blinked at him, then turned her back as she stripped while he sat on one of the intricately carved chairs and watched her stubbornly. It was more of a torture to him than it was a punishment to her, but the principle of the thing required that he not look away. And a related obstinacy must have struck her, for when she was naked, she did not take the pitcher and basin to a corner but stepped lightly over to where it sat on the central table and began to wash there. Bruises marked her pale skin, turning both her knees purple and blue and leaving a motley pattern on her shins, hips, elbows, and ribs, and yet despite the stab of sympathetic pain, what he felt more than anything was desire. Even battered and exhausted, she was everything he wanted. Alcy washed quickly, keeping her eyes downcast, but he sensed her awareness of his gaze in her body, in the jerkiness of her movements and the tightening of her nipples even though a cheerful fire wanned the little room to toastiness. She washed her hair, too, and then dried herself and shrugged into the shift the child had brought for her. When it was Dumitru's turn, she steadfastly turned her face to the wall and set about trying to untangle her hair with her fingers. They did not speak again that night, nor in the morning when the revolutionaries came to take them to their mounts. It was just as well, Dumitru decided, for he had no idea what he might say.

Chapter Sixteen

It took five long days of travel to arrive in Belgrade. Their revolutionary captors were better dressed than the hajduks, and they weren't quite so inclined to either hilarity or obscenity, but they seemed no less dangerous despite their manners and their English suits. Between them, Alcy counted ten guns and eight blades of various types, and one of them had four huge dogs that rode at his side, whether mastiffs or sighthounds, Alcy didn't want to know and didn't want to guess. Though Dumitru still offered—and Alcy accepted—help with her corset every evening and morning, they rarely spoke. Alcy preferred to lose herself in the mental world of numbers and abstractions whenever she could, forgetting her surroundings for minutes at a time. That was far better than the alternative of worrying about what would happen to her and Dumitru, who looked more and more troubled the farther they rode, the habitual laughter in his eyes often replaced by shadows. On the sixth night since the they left the knez's village, they sat next to each other by a smoking, spitting campfire. The revolutionaries had stopped near a village for once, so all the deadfall in the woods had already been gathered. Alcy had been sent out every night to find wood for the fire—unsupervised, to her humiliation, because their captors knew as well as she did that she had nowhere to go, and even if she had, no chance to get there on foot before the dogs tracked her down. That night, she had returned empty-handed, and their captors cut limbs from a living fir tree to cook their evening meal. The sap burned hot, and it snapped and smoked, giving their fresh hare an unpleasant, resiny taste and driving the Servians a dozen feet back. But Alcy craved the warmth against the bitter night, and so she ignored the smoke that cast a pall around the fire and huddled close, raking the wildly curling ends of hair out of her eyes whenever they fell into her face. Dumitru had not retreated, either, and so now they were more alone in the center of the cloud of smoke than they had been in days. He did not seem to need the warmth, though. His expression was distant, as if he did not even notice the discomfort that had made the Servians cough and retreat. "Are you sorry that you refused the revolutionaries?" Alcy asked. He had told her of their offer and his refusal, and she wondered if now he regretted not taking a sure thing. He looked up at her question, blinking as if to clear his mind. "No. If I'd agreed to their scheme, my end would be sure and painful when the prince caught me, which would not take long if I rode about the countryside preaching rebellion." "What will he do now?" she pressed. "Since you aren't preaching anything?" "Oh, he will probably devise some way to try to turn me into his puppet." He gave her a lopsided smile. "Don't worry. I haven't given up. We will get out of this somehow." Alcy was silent for a long moment, staring into the fire and shivering with more than the cold. It wasn't fair, she thought, not for the first time. It wasn't right. They were childish, stupid objections—she, of all people, had learned long ago how unfair the world was—and yet she could not help them. "I wish I had taken a different route from Severinor," she said. Dumitru cocked his head to look directly at her, and her breath caught slightly, her center contracting with a warm, familiar pang of desire. A short black beard now shadowed his jaw, making his blue eyes look even paler, and his cheeks had new hollows that made him more wolflike than before. "But not that

you had not run away?" "No. As long as you wanted to take control of my bridal portion, I could not stay," Alcy said with brutal honesty. "Why did you follow me across the Danube?" "Because I wanted you. Because I love you," he answered, unblinking. Alcy made a noise of frustration. "But you knew it was dangerous, being a nobleman, and your appearance makes it doubly so." "What, do you mean that there aren't many silver-haired thirty-one-year-olds wearing a French suit and riding a fine mount in this corner of the world?" Dumitru asked lightly. "Thirty-one?" Alcy asked, deflected by surprise. "You are thirty-one?" "Thirty-two," he corrected, staring back at the fire. "The first of October has surely come and gone now, for all that it has felt more like November since the night you left." "I thought you were…" Older? Younger? She didn't really know. Sometimes, he seemed even younger than she was. Others, he seemed older than the hills. "I know," he said, still watching the crackling flames. Why had she never noticed before how the left side of his mouth formed a little hook when he was smiling and did not mean it? Alcy's throat closed. She wished she could say something, do something to make everything better. Apologies were empty now, and she did not know how much weight they could hold since she bitterly regretted the situation they were now in yet could not regret most of the decisions that had brought them to this point. He had never apologized for what he tried to do to her, and she must not forget that. Dumitru was too easy to feel for, too dangerous to trust. And so she fell into a silence that lasted until they slept that night, an arm's length and a world apart. They rode through empty pasturelands and forests for the first four days, only the occasional dirty village breaking up the monotony of the wilderness. The land was desolate and wild, its emptiness seeming to empty out Alcy as well. She was accustomed to the bustle and movement of a teeming city, the black soot and mechanized roar of industry, the clatter of hooves and wheels and the chorus of hundreds of people talking, laughing, fighting, living. Her time at Severinor had been like a dream of another place, not quite real, but even there, the presence of an entire village of four hundred people crowded around her had kept solitude at bay. Her trip from Orŝova had been full of too many anxious thoughts to allow much else to penetrate, and her flight from Severinor too full of fears. Now, though, she was oppressed by the sense of isolation, the silence, the inhumanity of the wild lands between the feeble outposts of an antiquated, enervated civilization. The day before their arrival in Belgrade, Alcy began her monthly bleeding, which she saw with a mixture of relief and dismay—and confusion, that her emotions should be so muddled when everything ought to be simple. Dumitru had tried to steal her bridal portion—had succeeded by now, for all she knew. He had conspired to make her helpless, dependent, and impotent. Whatever else was between them, and whatever she had done, that fact remained, and so her goal was and must continue to be to escape, free of all fetters, from the sham of a marriage he had tricked her into. But there was the fear, never to be completely forgotten, of what would happen when they reached Belgrade. Perhaps Alcy was bleeding out the only hope of continuance Dumitru might have, her only possibility of preserving a piece of him. I could lose him, she thought. I don't want him. I can't have

him. But I cannot bear to think of losing him in that way, not just for him but for me. Yet Alcy belonged in England. She knew that now. After the annulment, she could set up a quiet spinster household in Leeds, or if she must wed to ensure the continuing prosperity of Carter Manufactories, surely she could work out an arrangement with Ezekiel Macgregor, however unacceptable his original offer of marriage had been. He might, in a moment of self-delusion and personal fantasy, have cast her in the role of an angel of the house, but he was a reasonable man, and he would not turn his back upon the possibility of a very different arrangement with a woman whom he already had a fondness for who stood to inherit one of the largest fortunes in England. He was no peer, certainly, but Alcy was tired of peers. All she wanted now, she told herself, was to be allowed to continue her life free of husbandly interference. But she also knew, in her heart of hearts, that if she married another man, she would be committing adultery no matter how many annulments she was granted from whatever churches. Whether she was truly Orthodox now, or Church of England or Presbyterian, as her family had been in her youth, she knew one thing for certain: She was married to Dumitru Constantinescu von Severinor, and she would continue to be married to him until the day one of them died. The next morning, Alcy was feeling heavy and dull with the cramping pain low in her abdomen and a throbbing ache at the back of her head when they emerged from the forest to discover a town in front of them. The patchwork of villages and fields spread out in front of them and merged until there was more village than field. As they rode, Alcy noted signs of increasing prosperity: structures that looked more like houses and less like huts, neat little gardens, buildings that were not homes at all but workshops and taverns, and the occasional mansion, standing aloof from its neighbors. Soon, they were in Belgrade proper, with paved, shop-lined streets and houses that were almost Western, Mediterranean red-tile roofs with Palladian-influenced facades touched with alien, Ottoman arabesques. In front of them, visible above the closer buildings, rose the high brown walls of some great, ancient fortress. Alcy eyed it nervously, an uncomfortable fluttering deep in her stomach. "I think I would rather not go there," she said to Dumitru. He laughed shortly. "That is a wish that you will get. The fortress is full of Ottoman soldiers, a thorn in the prince's side and a hobble to his ambitions. He and his family have summer houses in the countryside, and he has another residence in the city, which is where I can only assume we are being taken." Dumitru was right. A mere minute later, their captors turned down a street lined with imposing mansions and pulled up in front of one. Their leader dismounted and spoke briefly to a guard who stood at the door, who then disappeared. Alcy wanted to say something to break the tense silence, but she couldn't make her mind or mouth formulate anything coherent. The guard reappeared and ordered them inside. Alcy scarcely had the chance to take in the richly decorated hall before her captors and several more of the prince's guards shuttled her down a corridor and away from Dumitru. She caught a last glimpse of him, staring fixedly at something out of her range of vision, before she turned the corner, went up a flight of stairs, and was gently but firmly deposited in a room. The click of a bolt after the guards shut the door behind her left no doubt in her mind that she had been locked in. With no other occupation in view, she began to investigate her surroundings. She had been left in an upper-floor parlor, decorated after the French fashion and rather oppressively conventional. Nothing hinted at the exotic: More to the point, nothing seemed to offer the least chance of escape. Maybe she could break the looking glass that dominated one wall and use the shards to cut the

curtains into strips… She approached the mirror without much hope, and her reflection caught her attention and made her stop in her tracks. Her hair stood up in a wildly tangling mass, her face was smudged with dirt, and her dress was mud-stained and torn beyond repair, looking more like a castoff worn by a beggar than a lady's attire. Her own expression, staring back at her, was so astonished she began to laugh, and once she started, she could not stop. Harder and harder the laughter came until the tears sliding down her cheeks had washed clean rivulets in the dust on her face. "Fräulein?" Alcy jerked back at the voice, her hysteria cut off abruptly as she whirled to face a small maid standing in the door. "Yes?" she replied, composing herself quickly. The maid continued in her heavily accented German, "My name is Dejana. We have brought you water to bathe in, clean clothes, and refreshment." She nodded behind her, where it seemed that a near army of maidservants stood, all heavily laden. "Good," Alcy said, feeling ridiculous. "I need a wash rather badly." Half an hour later, she felt like a new person. She had enjoyed a deliciously warm bath, and her hair had been washed, combed, and dried by the heat of the German stove. The maid spent half an hour trimming and arranging it while making universal despairing sounds before she was satisfied. Alcy managed to smuggle the thaler from her old corset and slip them into the new one the maids brought. She was given new clothing from the skin out, keeping only her shoes when none of the options the maids could produce proved to fit. The French evening gown she chose was made of a dark blue silk of acceptable if not exquisite taste, the fine fabric making up for its less than modish cut. When the maid finished, Alcy found herself restored almost miraculously to the appearance of the woman who had left England more than half a year before—a little thinner, perhaps, but that was all. It seemed strange, wrong, even, that it should be so, for she felt nothing at all like the eager, innocent, romantic girl she had been then. Even her fear had a different taste, for then it had been novel and nebulous and sharp, but now it was as familiar as an old pain. Just as Dejana was fixing the last pin into place, there was a knock at the door. It opened at the maid's reply, and a manservant in a Western suit stepped through. After a brief consultation the man left again. "It is time to go," the maid said in German. The flutterings of nervousness, forgotten during her preparations, stirred in Alcy's belly again. She stood and followed the maid from the room and through several hallways until they reached a kind of… state study, was the only way Alcy could think of describing it, for it was as large as a ballroom and furnished like a cross between a parlor and the chambers of a government office. A silver-haired man with a neat little mustache sat behind the desk that dominated the room, wearing a scarlet pseudo-military uniform encrusted with gold braid. Prince Obrenović, surely. He had a red nose and shrewd eyes, and despite his expressionlessness as he surveyed her, Alcy felt a chill sweep across her. The men who stood around him wore variations of his costume or Western afternoon suits, the contrast of red-and-gold decadence and sober self-restraint creating a queer effect.

She risked a glance around and saw Dumitru standing to one side, glowering and silent, dressed in a new English suit and looking immaculately handsome. He had shaven, and his hair had been cut short and shaped to his head with macassar oil, leaving his strong neck looking strangely naked. Alcy remembered what she had told him, less than two months and yet a lifetime ago—that he could cut his hair however he liked as long as he left his chin bare for her. Had he remembered? Her heart tightened a little as he caught her eye, and she saw a pain that was a mirror of hers pass over his face before his expression of distant arrogance returned to cover it. Prince Obrenović had not risen when she entered, and she considered ignoring him in return but decided that she would not wish to pay whatever price he would exact for such disrespect. So instead, she gave him a carefully incremental curtsy and nod, fractionally too deep for a snub but far too shallow for a show of respect. Still, the prince did not acknowledge her. Their revolutionary captors filed in then, freshly shaven but in their own suits, wearing identical expressions of pride and anger oddly mixed with supplication. The man behind the desk said something gruffly, and one of them stepped forward with a tight bow and began to speak in Servian. Never before had Alcy wished so intensely that she understood that language. He declaimed his tale in a dramatic style, pointing suddenly to Alcy or Dumitru and then, at the climax, pulling something long, thick, and black from a pouch he carried with him—her shorn braid, she realized with a start. He waved it around like a snake for a moment as he spoke and then shoved it back into the purse and continued his tale, now sounding beseeching, now proud. Prince Obrenović looked neither credulous nor particularly unconvinced: In fact, his expression changed so little that he might have been made of stone. As the revolutionary finished and stepped back, Alcy sneaked a sideways glance at Dumitru. His expression was darkly amused, and she didn't know whether to be reassured or frightened by it. After a moment's pause, the prince spoke directly to him. "I would prefer that we speak German," Dumitru replied in that language. "I will be able to express myself better." Alcy hid surprise at the request under a swift blank mask, but she still felt the prince's narrowed eyes upon her for a brief moment before he replied. "Go ahead." He spoke with a thick accent, nothing at all like the cultured speech of the upper-class revolutionaries. Who was this man? she wondered. And how had he become a prince? "The woman is lovely, isn't she?" Dumitru said, replying to whatever the prince had said in Servian. "Unfortunately, she is no longer a virgin, and so she is not a fitting addition to any decent man's household." Alcy had thought she had known fear before, but the sudden bolt that went through her at Dumitru's words was so intense that a distant part of her was astonished that she could still be standing rooted to the center of the chamber and had neither fainted dead away nor had frantically attempted to flee. She should be humiliated that Dumitru would say such a thing aloud, but she could find no room for such a paltry thing as embarrassment in the horror that consumed her at the suggestion that the prince must have made to elicit such a response. "Is that true, girl?" the prince said, his eyes searching her as if he could see proof of her maidenhood—or lack of it—through her clothes if only he looked closely enough. "Yes," she managed, pushing the word past her fear. "Yes, it is." Please, Dumitru, she shot silently to him, say anything, do anything—just don't leave me to this man.

The prince snorted, his expression turning to one of distaste. "Then why did you cut off your hair to keep him away, foolish child? The only decent thing to do would be to marry him now. No father will take you back and allow you to bring such dishonor to your family." "She did it to shame me and out of mourning for her lost purity," Dumitru said, managing to blend humility and arrogance in his words. "She told the hajduks what they wanted to hear, in hopes that they would kill me and she could pose as an honorable widow, free to marry as she pleases." "Devious," the prince remarked, looking as if he were torn between being properly disapproving and smugly pleased. "It is fitting your stumbling block was a dishonored woman. The occupation of spy is too effeminate for any man to have gained honor in your downfall." Spy? Alcy blinked. "Spy master," Dumitru corrected, his expression not changing. The prince snorted, then sat for a long time, staring into space. Alcy scarcely dared to breathe. Finally, he said, "I would like to keep you both here as my guests, but as helpful as you might prove to be, I could not imagine that anyone—not Russia, not Austria, not Turkey—would be pleased at the appearance of my having gained your resources for my exclusive use. So the question is, What shall I do with you instead?" Alcy stood frozen as the prince looked them both over slowly. "Austria wouldn't care if I delivered you to Vienna with a bow and a note, for away from your network, you are worthless to them. Russia, too, would care little for such a gift," the man continued, "but Turkey… ah, Turkey is a different matter altogether. I have not given the sultan a gift in years, and I know you have been a thorn in his side for a very long time. The woman belongs to you now, and as you will be the sultan's slave, so she must be, too." He gave them both a smile, as cold and canny as a snake's. "Besides, the story is not complete without her, and the sultan appreciates a good story as much as I do." Dumitru bowed slightly. "As you wish." His tone and expression would be perfectly neutral to an outsider, but Alcy saw the tension in his shoulders, the infinitessimal graying of his face. Her heart stuttered with fear. "Yes," the prince replied dryly. "Precisely as I wish. The woman will spend the night here, but the prison is good enough for you. Perhaps a night on cold stone will teach you more respect." His mouth quirked in the first smile Alcy had seen from the man. "Though I doubt it." He switched languages abruptly, and four of the uniformed men stepped away from the walls to whisk Dumitru away. He caught Alcy's eye for a second as he was swept through the door, but he passed too quickly for her to read his face. Then the little maid and the manservant led Alcy away. That made only two guards for her, and one of them was a woman smaller than she was. As they moved through a tangle of corridors, Alcy considered making a run for it. She could dash down a passageway… And then what? Get caught within a minute, almost certainly. No, attempting escape might undo everything Dumitru had done to save… her? him? them? What exactly had the purpose of the new twist on their story been? It had preserved Alcy from imprisonment or even rape, and it had made him look the part of a fool—a harmless fool, whom a weak-minded and -bodied woman had brought low. Yet now they were both destined for Istanbul and the sultan's presence, and she was not certain that he had not put them both at greater risk. She had never seen Dumitru like that before—had never considered why anyone would have labeled him wily, as the knez had, nor had she

put much credence in his labeling of Dumitru as a spy count, assuming without reflection that it was merely a slur or, at most, an unsubstantiated rumor. Only now did she remember the brief and, in retrospect, mysterious visit of Nikolai Ivanovich, the Russian "diplomat," and wonder if Dumitru was not, indeed, engaged in the Great Game. The thought gave her a terrible chill, for if he was more than simply a recalcitrant march-count, he had more to fear from the sultan than she had imagined when he had quipped that the Ottomans did not care for him. I will be strong, she told herself. I must be strong. And she squared her shoulders and followed her captors with her head held high.

Chapter Seventeen

Dumitru's eyes were gritty as they rode away from Belgrade the next morning. After throwing him briefly into a cell in the city prison, the prince had pretended to change his mind and called him to supper. Obrenović kept him up half the night, ostensibly to play the part of a capricious host but, in reality, to attempt to pull any information out of Dumitru that he could. Dumitru had feigned weariness though his nerves twanged with tension, pretending to make unintended admissions even as he tempered lies with a sugarcoating of truth. Not that any information he had would do Obrenović any good. The prince well knew that the Servian people were once again on the verge of revolt—from him more than the sultan, now that that person was little more than a figurehead—and the Great Powers and sultan alike were still unhappy with the unrest in the area. As far as a final separation from Ottoman authority went, France and Russia were prevaricating, as they always did, and nothing Dumitru knew or could say could change the situation in any direction at that moment. If Obrenović wished to make his move against Istanbul, he would have to be prepared to do it alone, as both of them had known perfectly well before they sat down for their meal. The prince had sent him back to his cell for the few hours he was allowed to sleep. Then, in a demonstration meant to underscore the uncertainty of his humor, he had showered both Dumitru and Alcy with gifts before they left—new clothing and mounts for them both and a small, brunette maid to attend Alcy for the duration of the trip, as well as an "honor guard" of a dozen soldiers from his personal retinue to escort them to Istanbul with pomp suitable to Dumitru's status as an actual if not nominal captive foreign prince. For the first time, Dumitru seriously entertained the possibility of his death in this enterprise. He was not a man who dwelt upon his mortality, and having to face it in such an abrupt manner left him feeling shaken and, for the first time in his memory, truly afraid. In stark contrast to how he felt, Alcy looked impossibly fresh. There was a new vigor in her movements and a determined optimism in her expression, and now that she was clean and well dressed again, she looked every inch the lady. She was even beginning to get used to riding, for she did not look painfully awkward on her horse that day. Had acquiring a new wardrobe and a servant lifted her spirits so much, despite their new, sinister destination? Dumitru might be tempted to attribute such a cause to another woman's moods, but not Alcy. Did she believe that they would avoid trouble with the sultan as easily as they had with the hajduks, the knez, the revolutionaries, and now the prince? Surely, she couldn't be that foolish. He resolved, at their next stop, to ask her.

The two captives were allowed to dismount for lunch as the horses grazed. Alcy had ordered her maid to spread a blanket for her to sit upon and was chewing her bread with a stubbornly content look on her face. Dumitru took the food the soldiers' quartermaster gave him and sat down beside her without invitation. "You seem unaccountably cheerful," he remarked. "I am clean, I have rested, and much might happen before we reach Istanbul." Her smile had a brittle, determined edge. "If something terrible happens to us, well, at least I will not have spent weeks obsessing about it for nothing." Despite everything, Dumitru was startled into a bark of laughter. "You are obsessing?" "Naturally. Aren't you?" she asked, and behind her show of heartiness he saw fear in her eyes, sharp and consuming. The prince's decision must have come as great a shock to her as it had to him, but she was reacting in a way he never would have predicted—by putting up a brave front, even if the result did have an edge of hysteria. Oh, Alcy, he thought, wanting to kiss her with a fierceness he had not felt since the night at the inn. Instead, he merely said, "I am rather preoccupied with deciding how to escape," which was selectively honest. His own nightmares of the future were illuminated with detailed knowledge of the Ottomans' brutality that Alcy had no need to know about. "Hmmm," she said, still grinning with funereal cheer. Despite her display of playful optimism, he could tell that she was unconvinced. "If you find out how, would you let me know?" "Certainly," he agreed. "I would not imagine leaving without you." She looked at him swiftly then, the pasted-on bits of her smile falling from her face so quickly that it made him ache for her. "Even though I have tried to leave you at every turn?" "Not at Prince Obrenović's court," Dumitru countered. She stood perilously close to falling to pieces, and an argument was the surest way to keep her together. Predictably, she frowned. "I had no wish to be his whore or plaything or whatever it was that he intended me to be," she said with loathing. "But that isn't what I meant, and you know it." Dumitru shook his head. "Alcy, my purpose from the beginning of this mad farce was to bring you back to Severinor with me. Why would I change my mind now?" "Because now you are in danger of your life," she returned, her green eyes clear and grave. "I haven't changed my mind, Alcy," he said heavily. "Not even because of that." Her smile was sad. "Neither have I, though I wish more and more…" She broke off and was silent for several minutes as they ate, and then she said, suddenly, "How many languages do you speak, anyway?" Dumitru blinked at the non sequitur but decided to indulge her change of topic. Anything to get away from morbid speculations about their fates. "All the upper classes in this region speak German at home, and so that was my milk tongue. My family also spoke Greek because my grandmother was a Phanariot, for all that Grandfather died fighting against them." "A what?" Alcy's eyebrows drew together slightly. "You've said that word before."

"The Greeks who came from the Phanar district in Istanbul gained a monopoly on most government positions open to Christians. My grandmother was the granddaughter of one of them, a ruler of Wallachia —which is why I am entitled to call myself a prince," he explained. "I see," Alcy said, frowning slightly. "Most peasants in Severinor speak Wallachian, but I also know a smattering of Hungarian Magyar and the Transylvanian dialect," he continued. "Then my grandfather insisted that I study Russian as a boy because he thought the future of Rumania depended upon its help, but after he was killed, my father forbade it to be spoken or read in his house. I learned French before I left for Paris and English during a six-month stay in England. And, of course, I know a serviceable amount of Servian and the Persian-Arabic dialect of the Ottoman court, as well. And some Latin, of course, and a little Old Church Slavonic." Alcy paused for a moment, then said, "That is twelve languages!" It sounded like a cross between an objection and an accusation. "I am a spy master, Alcy," Dumitru said, smiling crookedly. "I pay many people to bring me their stories, and I must be able to understand them when they do. And then when the spies and diplomats visit, I must be able to bandy words and negotiate a price and tell them, in their own languages, exactly what I want them to hear." "Like Nikolai Ivanovich, the Russian," Alcy said, frowning. "How many other countries do you deal with?" So much for his determination to keep the sordid details of his not-so-secret occupation from her. Not that there was any point to it now—and not that her ignorance could protect her now. He said, "The Austrians, French, and British, always. Sometimes, Prince Obrenović will send someone with a specific question that I may or may not be able to answer for him. And every so often, the Ottomans send their own representative." "But you and the prince both implied that the sultan hates you!" This time it was definitely an objection. "Welcome to international politics, Alcyone," Dumitru said dryly. "He would rather that I do not exist, true, but since I am spying, he wishes to know all I do. Anyhow, everyone involved has a very good idea that I am selling information to everyone else, and they know that I know that they know, and so half the motions they go through are actually for the benefit of one of the other powers and have nothing at all to do with any information I collect directly from my spies." "Other than the Russian, I saw no one suspicious skulking about Severinor," Alcy said. He smiled thinly. "Nor should you. My spies are ordinary people: trackers, merchants, travelers, peasants, boyars, knezes—no, unfortunately, not the one we met," he said before she could interrupt. "Some write letters or copy other people's—which is, as I have said, how I learned of Benedek's plans to marry you—others my people visit, and others visit me whenever they have any news to give." "But why do you do this?" Alcy asked, a note of frustration in her voice. "If you hate the games the Great Powers are playing with your part of the world, if you loathe the schemers and the revolutionaries, why get involved at all?" "That is what my father thought," Dumitru said. "What he didn't understand is that we are involved, whether we want to be or not. I told you once that I would not be a pawn. If I have no choice about the game, I want to be certain that I am one of the players. And it didn't hurt that I could clear five hundred

pounds a year doing it, either, putting to use the people and powers who wanted to use me." He laughed bitterly. "Only now it seems that the tables have turned, and I truly am the pawn I tried so hard not to be." "Oh," she said, gazing beyond him and into the woods. He could see her thinking, processing everything and placing it into the wider context of her image of him. He wondered, not for the first time, what that image was, what she truly thought the entirety of him to be. It occurred to Dumitru how much he missed her, not just her body against his, under his, or even the subtle comfort of knowing that she was there waiting for him, but the companionship of speaking with her, with her inappropriate questions and deliciously, awkwardly agile mind. What would happen if he got her back to Severinor? Would she forgive him, or would she wait for another chance to run? And as much as he wanted her, did he want to keep her if she must be held against her will? "I am glad to know this," she said finally. "Perhaps deception comes too easily to you. It must be a difficult habit to break and an extraordinary proposition to ask a spy master, a string puller, to allow someone else to hold a few of the strings." Before he could overcome his surprise at that observation to formulate a response, she added, "So what are we going to do?" He knuckled the grittiness from his eyes and gave her a tired, sideways smile. "Escape, of course. What else?" Alcy did not believe Dumitru when he tossed off that flippant response. It sounded to her a great deal like the assurances parents gave their children that nothing bad would ever, ever happen to them—nice to believe in but ultimately meaningless. The days since departing Belgrade stretched out into a week. With every mile, they traveled even deeper into the wilderness, the forest getting thicker and the villages becoming farther apart and smaller. It seemed incredible to Alcy that they were moving toward the capital of an empire that once shook the foundations of Christendom—a city that had, for a thousand years before that, been the Eastern remnant of Rome, no less. It was hard to imagine that they could be more removed from civilization. When she could not keep her mind distracted with maths and philosophy, she found that fragments of quotes about the destruction of kings circled inevitably through her mind, How the mighty are fallen merging with Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair until she could half believe that the depopulated landscape was some sort of God-written warning for future generations, though of what, precisely, she could not say. She and Dumitru scarcely spoke. What was there to say? "I am so sorry that you are going to die, probably terribly." "I am so sorry that you'll be killed, too, or sold as a slave." Words were pointless: They changed nothing. Her return to England was just a dream now, if it had ever been anything more, but perversely, what she found herself missing most was Severinor. Snow fell and melted, and then it fell again as the world slipped silently into an early winter that settled deep within her heart. Every night, Alcy fell into an exhausted sleep inside the tent that she and Dejana shared while the men slept outside around her on the cold, hard ground. And every morning, she woke, scarcely refreshed, to dress, eat her breakfast, mount her horse, and take her place in their little cavalcade. She felt as if she and Dumitru were humbled princes in a very small Roman triumph, being brought back to be paraded through the city in celebration of their defeat. On the seventh night since they left Belgrade, days after she had felt her last shred of hope of escape slip through her fingers, Alcy was woken—not by the stirring camp and the dawn's light filtering through the

roof of her tent but by a hand over her mouth that dragged her from the depths of sleep. She opened her eyes, too confused to struggle, and looked up at the silhouette of a man against the white canvas of the roof. Dumitru. She knew it was him as she knew herself. She recognized the texture of his hand against her mouth, his shape over her, the warm smell of his skin, individual and heartbreaking. She touched his hand with her own in reassurance, and after a moment, he loosened its hold over her mouth. She eased away from Dejana, who was huddled against her back for warmth, acutely aware that the thin canvas was all that separated her from the soldiers and capture. The maid had grown used to Alcy's occasional trips into the brush at night, and she no longer even stirred, only shivered slightly and snuggled deeper into the blankets. Alcy stood, and the cold hit her like a wall, stealing her breath and slicing through her flannel petticoats. Clenching her jaw against the sudden chattering of her teeth, she scooped up the pile of her clothing, threw her cloak around her shoulders, and shoved her feet into her unbuttoned shoes. Dumitru wordlessly turned his back toward her and stepped out of the tent, the canvas whispering harshly as it was lifted. Alcy stepped after, her heart hammering in her chest and her movements clumsy with cold. All around the low red coals of the fire, their slumbering guards were formless lumps of blankets, buried beard-deep and motionless. Cold nights, Alcy had learned, make men sleep hard. Dumitru stepped noiselessly toward the surrounding ring of trees. Alcy padded after him, stepping over fallen branches that lay like black snakes on top of the patchy snow. The trees enclosed them and shut out the light of the campfire behind them and the pale fires of the stars above. Opening her eyes wide as if that could coax more light into them, Alcy reached out and caught the back of Dumitru's coat with her free hand, searching the scarcely visible ground ahead of her for stumbling places as she let herself be drawn after him. He stopped, and so did she, looking up and blinking as she found herself facing two horses tied to a low branch under a tree. He had gotten them horses. She closed her eyes and gave a brief prayer of thanks as her heart slowed a little, to something approximating its normal rate. Dumitru handed her the reins to one of them, and Alcy hauled herself, efficiently if not gracefully, onto the saddle as he swung onto his. He turned his horse and nudged it into a brisk walk, and Alcy's followed without prompting. She kept her silence for as long as she could bear it, many minutes after she was certain they were far out of earshot of the camp. Finally, she whispered, "How did you do it?" "I did nothing," he replied, amusement in his low-pitched voice. "I merely waited for the Servians to become complacent enough that their guards fell asleep on a night that the snow would not betray our tracks, and then I simply walked away." "What if they hadn't fallen asleep?" Alcy couldn't help but ask. "Fortunately, I did not have to consider that possibility," he said dryly. "The woods are growing thinner; I am going to trot." Despite the lightness of his tone—the wonderful, blessed lightness that Alcy had half forgotten his voice had once habitually had—she could tell that he had no desire to discuss the matter of possibilities any further. Alcy did not mind the silence, for she was still frightened stiff, and more than half her attention was taken with holding the bundle of her clothing close against her and listening for sounds of pursuit while a dull but growing headache kept her from seeking conversation for its own sake.

They rode without stopping until the sun came up. Alcy spent the first hour in terror of the sound of following shouts or hoof-beats, but as time wore on, her fear began to grow thinner until it was no more than a soft, high whine in the back of her mind. They stopped alongside the road for a breakfast of rye bread, cheese, and faintly resinous, teeth-achingly cold water as the horses grazed nearby. Bread and cheese: the universal travel provisions when no fire was possible, she decided. Alcy was grateful for the chance to get dressed and pin up the remnants of her hair—and to stand up, for her legs were already faintly protesting the lack of rest since she had last ridden. "This looks like the road we were on yesterday," she observed tentatively between bites. "It is," Dumitru agreed. "And we are still going southeast," she added, squinting at the sun, which had half cleared the trees in front of them. "We are," he agreed again. "I know that it might be the direction they least suspect," Alcy said, frowning, "but don't you think going in the opposite direction from Wallachia might also make it a little difficult to get back to Severinor?" "Perhaps," he said again, in a tone of almost insufferable amiability. "But the truth is, I do not know this country. The Servians said this road goes through Sofia, only two hundred miles from Belgrade, and since we have been traveling a week, we can't be too far from it now. In another couple of days, maybe, we can change horses there, change clothes, too, and I know of men who would be willing to aid us for a future reward." "Your spies?" Alcy asked. Dumitru gave her a crooked smile, his icy eyes glittering with suppressed amusement. "But of course." She chewed a bit of pale, hard cheese reflectively and swallowed, its texture scraping harshly against the back of her sore throat. "I have decided that I am glad that you are a spy," she said. "Spy master," he corrected. "Whatever," she said, refusing to be deflected. "Especially if the help includes a hot bath—a real bath, not just a basin of hot water in a freezing tent. I don't think I can remember what being warm feels like." There must have been less humor and more wistfulness in Alcy's voice than she intended, for Dumitru paused as he was about to take another bite of his bread and looked at her. "I brought blankets—" "No, no," she interrupted hurriedly. "It's fine. Really. I'm fine." And she gave him a smile that he regarded distrustfully for a moment before going back to finish his meal in three more bites. When she had eaten her bread, she mounted again silently, ignoring the faint clouds of weariness that were already beginning to tug at her consciousness and the headache that was throbbing in a hot band around her head. Dumitru swung up effortlessly on his own mount and nudged it into a walk, and Alcy followed behind, straightening in her saddle to face whatever the day would bring.

Chapter Eighteen

Dumitru's senses seemed to hum, not so much with adrenaline or fear as with the pure energy of life. For the past week and a half, he had been a prisoner, as surely as if he had been thrown into Belgrade's darkest cell. Now he felt as if he were stepping out into the light, breathing the free air and determined not to ever be locked away again. He kept a sharp ear out for the noises of anyone else coming along the road, and he was careful to guide the horses into the woods a minute or more before any other travelers came into sight. Most were simple peasants, daring the road to visit a nearby village, but once, a group of mounted horsemen wearing the colors of the Ottoman army trotted by, escorting a bureaucrat in an Eastern robe and elaborate headdress, and another time, a group of wild-looking men strolled by with their rifles over their shoulders: Bulgar brothers of the hajduks who had captured him and Alcy nearly two weeks before. Each time Dumitru led them off the road, he could see the tightness in Alcy's shoulders, but she never broke her tight-lipped silence even though her placid gelding shifted irritably in response to her tension. He wasn't sure whether it was fear of capture, the delay of waiting, or both that made her so anxious, but since she didn't volunteer a reason, he did not ask. He called a halt at dusk. The horses were still going strong—they were from the prince's stables, not the broken-down nags that had belonged to the hajduks—but Dumitru would not risk injuring them by riding into the night when they did not absolutely have to. He decided that it was worth the gamble of being caught unprepared to unsaddle and unbridle the horses for the night. To his surprise, Alcy set to work on her girth as soon as she dismounted, and though she grunted a little under the weight of the sidesaddle as she slid it off, she carried it to where his already lay under a tree without any sign of excessive strain. "I didn't know you knew how to do that," he said as he began to groom his mount with the brushes he had stolen from the prince's soldiers. Alcy looked at him, her startled expression melting immediately into wry amusement. "I didn't, either, until Raisin and I were alone. I can't put the saddle on properly again, though." She dropped her eyes as shame flashed across her face, clear even in the last glimmers of light from the setting sun. "Has anyone ever shown you how?" he asked reasonably. "No," she replied, a touch of petulance in her voice, "but it looks so easy." He couldn't help himself; he burst out laughing. "God, Alcy, if everything were as easy as it looked… But to be fair, saddling a horse is simple, once you know the trick. Would you like me to show you in the morning?" "Aren't you afraid that I would run away again?" she asked softly, suddenly shy. "No. You have nowhere to go," he said simply, handing her the curry comb. She seemed to stare at it for a moment, though Dumitru could no longer make out her expression; then she began to brush her mount in too-small, too-light strokes. He came up behind her and put his hand over hers, guiding it firmly across the horse's withers, barrel, and flank, brushing away the saddle marks. Her body felt good against his, like it belonged there, and she leaned back into him slightly, naturally.

"I could go north," she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper. "Or south to Sofia. Or west." "Do you want to?" he murmured in her ear, no louder than she. There was a long pause in which the only sound was the steady shwip-shwip of the brush across the horse's hide. Then, finally—"No. I don't think that things can be as they were before, but I am too tired to run anymore. Isn't that a silly reason to give in? But it's true. I am tired, Dumitru. I will find a way to secure my fortune again and guard it against any future attempts on your part, have no doubt about that, but I can't go through this again." "What if I let you go?" The words slipped out before he had a chance to consider them, and he stiffened as much in surprise at his own words as in reaction to the sudden rigidity of her body against his. Her brush rested, forgotten, against the horse's side. "Do you mean that?" Alcy breathed. He could not tell what emotion filled her voice so that it wobbled. "Yes. Or at least, I think so," he said, forcing his own to stay steady. "We would have to come to some settlement with my part of the dowry, of course, but if you want to go…" He trailed off, feeling abruptly and disconcertingly at a loss. "Do you want me to leave?" Her voice was under control again, but the tension that radiated through her body made her words a little rushed. "I can understand completely, and it was quite admirable of you to take me with you when you left, for I know I can only slow you down—" "No." He cut her off before she could actually begin babbling. "I don't want you to go any more now than I did when I set off after you. But then I wanted you because, well, I wanted you. Now, though… I want you to be content with me, and if you are not, I cannot be happy even if I do have you." He stopped, laughing self-consciously. "That sounds like the most convoluted, irrational—" "No, it doesn't." It was Alcy's turn to interrupt him. She disengaged her hand gently and turned in his arms so that she faced him, a handspan of space between their bodies. "It doesn't sound irrational at all. It sounds to me… like you love me." The wonder that filled her voice astonished him in turn, and he wished intensely that he could see more of her face in the starlight than an expressionless pattern of ghost-white skin and black shadows. "But I have always loved you. At least since the day you cried after you sent away Benedek János," he ammended. "Perhaps a little," she said, "but mostly, you loved how I made you feel—or, at the most, you loved aspects of my personality and body. You did not love me enough to care about the parts you didn't particularly like." "Now you are the one being convoluted," he said. He wanted to draw her into his arms, to kiss her into… something, he didn't know quite what. He laughed unsteadily. Everything was muddled in his mind, so much so that he wasn't even certain what everything was. "Did you… do you love me?" She went very still, her eyes pools of blackness under her star-touched brow. "I think that I do," she said slowly. "I think I knew it the day I found out that you had betrayed my trust. I did not want to think about it, not then or ever, but that is why it hurt so very much." She paused, and after a moment, she added, "Logic and emotion are a dangerous combination. Logic is relentless, merciless, pushing you down paths you do not wish to travel to conclusions you want to deny, and when you arrive, there is no comfortable buffer between the rawness of truth and one's core self anymore. Then emotion begins to tear you apart from the inside out even as logic puts you back together again and again… Why did you try to take away

my bridal portion?" she burst out suddenly. "I would have given you practically anything you asked." Dumitru was about to launch into his much-rehearsed defense, but somehow, with this woman, his wife, in front of him at this moment, his cherished reasons did not seem to make the sense they once had, unraveling as if her confession were the sword that cut the Gordian knot of his self-justifications into shreds. His theoretical husbandly rights were foolish quibbles next to the realities they now faced; his life was in her hands now as much as hers was in his—trusting her with a matter of a few thousand pounds seemed trivial in contrast. "I can't seem to remember anymore," he said. That was not entirely true—he could have recited his defense by heart. But it just didn't matter: not now, and not ever again. She paused. "You can't?" "I can't," he agreed. She paused for the space of a beat, then asked, "And you do not want me to leave you?" He could not tell whether she believed him or not, nor whether she wanted to. "I do not," he said, putting the vehemence of his certainty into the phrase. She was silent again, for a long moment. Then she stepped closer, so that her body was pressed against his, and whispered, "Good. Because I do not want to leave you, either." Alcy leaned forward and kissed him, her mind a tumble of emotion and urges and intentions. It was only the second time she had been so brazen—the first was on the night of their wedding, and somehow, it seemed fitting that this would be the next, for this was, she was certain, a new beginning, though of what and how long it would last, she had no idea. She had thought that she remembered everything about Dumitru's body, that it was burned into her mind, but his mouth was harder than she recalled, more demanding, chapped with cold but still incredibly, unbelievably hot. She opened her lips at his urging, and he slipped his tongue inside her mouth, the cheese they had both eaten for dinner mingling with the flavor that was uniquely him and more wonderful at that moment than the sweetest wine. His arms around her felt so good that she wanted to sink into them forever and let them shield her from the world, no matter how irrational and impossible the desire was. She felt warm, truly warm for the first time in days, basking in the heat of Dumitru's body and the nascent, tingling warmth that stirred in the dead cinders of her core and relit with a sudden rush of flame that licked outward, through her limbs and across her skin and back again with an intensity that made her want to weep. Eventually, she had to breathe, and she broke away, gasping. Dumitru's face was shadowed under his shock of silver hair, and she could read nothing of his expression, but she felt him breathing hard against her chest. "Wait," he said hoarsely, and then he stepped away, leaving her standing alone. Within a minute, the horses were blanketed and fed, and Dumitru had spread an armful of their own blankets on a sheltered area of the ground. Alcy shrugged out of her cloak and sat on the edge of the makeshift bed to take her shoes off—working slowly, for her fingers turned stiff the moment she pulled off her gloves, and she fumbled with the buttons as she worked. By the time she removed the second one, Dumitru had stripped down to his shirtsleeves and was standing a few feet away. "Aren't you cold?" Alcy asked with chattering teeth as she slid, shivering, between their blankets.

He joined her with a dark chuckle. "I will be warm enough soon." His heat next to her felt so delicious, perfect, right that she stretched against him, drinking in his warmth and strength that for once did not make her feel small or weak in comparison. "Do you want this, Alcy?" he asked. She could feel the rumble in his chest as he spoke. "Will you still want to have this between us in the morning? We have a very long way to go together, and I do not want there to be any regrets. Think carefully before you answer, because I will only ask once." She burned for him even as she shivered, and she knew that he felt the same. She also knew he spoke sense, but she could answer immediately and with certainty: "Yes, Dumitru. I want you, and I want you to have me." "Sweet Alcy…" The words were somewhere between irony and earnestness. "Sweet, sweet Alcy." And then he kissed her, and she let herself fall into the sensation. His mouth devoured and strengthened her, warmed her, thrilled her, the texture of his tongue across her own sending a sweet shock down into her core that stole her breath and made her feel both heavy and light. She welcomed it and insisted upon more, her hands tangling in the buttons of his shirt. She needed more of him, all of him against her body. His mouth moved down, across her throat, teasing along the high neckline of her riding habit, pushing it lower as he unfastened its back. Her skin burned with his touch, ached for it, his mouth soothing and enflaming her at once. Her hands slowed involuntarily in their work as the world contracted until it contained no more than the two of them and the space between their blankets. He got her dress loose just as she moved from his shirt to his trousers, which were taut with the strain of his erection. She unfastened the last button and slid her hand inside. Dumitru made a hissing noise and Alcy's own body tightened in reaction. "Cold?" she murmured, even though she knew he wasn't. "No," he ground out. She found the opening to his drawers and gripped his erection, moving her hand in the motion that always made him groan through gritted teeth. The skin was soft velvet over the shaft, and Alcy had forgotten the thrill at sheer tactile hedonism of touching it and anticipation at the pleasure of it—of him—inside of her. After a minute, Dumitru grabbed her wrist. "Not this way, Alcy," he said harshly. "Later, certainly, but not tonight, and if you keep that up—" "I understand," she replied, both gratified and faintly disappointed. She let him go slowly, teasingly, and he shuddered a little. Dumitru stripped off all his clothes quickly, but it took Alcy a full minute's wriggling to get free of her dress, punctuated with small, involuntary yelps whenever their movement allowed a puff of cold air under the blankets to chill her unnaturally sensitive skin. "This ought to be more dignified," Alcy said breathlessly as they both attacked the tapes that held her eight petticoats up. "This is a significant moment." "Little in life is dignified," Dumitru murmured with a rich note of laughter in his voice. Alcy closed her eyes and shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with cold. Even his voice made her want to kiss him, and so she did, following the line of his jaw up to his mouth. The stubble of his emerging beard scraped her lips, the prickle deliciously arousing in its maleness, the heat of his mouth when she reached it sending a shock of pleasure through her. His arms encircled her, pulling her hard against his

firm body, their size and strength making her feel irrationally safe and glad. When he broke away, she said, "You are wrong. I was very dignified before I met you." "And sad," he added as he set to work on her corset laces. She blinked at him in the darkness, his face only inches away, wishing she could see his expression. "Sad? Why do you say that?" Dumitru's warm bulk shifted slightly against her. "When you arrived in Severinor, the first time I heard you laugh, it seemed to me like you had almost forgotten how." "Oh," she said. Sad. She thought of herself as practical and sober, even if she suffered from an unfortunate impulsivity that made her say and do things that she shouldn't, but she never considered that the fundamental lack of levity in her life might in itself be a shortcoming. Yet during those weeks at Severinor, it had felt so good to smile___ Dumitru kissed her again, cutting short her thoughts. His mouth moved firmly over hers, the movements of his tongue sending warm waves of pleasure lapping over her and winding desire into a tight, hot ball in her center. When they separated, she shoved her petticoats down over her hips and off, kicking them toward the bottom of the blankets. Her corset soon followed. Her near-nakedness made her feel abruptly vulnerable. "Why do you still love me?" Alcy heard herself ask in a small, plaintive voice. "Why do things fall down instead of up?" Dumitru countered. Alcy giggled slightly then, feeling a little foolish. "I may not be able to say exactly why, but I can tell you how, if you want to know." "And I can tell you exactly how I am going to love you tonight, if you want to know," he replied. Her breath caught a little at the intensity of his voice. "Please do," she said hoarsely. "First, I am going to kiss you thoroughly so that you shut up for a minute," he said solemnly. "Being nervous makes you talk too much, and being nervous about this makes you talk too much and try to destroy the mood, a deadly combination." Alcy opened her mouth automatically to protest, and he kissed it as he had threatened to, and her protest turned into another giggle that immediately dissolved into a sighing moan. Oh, but his mouth felt good against hers, slick and insistent—how she had missed it, missed him since she had left Severinor! Warm waves of pleasure lapped around her, dissolving her frozen heart and suffusing her body with desire. Finally, he gentled the pressure and pulled away, and she sighed involuntarily and opened her eyes again. "And second, I am also going to kiss you like this," he said, moving to the jawline and teasing it lightly with his mouth. "Like this." He kissed lower, on her neck, his teeth and lips and tongue bringing her skin to a state of impossible sensitivity. Her body trembled involuntarily in reaction. "And like this." His mouth moved to the edge of her chemise, following it and leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Her skin felt flushed, overheated, which was ridiculous because she knew she was still a little cold. But the hot need inside her did not care—at this point, it could not have been extinguished upon a glacier. Her entire body was pulled tight with anticipation: much more, and it would pull apart. "Third—" Dumitru said huskily.

"Fifth," Alcy interrupted breathlessly. Even through her haze of desire, she could feel him shake with contained laughter, and he raised his finger and placed it across her lips. "You are not allowed to talk. Even if I say that seven follows nine." She nodded, and after a moment, he said, "Third, I am going to get this chemise off you so that I can touch every inch of your body." He put actions to his words, and Alcy wriggled so that he could slide the fabric out from under her, her legs locking around his to steady her as they both tugged and pulled until the chemise and the flannel undershirt beneath came free. Dumitru dropped them to one side. "I was going to get you completely naked, but on second thought, I will leave your stockings on because I can feel how cold your feet are through them even now—no, don't move them," he added when she started to pull away. "I am worried about your feet, not my legs." "I love you, Dumitru, damn your unromantic hide," Alcy said. "I cannot believe that you are talking about my cold feet at a time like this—nor that it makes me want you even more." Dumitru kissed her mouth again, and the heat that was spiraling through her tightened and spun faster, making her dizzy. "I will take that as a compliment, damnation and all." His body felt delicious, half over and half beside her, warm and strong and hers. "Fifth," he continued, "I am going to put my hand here." He slid his hand from her knee up her thigh so that it was lying just below the jointure of her legs. Her attention focused on it involuntarily and absolutely, and the tightness inside her seemed to open into a kind of void, desperate for him to fill it. But Dumitru wasn't finished. "And then I am going to kiss you until you forget that you aren't supposed to be talking and ask for me—no," he said as she started to speak, "not yet; I am certain you don't want it that badly yet. Now you are going to have to convince me that you really mean it." "I do mean it!" Alcy protested, her words caught between a laugh and a moan. She heard the feral, lustful smile in her husband's voice. "Not enough, you don't." And then he kissed her —on her mouth, her neck, her belly, playing her body like an expert musician. Alcy's vision dimmed until she could no longer see the stars above her, and her body stretched thin and tight as desire shuddered through her. She could hear the blood rushing through her veins, she could hear her breath racing out of control, and his reacting and quickening to her own response. He returned his attention to her neck, and she kissed him back in a kind of exuberant revenge, though with far less control and finesse than he, and he made a sound of pleasure low in his throat. "Now?" she asked, moving her hips suggestively against his hand. "No," he said with a wicked little chuckle. "When you really mean it." And he kissed her again, on the sensitive place behind her ear. "Now?" she asked, a little more stridently, a moment later. "No," he repeated. He seemed to be enjoying her torment far too much to her mind. "Curse you, Dumitru, I am not going to beg!" she snapped. "Don't tempt me to take that as a challenge, Alcy," he murmured hoarsely into her ear, and then he took the lobe between his teeth and nipped it lightly. "Dumitru..."

"That's close enough, I suppose," he said. And then his hand moved, and he slid one of his fingers inside of her, stroking slowly, insistently. Alcy's world dissolved into sensation. This was not the peak of ecstasy but a different kind of release, an incredible lightening and tightening so that she felt as if she were on the verge of soaring up and away. Lazy waves of heat went through her, leaving her skin buzzing and all her nerves tingling in their wake. Then another finger joined the first, and then another, sending secondary ripples lapping through, bouncing around chaotically until they reached the same harmonic and built… "Please—" she whimpered, scarcely recognizing her own voice. "Now that sounds like begging to me," he said huskily, his mouth against hers. "Dumitru!" "And sixth," he murmured as if she had not spoken, "I am going to love you like you have never been loved before." And then his erection was there, at her opening, and pushing through until he was inside of her. They moved together, and Alcy didn't know whose rhythm they followed, nor was she even sure, after the first moment, that their minds and wills had not merged just as their bodies had. They drove together, surging upward, pleasure pulling Alcy tighter and tighter until it broke her apart and they were both thrown into the glorious oblivion of free fall. Alcy was not alone even in the mad rush of sensation, for she could still feel Dumitru, not only as a pleasure but a presence, and she almost wept for mindless joy as the fragments of her awareness were battered with his by the ecstatic torture of their climax. Sensation receded slowly, and she could feel the blankets around her again, the ground under her, could hear the horses moving a short distance away—could feel Dumitru slowing, stopping and slumping against her, his weight carefully placed off to one side. He pulled away and turned onto his side, holding her against his chest, and for a long time, neither of them said anything. She was content simply to lie there, listening as his heartbeat gradually returned to its resting rate. After several minutes, the cold crept through the blankets despite Dumitru's body heat and began to eat away Alcy's warm lassitude, so she pushed away and wriggled under the blankets until she found her clothing. She even pulled her corset on over her chemise despite its stiffness. She would need its warmth. Already, her headache from earlier that day had returned with full force—if it had ever left in truth. "Could you tighten it a little?" she asked Dumitru, turning so that he could get to the back laces. She jerked down on her chemise, which had ridden up with her movement to tangle around her legs. "Not too tight. I just want to be warm." He obliged, his fingers finding the laces quickly in the darkness and tugging on them deftly, and as soon as the corset no longer hung loosely from her, she said, "That's enough." "It isn't sixteen inches anymore," he said, resting his hands upon her waist. She held still for a moment, savoring his touch, before her growing chill made her pull away and fumble for her petticoats. "No. The corset that Prince Obrenović gave me laces closed at eighteen inches." She paused as she wriggled into her petticoats, and then admitted, "But the dresses were originally made for a twenty-inch waist, and so I have been wearing my corset at about nineteen since we left Belgrade." "Better for striding about the countryside?" he asked, amusement in his voice. "Certainly," she agreed, granting him his victory without the least rancor. "And for swimming the Danube

and riding across half of Europe. Of course, you know this means that I will not be able to fit into a single one of my dresses when we get back to Severinor." Back to Severinor—it was the first time she had spoken those words aloud, and somehow, it made it more real. "I think I can accept that sacrifice for the sake of your health—as long as you use your money to buy new ones." Your money. She stilled in the middle of the impossible task of tying all the right laces in the darkness. "You do mean that, don't you?" "That you will have to buy them? Absolutely," he said lightly, though there was an undercurrent that left no doubt in Alcy's mind that he knew exactly what she was saying. "I have an income of only five thousand pounds, and while that might sound considerable, giving up a thousand or more to redress my wife would be excessive." "Eight hundred," she corrected, smiling foolishly into the dark. Her searching hands found the silk of her dress, and she hauled it on over her head, leaving the back gaping as she moved closer to Dumitru so that her cold cheek lay against the warmth of his chest. "Thank you," she whispered. "Unconventional women defy conventional wisdom," he whispered back, and she could tell he was needling her like he used to. She sighed dramatically and shifted her head so that she could hear his strong heart beat. "Well, it is a start." And then she went to sleep.

Chapter Nineteen

Dumitru never saw the ambush. The next afternoon, he and Alcy were riding along in companionable silence when twenty bandits stepped out of the woods on either side of the road, pincering the travelers between them. One fired a warning shot into the air—the demand for surrender. Dumitru had no alternative, for he had not even been able to steal a knife from the Servian soldiers, and so he raised his hands slowly to show that they were empty, cursing himself for his inattention and poor preparation. He heard the rustle of fabric as Alcy did likewise, could almost feel her fear, as intense as his own anger, but he did not dare to look. One of the brigands began to yell in Bulgarian. "What are they saying?" Alcy whispered harshly, the words cutting through the air between them. "I don't speak a word of Bulgarian, but I can take a good guess that it is something with the general meaning of, 'Give us your horses and all your valuables,'" Dumitru muttered back. With a glance at their guns, he decided it would be good for his health to avoid the language of the Ottoman court and give Servian a try. "We are peaceful Christian travelers!" he called to them. The men burst out laughing at that, and Dumitru felt with disgust that there was far too much hilarity

among bandits. If one was going to live on theft and murder, one should at least be properly grim about it. "Then I suppose we won't kill you, you son of a dog!" one of them shouted back genially—not that they hadn't already decided that, since Dumitru and Alcy were still alive instead of lying in the road in a pool of their own blood. "You look well dressed," the man continued. "Is there anyone to ransom you?" "No," Dumitru replied. Honesty was definitely the best policy, at least as far as ransom was concerned. "But there is also no one to listen to us or care if we tried to report you." "Interesting," the bandit said, grinning. "So maybe you think it would be better to leave you here than take you as hostages, where we would just have to shoot you, anyway, since letting hostages go without a ransom is bad for our reputation." "I'd certainly prefer it," Dumitru said, keeping his expression neutral. He heard Alcy shift behind him, and he prayed that she would not do anything foolish. "Then again, you might be lying," the bandit, their leader, Dumitru was now convinced, added. "To what end?" Dumitru retorted. "If we had a choice, spending a few days with you only to be released with horses and property when the ransom arrived would certainly be preferable to being stripped of our supplies hundreds of miles from our home." This caused a brief, multilingual stir among the brigands as they discussed the likelihood of this possibility, the conclusion of which was their agreement that he was probably telling the truth. Good start, Dumitru thought. Now he had some credibility among them. He had a feeling that he was going to need it—and their next words proved him right. "Why don't we take just her with us, then?" another bandit put in—in Servian, and therefore for Dumitru's benefit, he was certain. The Bulgar added an obscene suggestion, and the rest of the bandits who understood the language laughed uproariously. It was time for some fast talking, Dumitru decided; his little truth had been the sweetener for the big lie he was about to serve them. "If you want her, you can have her," Dumitru said, putting equal measures of anger and contempt in his voice, intensely grateful that Alcy could not understand a word of what was being said. That made the brigands pause as they looked Alcy over suspiciously. "What's wrong with her?" the second bandit demanded. "Who cares?" said a third. "If you don't want her, I do!" The bandits all began talking at once then, half in Servian and half in Bulgarian. "Shut up," ordered their leader, and they subsided—resentfully, or so it seemed to Dumitru. "Well? What's wrong with her?" he repeated. "Nothing wrong with her," Dumitru said. "It's her mother. She is a witch." This announcement caused another outburst, louder than the first. As far as Dumitru could make out, it was a raging row among those bandits who believed in witches, those who did not, those who thought the story was possible, those who thought it was made up to keep them away from the woman, and

those who appeared to be arguing all points at once. Dumitru waited until their leader called them to order again, and then he said, "Just look at her! Have you ever seen a mortal woman look like that without the aid of black arts? She is as innocent as a lamb, but her mother…" He shook his head. "I was once a great lord, until I set my eyes on her. Do you see my clothes? And the ones I bought for her? I was a rich man! I lured her away from her mother, and that witch put a terrible curse on her in revenge. She loves her daughter too much to hurt her, but anyone who comes near her is doomed. Like you, I laughed. I did not believe that a witch-woman could hurt me! But within a month of taking her into my home, I lost my lands to my brother, I was stripped of all my wealth and worldly goods"—he had a sudden inspiration and dropped his voice dramatically—"my hair turned white in the space of a week and my privates have shriveled into those of an old man's. Have you ever seen a man as young as I with white hair? But who can deny the evidence upon my own head? Anyone who comes near the witch's daughter will suffer as I have." As he spoke, the bandits' expressions began to change. The ones who had been wary now betrayed open fear, the ones who had been doubtful showed a grudging belief, and even the most belligerent looked slightly uncertain. The leader looked around at his men, and Dumitru could tell what he was thinking. If he took the woman, it hardly mattered whether she was the daughter of a witch or not. The first thing that went wrong, however small, would be blamed upon her, and the men would grow jittery and make more and more mistakes until it broke their nerve and someone died, and then the curse might as well be real. Dumitru waited, scarcely daring to breathe, until the leader made his decision. "Take their horses and everything on them," the bandit leader finally announced, "but don't lay a finger on the man or the girl!" "Get off your horse," Dumitru muttered to Alcy in French, hiding his wash of relief. This was better than he had dared to hope for, for it meant that they would be able to keep her cloak and his overcoat, as well as the satchel of emergency provisions that he wore as a precaution under the cover of his coat. Alcy obeyed without question, her face white and her movements jerky, following him promptly onto the verge when the bandits ordered them off the road before they would seize their horses' reins. Within moments, the Bulgars had melted back into the woods, and Dumitru and Alcyone were alone. "How did you do that?" Alcy demanded as soon as the men were gone. "I had thought we were dead for certain that time." "I told them your mother was a witch," he said simply. At her expression of stark disbelief, he burst out laughing despite the precariousness of their new situation. "Don't look so shocked. Peasants still believe in witches here." "Evidently so," she said, still looking a little dazed. "What do we do now?" "We walk," he said succinctly. "I am carrying a day's rations, and after that—well, we'll see. This is why I had already planned to go to Sofia. Without an armed guard, this kind of encounter will inevitably occur again." "How lovely," she said dryly, and Dumitru was glad to see an approximation of her normal color return to her face, though it still had a slightly gray tinge. "Well, we aren't getting any closer by standing here." And with that, she turned toward Sofia and began to walk. The road that had seemed tolerably smooth from the back of a horse was actually riddled with potholes and spiked with rocks, mud from the melting snow miring their feet and turning the bottom six inches of Alcy's skirt brown. Dumitru paced himself carefully, keeping a sharp eye on Alcy, but it was hard to tell

how the trip was taxing her, for she trudged along in determined silence, her expression so distant that Dumitru doubted she even saw their path. They passed through a village several hours later, and Dumitru found a distrustful peasant who understood enough Servian to tell him that Sofia was only fifteen miles distant. He translated for Alcy, who smiled tiredly and asked, "Any chance that we would get blankets or stop for the night here?" He shook his head. "Even if I were to trade away my overcoat, it would be too dangerous. Remember the knez? Passing through a village like this is danger enough." "Well, then," she said, setting her jaw, "let's walk through the night to reach Sofia by sunrise. If we stop long, I will freeze for certain, and if we travel by night, the local outlaws should be sound asleep." After a moment's hesitation, Dumitru shrugged. He didn't like her solution, but he couldn't think of a better one. "As you wish." And so they walked. The sun set, and though the moon was new, the sky glittered with the cold white light of thousands of stars, lighting the road in a pale ribbon that cut between the blackness of the forest on either side. "What are you thinking about when you look like you are gazing into another world?" Dumitru asked during a break that he had called after Alcy had stumbled three times within a minute. They sat on a dry patch of weeds on the side of the road, merging into the shadows that the trees behind them cast. "Mathematical notation," she answered, a slightly belligerent note in her voice, as if she anticipated a derisive response. Instead, Dumitru just smiled. He should have known. "And can you feel your feet when you are thinking about mathematical notation?" She giggled at that, a startlingly girlish sound. "Not nearly so well, which precisely is why I am thinking about it even though I can scarcely string two coherent thoughts together. I may not be getting anywhere with my maths, but I am getting somewhere with my feet." "I would try it, but I think I would confuse myself and fall over," Dumitru said. "Which is what I did," she said, and he could feel the smile in her voice even though it was slightly cracked with exhaustion. "Which is, I assume, why we are both sitting here now instead of getting closer to Sofia." "Shall we be getting on, then?" he asked. "I'm not getting much rest sitting down," she confessed. "I start shivering as soon as we stop moving, and then it is just that much harder to get going again." Dumitru stood and pulled off his overcoat, cursing again his carelessness in getting caught by bandits—for the second time, no less. "Oh, no," she protested. He thrust it at her, but she held up her hands in a warding posture, leaning away. "No, Dumitru. I have on at least as many layers as you. I will be fine as soon as we get moving again." He hesitated. He could not make out her expression in the moonless night, but he could imagine it well enough—her tilted chin, her determined mouth. He sighed and pulled the coat back on, its warmth enfolding him again. "If I see you shivering, you are going to wear this," he warned, offering her a hand

up. "As long as we keep moving, I will be fine," she promised, taking it. But Alcy was wrong. As the night drew on, the bitter coldness of the air grew more profound, and it seeped into her clothing and crept up her extremities until it settled in her belly, gnawing at her guts until she walked half hunched over with her muscles cramping in protest. Her fingers seemed to creak whenever she forced them to move, and her mud-heavy skirts clung to her legs, tangling around her ankles, the wetness soaking through her two layers of stockings and running down into her shoes until she could not feel her feet anymore. It occurred to her, not for the first time but with more impact than ever before, that the clothing of the weaker sex did not so much compensate for its deficiencies as hobble it further, and she envied Dumitru his trousers and overcoat. Soon, though, she was too tired and too cold to feel anything as definite as envy. Her headache from yesterday had only gotten worse, and now it throbbed in time to every step, the soreness in her throat nagging at her with every swallow. As time passed, those feelings grew in both distance and intensity, until she knew that her head was pounding and yet it seemed to be happening to someone else, far away. Numbers and symbols danced in the space behind her eyes, moving in patterns she was certain were deeply significant if only she could understand them as the half-dreaming state of the last stages of exhaustion slipped her senses into a confused medley of hallucination and reality. The thin, frigid road stretched out in front of her, as empty of meaning as it was of men, and she felt as if she were wading through a fog in which her thoughts swam away from her like sluggish, sullen fish and mingled with the phantasms that tugged at the edges of her vision, as intangible as the shape of Dumitru that trudged along beside her. The cadence of her steps filled her universe, driving out sense and sensation, until there was nothing else that was real except the swing of her leg, the distant weight of ground somewhere under her feet, and then the push that sent the other leg swinging after the one before… Everything lurched, suddenly, and a pressure on her elbow made her blink. Dumitru. He was in front of her, the only solid thing within the swirling, consuming fog that some part of her told her was not really there. He spoke. The words made no sense. They tried to float away, but something in his tone of voice stirred Alcy, and she reached out after them, pulling them from the oblivion of the fog and ordering them laboriously in her mind. "My God, Alcy, you nearly fell! You didn't even try to catch yourself." "I am fine," she tried to say, and she must have succeeded, for a moment later, her ears heard those words file in seemly order into her brain. "No, you're not." It was easier to understand him now. He reached out, and a moment later, she felt him touch her cheek, the two events strangely disjointed in her mind. His hand felt cold. "You're burning up," he said. She could not see his face. "Come on. I have a tinderbox. I will light a fire." He pulled her to one side, and she walked, floated after him, her feet touching the ground but not feeling it. He pushed on her shoulders, and she sat down, and that was the last thing she remembered until she felt someone shaking her shoulders. Dumitru. She had thought that before, hadn't she? Just a moment ago… She opened her eyes, and his face swam in front of her, bathed in orange light. Hot orange light that she could feel against her face as

well. "A fire," she said, her frozen brain, frozen fear beginning to thaw in its warmth. "Yes," he agreed. His face looked tight, deep lines etched into its young planes, the dark shadow of a nascent beard making him look worn in a way she had never noticed before. White hair, lined face, too old, too old on her young husband… The fire. Her mind shuttled back to that. It was important.. They shouldn't have a fire. Men would come, they would come and horrible things would happen… "Put it out," she said. Was that her voice? It rasped and croaked. "Too dangerous." Her throat ached. "No," Dumitru said. "You need it." She closed her eyes because the light hurt them too much, and she felt a warm blanket—no, they didn't have blankets—settle across her. Coat. It was Dumitru's overcoat. She wanted to protest, but her head pounded with a force that forbade speech. She felt his hands at her feet, pulling on her shoes, and then her sodden stockings came off. The warmth of his hands was a glorious agony, but distant, like it was happening to someone else. He made a hissing noise, and she opened her eyes enough to see his face twisted at the sight of her feet. "Alcy, sweet, sweet Alcy," he muttered, but the words had a broken note, all out of tune. Warm. She was beginning to remember what it felt like to be warm. After another moment, she felt Dumitru's long body against hers, and then she dropped into sleep like a stone to the bottom of a deep, dark well. Dumitru's face roasted from the fire, and he sweated with the heat of Alcy's burning body pressed against him even as his back and buttocks, hanging out from the edge of his overcoat, froze. Alcy did not stir, her utter, unnatural stillness waking a primal fear in the deepest recesses of his brain even as the slight movement of her breathing reassured him that she still lived. She needed a warm room, a soft bed, beef broth, and thick blankets. She needed someone who knew what to do—a doctor or a woman knowledgeable in nursing. She needed to be safe. But he could give her none of these things, and so he simply held her tightly against him, feeling the rhythm of her breath, and he hoped, and he prayed. He drifted in and out of nightmares, his sleep scarcely distinguishable from the fear-ridden obsessions of wakefulness. He stirred to feed the fire whenever it died down until the time that he rose to grab another branch and realized that the world beyond the ring of light the fire made was no longer swallowed in blackness but was graying with the approaching dawn. He looked down at Alcy's face. Even in the ruddy glow of the campfire, it was pallid and waxy and dry. Why hadn't he noticed that she was more than tired? Why hadn't she said anything? But what could he have done if she had? He dropped a few more branches onto the fire and stalked around the place where he had made their hasty camp, viewing it from all directions. It was well hidden from the road, in the center of a coppice that formed an isolated island surrounded by fields. The day was dead calm, and so the smoke from the fire rose straight up, lost against the backdrop of low gray clouds that had swept in some time after they had stopped. Alcy was as safe as she was likely to be until they were ensconced in Ognyan Penev's house in Sofia, Dumitru told himself, and his presence was not likely to make her any safer. He looked down the road. They could not be farther than five miles from Sofia now. He did not think he could carry Alcy that far,

and even if he could, transporting her through the cold in such a rough manner was a risk he dared not take. Three hours—surely it would not take him longer than three hours to make it to Sofia, find Penev's house, convince the man to give him a carriage, and get back to Alcy. She could make it alone for three hours. He returned to the camp to find Alcy sitting up and blinking dumbly at the fire. "There you are," she said hoarsely, expressionlessly, neither surprise nor relief in her face. "I am sorry I ruined it all and got ill." Her hollow eyes looked dully at him, and he could tell that it took her an effort to speak. "Because we were having so much fun before then?" he asked lightly, swallowing down the fear that rose like bile in the back of his throat. "Ha!" she croaked. He gave her the canteen of water—giving thanks again that the Bulgar bandits had not searched him— and she took it, drinking it obediently even as she grimaced with every swallow. "My feet are a mess," she said then, looking at them dispassionately as she stretched them out in front of the fire. "Yes," he agreed, his stomach lurching a little at the sight of them, not because they were awful enough to make him sick but because they were hers, and he had held them in his hands when they were smooth and flawless—lovely, even. Now the skin was softened from being waterlogged too long, puffy blisters covering the pads of the balls while torn, bloody ones marked her heels, and the tips of two of her toes on her left foot showed a hint of the terrible whiteness of flesh that had been touched by frostbite. "They hurt now," she added. "They didn't last night. It was good that you stopped when you did." "You couldn't have gone another quarter mile," Dumitru retorted, denying her implied thanks. "If anything, I stopped too late. I am going to gather some more deadfall now for the fire, and then I am going to go into Sofia and get a carriage to come fetch you. I will be back before noon. Can you feed the fire until then?" Alcy sat silently for a moment. "Yes," she said, in the same affectless tone that she had been using since she awoke. "But you will need money." "I have a friend, remember?" Dumitru assured her. "We don't need money." "I have money," she insisted, her brow creasing as she looked at him. She must be slipping into confusion. "Yes, I know," Dumitru soothed. "Your money is safe. It is in Geneva, remember?" "No," she said, grimacing. "I. Have. Money." She paused, as if considering how to approach a difficult problem. "Part of my allowance. In my corset cover. The Servians never found it." Dumitru stared at her for a long moment. "How much?" "I don't know. Seventy-five, eighty pounds' worth in thaler." She looked even grayer with the effort of their conversation. "I didn't tell you because I was going to escape. Then it didn't matter. Now it does. Take it. Help me."

Getting back to Severinor would require at least a hundred and fifty English pounds, but eighty was a start, and it would certainly be enough to persuade Penev of his identity and sincerity. He helped Alcy out of her corset and then back into her dress. She sank, exhausted, back on top of her cloak, too tired to protest as he tucked his overcoat around her. "Are you sure you can keep the fire up?" he asked. "Yes," she said dully, even as she shut her eyes again. He unfastened the corset cover and shook the corset upside down, and sure enough, a double fistful of thaler came tumbling out. "Clever Alcy," he whispered, wishing he had possessed as much foresight as she had. He left her with a pile of wood, the canteen, and the last of their bread, and with the money weighing down a pouch he fashioned inside his shirt, he went out to the road and turned south by southeast, toward Sofia and their best hope. In scarcely half an hour, Dumitru reached the outskirts of the city. He had traveled more slowly than he liked, for he had barely rested during the night, and he had a dull, throbbing headache that made his steps drag and his thoughts slow. He was grateful that he did not meet with any more brigands, for he doubted he would have been able to talk his way out of anything at that point. As he passed through the outskirts of the city, the huts grew closer together, then larger into two stories, and finally the houses began to be built one against the next so that their long walls shadowed the narrow, angled streets. Occasionally, he would pass a larger house with an inward-looking courtyard, or a church or mosque would break up the monotony of the labyrinth of plastered walls. Sofia was the seat of the Beylerbey of Rumelia, the Ottoman governor of all of Turkey's European holdings, so Dumitru had numerous contacts in the city. But Dumitru judged it far too dangerous to come near the beylerbey, and he had only two regular contacts who were not directly associated with the court: a petty Jewish shopkeeper whose main trade was providing a discreet location for the assignations of upper-class Moslem wives and a wealthy Christian Bulgar merchant. The second of these was Dumitru's destination. It took only a dozen questions of likely-looking shopkeepers to be directed to the man's house, which was encouragingly expansive—Ognyan Penev was a man who could easily afford the expense of sending Dumitru and Alcy back home and see it as a good investment. Talking his way past the suspicious servant at the front gate was harder, but at least the man spoke German, and soon enough, he found himself shown through the courtyard to a parlor, where he was assured that the merchant would meet him promptly. And he did. Ognyan Penev, a middle-aged man with twinkling black eyes and an expansive manner, stepped through the door opposite the one Dumitru had entered. When Dumitru stood, he waved a hand dismissively. "Sit down, sit down! If you are who I think you are, you have no reason to rise for me." The first tingle of alarm running through him, Dumitru obeyed. "And who do you think I am?" he asked cautiously. The man grinned. "Why, my dear associate, you must be none other than our missing count from Wallachia. The sultan's spies in Sofia have known that you were traveling from Belgrade for three days now, and as you know, half the sultan's spies here are mine, as well. And yours, too, of course, as long as you keep sending me such a generous incentive to share the information that I collect—for purely

mercantile reasons, of course." "Of course," Dumitru agreed, taking an immediate dislike to the man's manner. Maybe the shopkeeper would have been the better choice. The man was not nearly so rich, yet he had connections— "And since this Wallachian personage is so very distinctive and so very clever, what would be more natural than him escaping his captors and appearing on my doorstep?" the man continued, breaking into Dumitru's thoughts. "Or so I said to myself when the doorkeeper told me there was a mysterious, young but silver-haired stranger on my doorstep, insisting upon seeing me. So what is it, exactly, that you want?" It was too late to change his mind now, and so Dumitru told a carefully abbreviated version of their story as quickly as he could, a wary reticence keeping him from making reference to the money he was carrying, for he sensed that admitting to it would only make his situation more precarious. He should have gone to a livery stable and hired a carriage immediately, then installed Alcy and himself in an inn before sending out tentative feelers in the direction of his contacts. God, but his head hurt. He had been too tired, too afraid to think clearly, set upon a course he had originally decided upon because he had no other option. He only hoped that he had not made a fatal mistake. Even if he had, though, revealing Alcy's location was still her only hope. If someone did not come for her, she would die when night came and she could not gather enough wood for the fire. And so he spoke at length of her charm and startling beauty with the hope that the Bulgar would seek her out for ignoble reasons if altruistic ones would not suffice. "Well," Penev said heartily when he finished, "I will send someone out for the lady immediately. I think I know the place you describe." He clapped his hands twice, loudly, and a dozen large men in fezzes and frock coats stepped through the door behind him, spreading out along one wall of the room. Dumitru stood, certain now of the trap. The room seemed to swim a little around him. The merchant spoke in a string of Bulgarian, and two of the servants bowed and stepped out. "Yes," Penev continued in German, still smiling. "We will take care of your little wife. The Beylerbey of Rumelia will be very, very pleased to see you both, and I am afraid that such pleasure means more to me than your occasional payments." The remaining servants advanced. Dumitru turned, but there were already more men crowding through the other doorway behind him. Caught. He spat a curse. All the frustration and anger at the last two weeks overwhelmed him, and even as he knew it was futile, he leaped at the nearest one, closing the space and swinging hard in the same movement, his fist meeting the man's nose with a satisfying crunch. There were instantly more targets crowding around him, and again he swung, and again. Blows rained down upon him in turn, slammed into him from every direction. Overturning chairs and tables, he fought his way back against the wall as Penev shrieked for the men to be careful of his furniture. Dumitru struck out too many times to count, hitting for him and Alcy and their shattered hopes. He felt the pressure of the fists that smacked into his flesh, but he did not feel any pain even when the last one hit him so hard in the jaw that lights exploded in his eyes and his head slammed back against the wall. And after that, he felt nothing at all.

Alcy woke to the sound of approaching footsteps. Dumitru—the carriage, her sluggish mind thought, just coherent enough to be relieved. She opened her eyes, blinking away the bleariness of pain and fever and exhaustion. But the men who stepped through the trees were strangers. Terror thrilling through her, Alcy stumbled to her blistered feet. Everything spun around her dangerously at her sudden movement, blackness rushing up to consume her. "Oh, damn, not again," she muttered—and then the darkness swallowed her, and she knew no more.

Chapter Twenty

Alcy did not know how long she spent in the dark, warm chamber, perfumed with strange scents of Eastern spice and foreign medicines. At first, she was too sick to care about anything. She was aware of the passage of time and of faces, which gradually became familiar, bending over her, tending to her, and she drank what they told her to drink and coughed when they told her to cough. But they answered none of the questions she tried to ask, and so after a while, she gave up trying. Instead, she stared at the patterns of tile on the floor and walls as they danced and wavered in the dim light of the single candle that lit the room, day and night. Eventually, though, her fever broke, leaving her sweating and miserable but clearheaded, even if it hurt to think too much, and her dreams lost their ghoulish, frantic edge and became ordinary nightmares. But again and again the same dream came to her, in which she and Dumitru were trapped in a room with no doors or windows, with black and white patterns of square tiles on the floor that shifted as she looked at them, and she had to understand what they had to do with her and the three huge right triangles that dominated the room before she and Dumitru could escape. Then one day, she opened her eyes to discover that the fever had entirely left her. And the answer to the tile dream came to her in a rush, and she laughed—hysterically, bitterly, foolishly, until she was shaking with weakness and mirth as tears rolled down her face. "Countess von Severinor?" the woman who sat at her bedside asked, her voice full of alarm. That is what everyone here called her, though she was certain she had never told them her name. "What is wrong?" "Nothing is wrong," Alcy said, lying weakly upon the divan-like bed and staring at the ceiling above her. "I have just developed a new kind of mathematical notation, and it will not do me or anyone one whit of good." And she spent the rest of her time until she fell asleep again staring at nothing as half her mind turned her fears for Dumitru over and over again like a pebble that had long been worn smooth and the other half arranged groups of extracomplex numbers into dancing grids and ran them through all the calculations that had so frustrated her before. Soon—the next day?—the heavy curtains were thrown back to reveal a wide, sunny enclosed garden two floors below, and she was allowed to dress and to move around the room, though the shakiness of her legs alarmed her and prevented much exertion. She was not allowed to leave, nor did the various women who waited on her answer any of her questions, but when she asked for books in German, English, French, Latin, or Greek, they brought her an ample selection to choose from, which brought the total of her knowledge about her new captor or host to three facts: that he was rich, that he had an impressive library, and that he was a Mohammedan. The third had required practically no deduction at all, for most of the women who attended her wore Turkish trousers and made frequent and decidedly

unchristian references to God. Alcy settled upon a handwritten historical treatise that appeared to date from Byzantine times, written in a Greek dialect that was hard enough for her to decipher that it required every ounce of her attention. She read, and she waited. Finally, four days later, the woman who was currently attending her said, without any preamble, "Your husband was very sick for a long time, but now he is better. The beylerbey has spoken with him now that the danger of contagion is over. The beylerbey has decided that you and he will be taken to the sultan for him to do as he pleases, and I am to come with you. My name is Aygul." Alcy's heart leapt—with fear and relief so intense that she had to swallow back a sob. Dumitru was alive, and he was here, but he was in as much danger as either of them had ever been in. "I want to see him," she said. "The beylerbey?" The woman looked scandalized. "My husband. I want to see him." She had to bite her lip to keep herself from saying anything more—to beg, to make wild threats, to promise anything as long as she could be with him, if only for a moment. The woman's expression softened. "That is not possible here, but have no fear—you will see him soon enough. The beylerbey has decided that both of you are too delicate and too dangerous to risk on horses. You will leave tomorrow, and you will ride together in a carriage." She paused, and then said more hesitantly, "I have heard your story, how he stole you away and disgraced you, how you reviled him, yet he made you an honest woman and saved you from the Servians. It is very romantic and noble. I am glad that you have come to see him as your lord." "Yes," said Alcy, feeling with a giddiness that had an edge of hysteria that Aygul's idea of a noble marriage would have very little appeal in England. "Very romantic." And then, with a mass of emotion she could barely contain roiling through her, she went back to reading the treatise, for there was nothing else that she could do. Dumitru sat back against the squabs with his eyes closed, too tired and weak to think. As soon as the Alexandrian doctor had pronounced him past the risk of death or spreading his disease to anyone else, Mehmed Reshid Pasha had spent three solid days interviewing him, taking scrupulous care of his health but pushing him as hard as he dared. Dumitru considered himself fortunate the beylerbey had decided that killing or torturing him might displease the sultan, if for no other reason than that the autocrat would prefer to have the exclusive privilege in that regard. But the beylerbey had no reason to resort to such methods, anyhow, for Dumitru talked as freely as he would have under any abuse. His only requirement had been assurances of Alcy's safety, which he had gotten in the form of the clothing she had been wearing and a description of her behavior since her recovery, which was so idiosyncratic and yet so predictable that he had wanted to laugh and kiss the veiled woman who had brought the report, so convinced was he that his wife was now safe and well. Dumitru was no patriot or revolutionary. He was a minor, self-interested prince whose self-interest, at that moment, was in keeping the beylerbey happy, for both his sake and Alcy's. He used the truth as a convenient vehicle to convince Mehmed Reshid Pasha of the lies he wished him to know, and he took great pleasure in imparting enough information about Penev's double dealings—such as he had been able to work out about them while he had been ill—that Dumitru was satisfied that the merchant would be

repaid in kind for his perfidy. At the end of the three days, the beylerbey had announced that it was time for Dumitru to continue on his journey to Istanbul, now in the hands of his fourth set of captors. He would answer no more questions about Alcy, however, and Dumitru did not wish the man to think that he had held anything back by making allusions to additional information that he could impart. And so, in ignorance to everything but his eventual destination, he had been shuffled into a Turkish-style carriage in the middle of a grand cavalcade of several dozen Bulgar-Ottoman troops. The carriage door opened, and his heart almost stopped as he opened his eyes to see Alcy standing in the doorway. She was thinner than she had been; he could tell that immediately despite the Turkish shawl that obscured her figure with its matching head veil hanging loosely down. Her skin had a new translucent quality that was otherworldly, as if she were some modern-day, black-haired Eurydice come back from the land of the dead. Her fragility was now striking, almost startling, rousing in him primitive urges of protectiveness with a strength he had never felt before, and her green eyes looked even larger and more luminous now that the features of her face were more finely drawn. Could any experience that was not actually disfiguring do anything but throw her beauty into an even sharper, rarer light? When she had arrived in Severinor, she had been the picture of conventional loveliness, a woman a man felt immediately attracted to and possessive of, but now her illness had transformed her into something sublime. "It is you," she breathed, a faint tension going out of her frame all at once. "I scarce dared believe…" She stepped into the carriage, and a tall, veiled Turkish woman followed, shutting the door behind them. Ignoring her, Alcy kissed him with a fierceness that belied her new appearance of fragility. God, but her lips felt so good, her body thin but so real, so wonderfully real against his. She smelled now of foreign perfumes and tasted of exotic spices, but under those she was still herself, the immutable, incredible scent and flavor that were as much a part of her as her mind and body and indomitable spirit. Finally, she broke away with a sigh, and he urged her down into the seat next to him. She sat—sank into the seat in a way that betrayed her weakness despite the strength of her kiss. She leaned against him, her body slack. "I didn't think I would ever see you again," she said in French, with a glance at their chaperone, who was now attempting to look disapproving yet seemed more impressed than anything, from what he could read of the narrow strip of face around her eyes. "Nor I you," he confessed. She snuggled against him. "I am frightened, Dumitru," she said even more softly. "Don't be." His heart contracted at her words. "Do not tell me there is nothing to be frightened of," she retorted, abruptly severe. "I know where we are going. I know what the sultan will do to you when we get there." I doubt that you can imagine it, my love, Dumitru thought, with a kind of amused despair. But aloud, he said, "I meant that being afraid will do neither of us any good." She paused for a long moment, then said, "Neither of us will escape again, will we? They told me you were sick, too, and I can see it in your face. I was planning to tell you to run away without me, that I would be fine, but now I see that it is not possible." Her smile was sad. "We would have been better served to have saved our escape from the Servians for when we were closer to Istanbul." "I would not leave without you, even if I had the chance," Dumitru said flatly.

"That is stupid," she snapped, her eyes flashing with fierceness. "I never said it wasn't," he agreed simply. "But it is a moot point now, isn't it?" "Yes," she admitted. "We are together for now, for better or for worse." Outside the carriage, the Bulgar-Ottoman captain shouted orders, and there was a stir as the men fell into their places. Dumitru said, "I have something that belongs to you." He slid the carefully wrapped bundle of Alcy's money out from under his coat and handed it to her. "Will it do me any good?" she asked, looking startled as she took it and slipped it into her skirts. She must have a pocket hidden under them somewhere, Dumitru thought. Clever of her to manage it, if the Bulgars had not brought her one without her asking. "I doubt it, considering where we are going, but you never can be certain. It will do you more good than it can possibly do me, though—that I know for sure." "I will do everything I can, Dumitru," Alcy said earnestly. "I do not know how I can possibly change things, but if there is the slightest opportunity, I will not fail to exploit it." Dumitru frowned. "Don't risk yourself, Alcy. I could never forgive either one of us if you were hurt." She looked away from him. "I am not afraid. If I did get hurt, you would probably never hear of it, anyway." Dumitru knew there was no reply that would not make her even more stubborn, and so he kept his peace as the carriage lurched into motion, carrying them toward Istanbul and his doom. As they traveled away from Sofia, they left the wilds of Servia and northern Bulgaria behind in another world. Now the road was paved, the fifteen-hundred-year-old causeway that ran south to the ancient Byzantine capital kept in good repair by the sultan's roadcrews, and villages and inns stood at regular intervals, catering to Ottoman and Greek caravans and the passage of government officials. The unseasonable winter had given way to milder late-autumn frosts, growing fractionally wanner by the day as they moved away from the high, cold interior of the peninsula and closer to Istanbul and the tempering waters of the Mediterranean. Day after day, Dumitru watched through the glassless, latticed window of the carriage as forest gave way increasingly to field and village, and Alcy sat next to him, largely silent once they had each told the other of all that had happened since they had last met. Her head rested in the curve of his shoulder as she stared out of her own window while her new maid sat across from them and busied herself with her handiwork. When he and Alcy spoke at all, it was of inconsequentials. each shying away from anything that might acknowledge the reality of their impending doom. Dumitru shared trivia about the Byzantine and Ottoman empires and the lives and the habits of the people whom their grand cavalcade passed and of his boyhood and the scrapes he got into with his best friend before that boy sneaked into a bull pen one night and was gored to death midprank. In turn, Alcy told him stories about growing up in Leeds; about her mentor-friend Ezekiel, whom she might have married if things had been different; about her governess Gretchen and the other odd friendships she had made over the years; and about her four spectacularly unsuccessful seasons in London.

"You miss the city," Dumitru observed. "Any city." "Yes, I do," she admitted, looking up at him in a way that made her green eyes seem catlike. "That is why I wanted Vienna when I first came to Severinor. You were right: I didn't care about the court. It was the energy and bustle and life of a city that I wanted, the museums and universities and operas and public institutions. In some cities, there are also literary and scientific salons and even clubs in which women are welcome—perhaps not as equals but not as mere decorations, either." "Most often if they are whores or hostesses," Dumitru put in dryly. "Even so," she said, dismissing his teasing with a toss of her head that set the loose ends of her short curls to bouncing. "I miss Paris, sometimes," he admitted. "Most often after the harvest is in for the year, the last of the summer projects are completed, and there is nothing to do for the winter but to direct some minor construction and repairs when the weather is fine and spend the test of the days and half the long nights hunkered down in front of a fire, drinking brandy and reading books I've read a dozen times before." "Well, then, we will winter in Paris," Alcy said with decision. "Or in Germany. Or Scotland—I have several good correspondents at the University of Edinburgh who would not be too startled to find that I am a woman. Or Cambridge, perhaps." Dumitru chuckled, pulling her close to him. "You would have to reach into your three percent if you wanted that. I have already warned you that five thousand pounds don't go far when you have fourteen hundred square miles of field and wilderness to drag through four centuries of development in less than one lifetime." "I would reach into the principal in any case, to fund your canal," she retorted. "How much shall that cost, in any case?" "Fifteen thousand," he said. It seemed like an eternity ago that his greatest preoccupation had been the improvement of transportation in his small corner of the world. "My most conservative estimates indicate that it would earn six hundred pounds a year, assuming that we made no increase in our production." "Well," she said, snuggling close to him, "why didn't you say so in the first place? That would be four percent of the initial investment per annum—one-third again my current rate. The profits would be mine, of course, since the capital would be mine, yes?" He looked at her, startled, and then burst out laughing. "How about half? The capital might be yours, but the oversight and planning would be mine." "Sixty-forty," she countered. "Done," he said. She looked at him askance. "You truly mean that, don't you?" He paused. "You didn't?" She smiled a little. "No. You would want the full three hundred a year to invest in your lands, anyway, wouldn't you?" "I would like it, yes," he said admitted. "Severinor will be rich some day, but it will take thousands of thaler—or pounds—more to make it that way."

"Then you might as well have the profits of the canal to invest, as well," she said. "What about your independence?" he asked softly. She shrugged. "I will still have eighty-five thousand pounds of independence. Surely that will tide me over until my inheritance." Dumitru blinked. "Your inheritance?" "What do you think would happen to my father's mills after he dies?" Alcy asked. She laughed, apparently finding his expression amusing. "I don't mean that I will be a millowner. They will be sold, and if my mother is alive, she will have half, and I will have the other, along with a portion of whatever else he amasses over the years." "And how much will that be, if it is not too crass to ask?" He had been so focused upon her dowry that he had not even thought about inheritance. "I would not be surprised if the entirety of my father's fortune were quite in excess of a million pounds by then," she said, "including the mills, of course. There are probably dozens of peers whose total worth is more than that, land values being what they are… but I just might be the wealthiest woman in Britain, if not Europe." "And what will you do with all this money?" he asked, feeling a little dazed. "Found university houses for women at half a dozen universities in Europe, of course," she replied promptly, her eyes shining with purpose. "Men's minds are more easily changed by donations than by argument. And I would found an international scientific and philosophical society that would be open to both genders upon merit only and would offer generous rewards for the best work of that year. And"— she looked at him shyly—"I would make Severinor the most profitable and progressive region in all Europe, and I would save a generous sum aside, invested wisely, so that our children will have all the advantages of wealth as well as birth." "I thought you didn't like children," Dumitru said, moved even though they both knew how impossible her vision of the future now was. "I don't like babies," she corrected. "They are smelly and demanding and useless. But they grow out of that, and I think that I would love ours—yours—even if I don't particularly like them." "I am glad to hear that," he said, pulling her more firmly against his side. "I would love your babies, too, especially if one of them turned out to be a beautiful little girl with green eyes." "You mustn't pick favorites," she said with mock severity. "I'm sure I won't," he assured her, smiling. And then they lapsed into a silence that lasted a very long time. Each night, the cavalcade stopped at a different inn, and Dumitru was allowed the privacy of his own room while Alcy shared hers with only her maid, a small measure of respect for the damned. The soldiers spread out among the remaining rooms, pitilessly ejecting private travelers. As they pulled to a stop in front of an inn on the eighth evening after they left Sofia, Dumitru said, "I overheard the officers talking last night. We have three more nights until we are in Istanbul."

Alcy looked troubled. "I thought we had more time." She shrugged slightly, helplessly, her small, sad smile aimed inward. "I think I had almost convinced myself that we would always have a little more time." "All good things must come to an end," he replied, trying to be facetiously ponderous. It came out grim instead. "I suppose they must," she agreed inanely, dropping her gaze. The maid had already opened the carriage door and stepped out and was waiting impatiently in the yard. Alcy followed, looking small and lost as she followed the rawboned woman into the inn. Dumitru was escorted directly to his chamber as he was every night, armed men taking their places at his door and window to prevent his escape. Like every night, he ate his dinner alone and set his bowl and spoon aside—at the table, this time, for the room boasted such a luxury. The Ottoman officers would not allow him anything that had to be eaten with a knife, would not even allow him to shave himself in the mornings but sent in a boy with a burly guard to undertake the task. Dumitru wasn't sure if they were guarding against his suicide or his escape, but they had no reason to fear either. He had regained much of his strength, but he was still in no condition to rescue Alcy and keep them both alive for the time it took to elude nearly forty well-armed soldiers. And even though he had no reason to hope for salvation, no friends in Istanbul he might ask for favors nor any secret plan, and even though he knew the fate that awaited him in Istanbul was worse than—and would certainly end in— death, he still had no desire to end his life prematurely, not when even the smallest moment of time with his wife might yet remain to him. The desire was stupid and shortsighted, he was sure, yet it was no less real for that. There was a soft knock on his door, and Dumitru stood, startled, as it opened. He saw the sleeve of one of the soldiers who guarded it, and then it opened farther and revealed Alcy, holding a small, bare-flamed oil lamp and wearing a nightdress and an expression of desperate intensity. Before he could react, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. "You were right," she said. "You never know when a little money can be useful. I bribed the guards and the Bulgar maid. After all, what will be the difference in another few days as to whether they let me share your bedchamber now or not?" "Alcy…" he said. Her action was a pointless gesture, a prolongation of their separation and an intensification of their pain when it inevitably occurred. And if she became with child… That possibility ought to horrify him, for what could be the life of a baby born in such desperate circumstances? And yet the idea filled him with a horrible hope, an emotion he had not dared to feel for weeks. "Come here," he said roughly, and he took her into his arms. She clung to him, her mouth seeking his with a desperation that took his breath away, so soft and yet so fierce. She was naked under her nightdress—he felt her hard nipples press against his chest through the fabric of his shirt and undershirt. And she was hot, deliciously hot, not with fever but with desire. It was a matter of moments to pull her nightdress off, and he shed his own clothes almost as quickly. She stood, shivering a little in the light of the lamp, for the small brazier he had been given did not put out much heat. Her breasts were still full, but the plumpness of her hips had given way to leanness, sleek now instead of round. He raised his gaze to her eyes and realized that she was staring at his body, too—at the worst of the bruises that he had received at the hands of Penev's servants, which still left a fading yellow pattern across his rib cage.

"They beat you," Alcy said in a tone of horror. "Dumitru—" "It was mutual, believe me," he said. "I was rather… upset when I discovered that my Sofia contact was double-crossing me." Her eyes widened. "You hit him? You didn't say that!" "I couldn't get to him, but more than one of his henchmen were nursing injuries for the next several days," he said, somewhat sheepishly. "Good." Her tone was vicious. "They deserved it." He chuckled. "Alcy, my love, remind me not to cross you again. I might not survive it a second time." She grew suddenly sober. "You might not survive it now." "You cannot take responsibility for this," he said, shaking his head. "Now look, you're shivering so much you can barely stand." He pulled the top blanket off the bed and draped it around her shoulders. She gripped it, her expression stubborn. "I may not be fully responsible, but I must have a part of the blame." He sighed. "As must I. More than you, I think, since it could be argued that my actions started it all—and they certainly got us captured the second time." She started to speak, and he raised his hand to silence her. "No. Stop. Pretend I did not say that. We could argue all night exactly which actor deserves what portion of the blame, from us to the sultan to your new Bulgar maid. But who cares now? It doesn't matter." Alcy looked a little deflated. "You are right. It doesn't." She was silent for a moment, her lips pressed tightly together as she searched his face with her gaze, her lovely, familiar features tight and shadowed with suppressed emotion. Then she burst out, "Damn it, Dumitru, I don't want to lose you!" "I don't want to lose me, either," he said, and she made a hiccoughing kind of sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a sob and lunged awkwardly at him, bearing him down onto the bed under the force of her kiss. Dumitru's body was warm and solid under Alcy, as vibrant and alive as his kiss. She was crying, she realized, but she didn't care. She kissed him again and again, her mouth moving across his body, tasting him, memorizing him, making him hers in the only way that she could. She needed him like she had never needed anything before; she needed him with her, inside of her, a part of her that could never be taken away. She slid down his body, touching every part of him, kissing every part of him as he said, "Alcy, oh, my sweet, sweet Alcy, it will be all right." She pulled herself back up to look into his pale blue eyes through her tears, to comb her fingers through his silver hair. "No, it won't, Dumitru. That's the problem. It will never be right again." "You'll survive; you'll get free; I know you will," he insisted, holding her to him. "And you'll go back to England and have your babies that you love that grow into children that you like with some other man, and you'll found your women's universities and your society, and everyone will remember you forever." As he spoke, his arms tightened around her, as if he could bind her to his words with that action. "No, Dumitru," she protested in a choked whisper. "Yes." His voice turned fierce. "It is what must happen, Alcy, because if I know that you will be happy

again one day, then I can bear anything, but if I don't—" "I won't lose you, Dumitru," she said, her hands tightening into fists. "I won't. I can't. I refuse!" Her voice rose with each word until the last was loud and shrill enough that she froze at the sound of the guards shifting outside the door. Dumitru looked as if she had pulled out his heart and held it in her hand. "Then remember my words— later. Tonight, at least, neither of us has to lose anyone." "Yes," she whispered. She was still crying—and hiccoughing and sniffing. "Oh, God, what a mess I am! This wasn't the way it was supposed to go!" "It never is," he said, and he pulled her mouth down to his. It had never felt so hot, so angry, so wonderful. Alcy's defenses were a wreck, and raw reaction tore through her, searing her nerves, blistering across her mind. She sobbed against his mouth, and he kissed her harder. She wanted him, must have him, needed him like the air she breathed. When he released her, she shifted, found the hard heat of his erection, and angled it into her, sliding down it until their bodies met. "Alcy," he said roughly, his eyes closed and his face twisted in the pain they shared. She bit back another sob and moved, driven by the rhythm of love and agony in her blood, their blood. Her breasts brushed his chest with every beat, and he moved with her, and soon they were going faster and faster until it was all Alcy could do to hold on as she surged headlong into a wall of sensation that was so intense that it broke her, blinding, deafening, maddening, all the grief and joy and pleasure and pain in the world wrapped into a single moment. And still Alcy knew, with terrible clarity, that it wasn't enough, that nothing could ever be enough—that nothing either of them could do or feel would change anything in the end. She slumped against Dumitru's chest, spent and panting, and his arms surrounded her and held her tight. "I don't want tonight to end," she said. "Not ever." "I know." She felt the rumble of his words through his chest. "What are they going to do to you?" she asked in a small voice. "Alcy…" She could hear his frown. "Because I think I have a right to know," she continued, ignoring his warning. "They're going to torture you, aren't they? That's what the sultan always does, I've read." "Yes." The word was heavy and final. "For how long? What will they do? Where will they keep you? What will they do when they're finished?" The questions came out in a flood, all the horrible uncertainties that had been spinning through her mind finding voice at once. "I don't know, Alcy," Dumitru said. She still didn't dare to look at his face. "I have overheard the officers, and I know that we are both to be taken to the Topkapi Palace, but that is all." "It isn't much," she said. "I know," he murmured into her hair.

They were silent a long moment, and then Alcy said, "We could tip over the brazier and start a fire." Dumitru snorted, but softly. "And then what? We'd die from the smoke before it would spread to the rest of the inn." Alcy did look at him then. He was staring at the ceiling, his face blank. "Wouldn't that be better than—" "No," he said, his gaze snapping to her face. "Alcy, I want you to promise me that you will let me go, that you won't do anything to risk yourself for my sake." "I won't say any such thing," she said fiercely, tightening her hold on him. "Alcy, please," he said. "It is the last thing I will ever ask of you." Please. It was the first time she had ever heard him say the word. She bit her lip so that she would not start to cry again. She could promise. They were just words, after all. Only words. "I promise," she said, knowing that she lied. Dumitru, closed his eyes, and his face distorted with emotion for such a tiny fraction of a second that Alcy could not read it. "Thank you," he said. "Love me, Dumitru," she whispered into the night, her voice shaking again. "Love me until the dawn." And he did.

Chapter Twenty-one

That night and the next were devoured in a frenzy of love-making, and they talked incessantly in the brief lulls, terrified of the silence. When they slept at all, it was during the day, in the rattling carriage, but even then they only drifted into brief catnaps, both of them too desperate to seize hold of every last moment remaining to them to truly rest. By their last night, they were as wrung out as they were desperate, and they spent as much time clinging silently to one another as they did in more impassioned embraces. On the afternoon after their last night together, they entered Istanbul, just as Dumitru had predicted. It was a moment of historical significance for Severinor, and not just because of the fate that awaited him there. Istanbul had been a distant force, great yet invisible, that had defined the role of his family's land for more than a thousand years, and yet this was the first time to Dumitru's knowledge that any of its lords had laid eyes upon it. Their progress slowed as their highway merged with others coming from every direction and passed through the vast triple walls that had defended Constantinople for a thousand years before it was finally overrun by the Ottomans. Now, in the age of cannon, they were abandoned to time and the depredations of the poor who sought to salvage its stone to build their own houses. The city had once been truly Roman, but most of the oldest buildings had been swept away by the tide of centuries. Now it was unrelentingly Turkish in dress, construction, and manners beyond the sheltered enclaves of the Christians and the Jews. The shops the bordered the thoroughfares spilled their exotic contents into the street as the shouted invitations of the shopkeepers competed with the clamor of the hordes of men and animals that crowded the roads. The carriage crept forward. Around them pressed other carriages and wagons, men riding horses and mules, and others leading donkeys and camels.

Handcarts, cloth-swathed women, skirt-clad Turkish men, and curtained sedans all competed for space, jostling slowly forward under the shadowed, latticed upper stories of the buildings. Alcy's expression was awed even as her hand clung tightly to Dumitru's. Three times, they saw the slender forms of minarets soaring about the nearby structures, and three times they passed by. Then an enormous mosque began to dominate their view, its form familiar to every educated man in the empire. Dumitru had to swallow against a wave of sickness at the sight of those five incredible domes. "The Hagia Sophia," he murmured. "It stands just outside Topkapi Palace." Alcy gripped his hand even harder and said nothing. They passed in front of the ancient structure, the mosque that had once been the Byzantine's greatest cathedral. Dumitru felt insignificant in its shadow, his life as small and brief as a fly's. Perhaps what remains will be no longer than that now, he thought. At the edge of the mosque courtyard, the carriage turned down a road and through the open main gates of the palace. An expansive park greeted them, the road now lined with trees and grass upon which milled a crowd of people in the garb of a hundred trades. They stopped at a second inner gateway and were challenged. After a brief conversation, their escort dismounted and walked their horses through as the carriage rattled after, into another, smaller park with paths radiating away from the gates. Here, they stopped, and guards swarmed from the gatehouse to form a stiff double line in front of the Bulgar troops. Some sort of ceremonial exchange seemed to take place, and then the door to the carriage was thrown open by one of the palace guards. He ordered Alcy out. "Time for you to go," Dumitru translated for her. Alcy let go of his hand. She stood and descended, followed by her maid. Four of the guards stepped forward and surrounded her, guiding her away, down one of the side paths. It was his turn. Dumitru's stomach churned. Brave men were supposed to be a credit to their deaths— but what if he didn't want to die? It all seemed so ludicrous, so stupidly impossible that his life should be cut short due to reasons that now seemed more to do with spite than political realities. But everyone else seemed immune to the ridiculousness of his circumstances, and so Dumitru had no choice but to play his role with the feeling of one acting in a pantomime, rising and stepping into the inner park's early evening light. Instantly, the rest of the guards advanced, their hands on their weapons. Dumitru considered running. One shot in the back, and it would all be over. Except the guards had no reason to shoot him: He had nowhere to go, nothing to fight with. The best he could hope for was a beating, and his life would be filled with pain soon enough. There was no reason to seek it now. And so he simply stood as if rooted to the cobbles as they locked the shackles to his wrists. A guard gripped each of his elbows as the rest closed wary ranks around him, and he allowed them to hustle him down another path, away from Alcy. The sound of a scuffle made him look over his shoulder as his guards hesitated. It was Alcy, foolish Alcy, now fifty feet away, straining vainly toward him against the alarmed soldiers with her face twisted in an expression that tore his heart in two.

"Dumitru! I—I love you!" she shouted, her voice ringing across the hard cobbles over the sounds of the guards' muttered curses. Oh, God, Alcy. "And I love you," he said, softly. "Always." But I was right, all those weeks ago—it doesn't make one damned bit of difference in the end. Then he turned away again, and he was pushed along the path and through a doorway, and after that, he saw her no more. Alcy stared numbly in the direction that Dumitru had disappeared. "I thought we had longer. Just a little while longer," she whispered. "You thought you had forever." Startled, Alcy looked at Aygul. The large woman's expression was full of pity. "Come on now, my love," she said. "There's nothing to be done about it. I will look after you and ease your transition into the haremlik." "I won't be staying there, will I?" Alcy asked, her voice unsteady. Until that moment, none of her possible fates had seemed real to her, being both too fantastic for an ordinary Englishwoman and too insignificant when compared with Dumitru's doom to allow serious consideration. The woman shrugged fatalistically. "Who knows? I can see what you are thinking, though—that you are to be the sultan's concubine. Have no fear of that. You are not qualified, having been married before. But the haremlik is the place for more than just the sultan's personal women." "Oh," Alcy said, numbly. Their guards had let go of her as soon as she stopped struggling, and now they began to move again, guiding her not ungently along the path again and to a small door set into the high wall. "What will happen to him?" she asked, straining for a last glimpse of the path Dumitru had taken before it disappeared behind the trees. The woman made a sound of universal maternal regret. "Ah, my love, there are some things that are better for you not to know." After that, Alcy was silent. The guards stopped at the door, where a tall, flabby man with skin as dark as night met Alcy and the maid and took them inside. An African eunuch, she realized when he spoke in a soft, high voice, startled and shocked despite her dazed state. A real, live eunuch. The man guided them through an enormous complex of fabulous rooms. Any other time, Alcy would have feasted on the intricate patterns of tile and fine engravings of stone that seemed to decorate every surface, but she had no appetite now for even the most wondrous of sights. They passed only women and the occasional other black-skinned eunuch as they went. Many of the women were dressed in Western clothing, but the servants and the older ones wore full trousers after the Turkish fashion. Alcy had neither the time nor the inclination to stop and stare, and within a short time, she was shown to a chamber with an immovable latticed window that overlooked the sea and left alone with her maid. "What an honor!" Aygul said, looking around the room with an expression of delight. "This chamber once belonged to Sirri Hanim, one of the sultan's favorite concubines."

"How do you know?" Alcy couldn't help but ask. "I was once a kitchen slave here before I was given my freedom and I married," Aygul said. "Now I am a widow, and there is no honorable way for a woman to remain alone, so when the beylerbey gave orders that one of the servants accompany you to Istanbul, I asked to be sent. My husband's family is here, and his sister has agreed to see about arranging another marriage for me." "Oh," Alcy said. She sat numbly on one of the divans that encircled the room. Western-style tables only served to accentuate the strangeness of the rest of the sparse furnishings. "What will happen now?" The maid shrugged. "You will wait until you are called by the sultan, unless he gives your charge over to one of the other women, in which case she will be your mistress, and you will do as she says." "Oh. Is there a prison inside the palace?" Alcy asked, her words returning inevitably to where her thoughts dwelt. "You are thinking about your husband again, aren't you?" the woman said sympathetically, sitting down across from her. "There is no hope for him now. Your little sum of money will not be enough to bribe anyone important enough to set him free—and anyhow, even if it were, there is nothing to stop anyone that important from just robbing you." Alcy blinked. "Bribe?" The possibility of such a recourse within the sultan's own palace had never dawned upon her. Now she realized why he had forced her to make the one promise to him she never had any intention of keeping: He had a very good idea of how the Ottoman government worked and didn't want her to risk any part in it. Surely you knew that I lied, she thought to him, wherever he was, as her hopes lifted a little. "Of course," Aygul said. "But it would take a great sum to a very important person to make someone like your husband disappear." Alcy thought for a moment. "But if I can't get him out… do you think I could get something to him?" "Why, it would depend upon what it is," the maid said as if it were obvious. "That doesn't cost as much, for the only person you must bribe is the turnkey. Food is easiest. A gun would be impossible, since the turnkey himself would be the most likely to be shot." "A knife?" Alcy asked, her heart hammering at what she knew she was suggesting. "Just a small one. Nothing that anyone might escape with." The maid's eyes softened with understanding. "Yes. That would not need any great pasha. I used to know most of the turnkeys in the prison—one of them must still be working there." "Tonight," Alcy urged. Before anything terrible could happen to Dumitru. "If God wills it, I will have a knife and a good supper to him before sunrise," Aygul swore. Alcy reached into her quickly diminishing supply of money and gave the maid what she asked for. Alcy had no way of knowing that she was not being cozened and no appeal if she were, but what else could she do but trust? She was Dumitru's only hope now, and she would do—must do—everything in her power for him. If she was incapable of rescue in the literal sense, then at least she could give him some kind of salvation, even if everything inside her cried out against the possibility of losing him.

They had just finished their transaction when a knock came at the door and a woman stepped through. She spoke briefly with the maid in a rush of words Alcy couldn't understand, and then she disappeared as quickly as she had come. "What is it?" Alcy asked with a tingle of fresh fear. "It seems you are to be greatly honored tonight," the maid said, looking divided between surprise and awe. "The sultan wishes to see you in his throne room." Alcy's heart sped up. This was an opportunity, perhaps her only one. It had to be. And if she could do anything, anything at all, she would be ready. She must be ready. Dumitru stared into the darkness, trying to shut out the fetid smells of rotting food and human waste. If he had allowed himself to speculate on the details of an Ottoman dungeon, he would have populated the loathesome darkness with horrible groans and shrieks. But his cell was utterly silent, the stone muffling all sound, and he could make out only a very faint drip of water and an occasional distant noise that might be a man moving, a muted whimper, or a mouse scuttling across the floor. The stillness was oppressive and almost more terrible than the worst sounds of gibbering torment could be. He had not had a chance to see his cell by the light of the gaoler's lamp before he had been tossed unceremoniously inside; a short, tentative grope in the darkness had measured it as perhaps five feet square, with a slops bucket in one corner and a ceiling too low for him to stand upright. The guards had taken the time only to search him for weapons—and valuables, he guessed, though they found neither— not bothering to remove his shackles before they shoved him inside. And so he hunkered in a corner facing the door with his wrists dangling, chained, between his knees. He thought of the path that had led him here, laid down years before by his decision to begin using for his own ends the foreign diplomats who so relentlessly sought his allegiance. It had been so natural to feed them each information of variable veracity about what the other ones offered and said, and even more natural to require that they buy the knowledge. From there, it had seemed a small step to start paying a man in Orŝova to copy Benedek János' mail, and then there had been another small step after another until he had a network of information spreading across the entirety of European soil to which the Ottomans still pretended to have a claim. Most of all, though, he thought of Alcy—of her wit, her intensity, her love, and her desire. She could not be simplified into a timeline, nor could his love for her be dissected as the elements of his career as a spy master had been. Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered anymore. It was over, now. Everything that his life had once been, everything that had ever meant anything to him—it was as good as gone. Sitting in the darkness, waiting for the beginning of the end, he realized what a fool he'd been—what a coward—not to end it himself earlier, before it came to this. Best to forget Severinor now. Best to forget Alcy, too: sweet, beautiful, stubborn Alcy, who was certainly scheming fruitlessly despite the promise he had extorted from her. There was no place here for memories of the light. They would only make what was going to happen that much worse. And yet, even in this heart of blackness, the echoes of their last nights and days together, their hours and minutes and seconds, enveloped him like a murmur of silk, insulating him from the rough, damp walls and bearing him off to long-denied sleep where he was awaited by the sweet memories of their whispers in the night.

Alcy stood in front of a pair of great double doors, forcing herself to keep from trembling with every ounce of will that she possessed. She was sick with fear, weak with it, but she would not waver. Not as long as Dumitru needed her. She had been dressed as if for a formal dinner in a French dress of vibrant green silk that seemed vaguely familiar until she realized, with a small shock, that it came from her own father's looms, one of the finest and most expensive fabrics that he produced in a color that he had spent hundreds of pounds in developing. She took comfort in its familiarity, as if it were some obscure affirmation from the universe, but it was hardly enough to keep her knees from buckling. Alcy knew she had reason to be afraid, her relationship to Dumitru aside. The maids—or slaves—who had dressed her had been very adamant about her wearing a veil and shawl as the Turk women did in public, but Alcy had refused all their efforts. "I am an Englishwoman," she said again and again. She was a foreigner, an outsider, not the sultan's subject or rebel. She knew that was an important distinction to make even in her dress. But now she wondered if her insistence was not foolhardy. What if she angered or insulted him? Finally, the doors swung open. "You may approach, Princess Constantinescu, Countess of Severinor," a distant voice intoned in English. She stepped forward, casting a glance over her shoulder at the eunuch who had escorted her thus far. He made no move to follow, so she took a deep breath and entered the room. Now that she was inside, Alcy could see the man standing just below the dais, calling out so that his voice echoed in the vast room. "Approach the Divan, Countess von Severinor, Princess Constantinescu. His Majesty Sultan Mahmud Khan the Second Ghazi Adli, Thirtieth Sovereign of the House of Osman, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of Khans, Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, Protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, Emperor of the three Cities of Constantinople…" The titles kept coming, on and on, and Alcy walked up the center of the throne room slowly, with her head held high, feeling lost in the sea of space and sound. The ceiling soared above her, painted in fabulous patterns, and every arch of the colonnaded room was carved and inlaid with semiprecious stones. All the opulence in the chamber was designed to draw the observer's eye onward to a single point—the dais, and the canopied divan that sat upon it. And upon that was a man dressed in rich robes, wearing the tall white turban of the sultan with three peacock feathers arcing from it, while around him stood a phalanx of courtiers and servants. Her heart pounding, Alcy came to a stop at what she hoped was a respectful distance and gave a deep curtsy just as the herald ended with a triumphant,"… as well as all the dependencies and borders, and many other countries and cities, welcomes you!" Should she rise? Alcy thought frantically. Or should she wait for the sultan to recognize her? Just as she was beginning to straighten again, another voice said, "Stand up so that I can see you." Alcy obeyed and found herself gazing up into the face of the absolute ruler of the Ottoman Turks. He was approaching old age, his beard shot through with silver, yet he was still vigorous and remarkably handsome. Of course, a detached part of her mind whispered. Why wouldn't he be? He was the descendant of generations of beautiful concubines. "So this is the woman who brought the infamous spymaster of Severinor low," the sultan mused, and Alcy

realized that it was he who had spoken a moment before. His English was excellent, though his accent gave it a strange lilt that made it hard to read his emotions. "At least he lost everything for a beautiful woman. So many men will throw it all away for the first girl to smile at them." The sultan leaned back. "I have a son who would be quite taken with you. It is a shame you are not eligible." Alcy felt, bizarrely, like she was being baited. "It is just as well, Your Majesty, seeing as I do not seem to bring good luck to men," she said carefully, making her voice sound as humble as she dared without risking obsequity. The sultan smiled, his bristling beard parting to show strong white teeth. "Perhaps that is so! What do you know of your husband?" "I know many things, since he is my husband, Your Majesty," she said guardedly. "I know his favorite foods and diversions, his preoccupations and his friends." "And what do you know of his spying?" the sultan said, as if merely making polite conversation. Alcy felt as if she were walking on the brink of a chasm. However easy his manner appeared, she knew that he held her life, like Dumitru's, in his palm. She wished she could plead for her husband's life—she wished she were not so dreadfully certain that any words to that effect would only endanger them both more. Instead, she spoke as clearly and calmly as she could. "I had never heard a whisper of it until the Servian prince denounced him for it. Your Majesty," she added belatedly. "To what purpose would he share such information with me? I do not know what your spies have told you, but they could easily discover the truth of our estrangement—that it was his distrust of me that caused me to flee Severinor, not the abduction." The sultan was silent for a long moment. "I find that I believe you, which makes matters much simpler." He gave her a smile that seemed a thousand years old. "My dear friend Admiral Lord Bunting's wife has heard of your presence in the city and would like the chance to meet you. To that end, I have ordered an English-style entertainment held here tonight, which the admiral and several other distinguished Western visitors will attend." Alcy blinked, then blinked again. "I am honored, Your Majesty." "Yes," he said dryly. "You are." I have become political, she thought, elation coursing through her. I am no longer just the wife of a traitor but an Englishwoman in whom a British admiral has taken an interest. This must be an opportunity—to save Dumitru, to save herself. It must be. And it might be the only one she was going to get.

Chapter Twenty-two

Dumitru roused, disoriented, at the sound of a key in the lock. The door swung open, and he blinked against the glare of an oil lamp, tensing. "Here," the gaoler said in Ottoman Arabic. "Your wife says to tell you, 'I lied because I love you. Use it if you must.'"

With that, a second man entered the cell and set something on the floor, and in the moment before he left and the door shut, cutting off the light, Dumitru made out a bowl full of food, a jug of some type of drink —and a knife. Use it if you must, she had said. God, Alcy, you stupid, stubborn woman, he thought into the darkness. What would I do without you? Both Alcy and the sultan stayed in the throne room while preparations for the entertainment were made. A group of musicians, sitting behind a screen on the dais, began to play soft, weirdly melodic music while the sultan consulted with various dignitaries and officials who hurried in and out of a small side door. Alcy had the feeling that he was staying because he distrusted what she might do and so was keeping her, for the time being, squarely under his thumb. He has reason to mistrust me as long as he holds my husband prisoner, she thought bitterly, keeping her face a perfect blank where she stood, out of the way under one of the arches, as servants hurried in bearing piece after piece of furniture. What he thought she might do about it was another question entirely. Alcy's beauty and wit would be her only weapons tonight, and never before had she felt so ill-equipped for a task. She must be dazzling, the perfect woman for her Western audience—for that masculine portion of her audience that was clever enough to act well yet brash enough to act extravagantly and romantic enough to commit rash acts for the sake of a soft smile, a pair of brilliant eyes, and a fabulous story to tell for the rest of his life. A story, Alcy thought. I must be a creature out of a story. No thoughtless, cutting words tonight, no impatient slicing through of pretty forms. Never before had she dazzled a man, but never before, she realized, had she really wanted to. The servants placed the furniture in positions around the chamber so that they formed two groups—a parlor and dining room. Divans and low tables mingled with Chippendale chairs and Sheraton side tables, the result of the juxtaposition far more exotic than simple alienness would have been. The dining table was comfortably familiar, though, and Alcy was intensely grateful for the dining chairs, for she hadn't any idea how one could gracefully eat in a prone position while corseted, which she had feared might be expected of her. The instant the servants were finished, one of the sultan's retinue clanged some instrument—a bell? a gong?—cutting off the current song midnote. Guards opened the wide double doors at the end of the room in response. "Approach the Divan, Admiral Lord and Lady Bunting," announced the herald who had called out Alcy's name when she entered. "Monsieur Francois Roux. The Honorable Mr. Robert Boyd. Sir Edward Cunningham." Then he launched into the sultan's list of titles and honors as the Westerners approached the dais. When the litany came to an end, each visitor bowed or curtsied and murmured a few words of respect to their host. Alcy could not hear what was being said, but shortly, they appeared to be dismissed, for they retired en masse to the parlor area, their movements a trifle awkward under the sultan's keen eye. Lady Bunting advanced upon Alcy like a ship under sail, a tall woman well into a robust middle age. "You must be the countess," she said. "What a terrible journey you must have had here, my dear girl!" Lady Bunting spoke in the careless drawl of what Alcy privately called the sporting upper classes, who were generally jovial and hearty and bred hounds and horses and never missed a fox hunt. It was a shock to hear such a quintessentially English voice after so long. Though Alcy had always before felt a small

pang of dread at such a greeting, since she had absolutely no knowledge of or interest in the country life, now it made her almost weak with relief. "Yes, it was, madam," Alcy said, trying to hit the proper balance between stoicism and delicacy. "I thank you for your concern." The woman laughed merrily as she took Alcy's hand in both of hers. "I am a madam only to sailors and servants. I am not accustomed to introducing myself, but we often find ourselves in queer situations when we are away from the conventional life of English society, don't we? I am Lady Bunting, and since we are now officially known to each other, I will introduce you to the rest of the company." Before Alcy had a chance to assent, Lady Bunting hooked the younger woman's arm over hers and led her to meet the man the herald had introduced as the admiral, a sturdy uniformed officer with a salt-and-pepper beard. "Countess von Severinor, may I introduce my husband, Admiral Lord Bunting?" Lady Bunting said as the gray-haired man bowed stiffly—from mild arthritis or perhaps gout, not awkwardness, Alcy noted. "Pleased to meet you," she said, with a deep nod for both his age and rank. If he were a romantic—and the sporting and military sorts often were—he might be a possible target, but he would tend toward caution because his official status in the government might lead to an international incident and professional repercussions if anything went wrong. Not the best, then. Lady Bunting guided her to the outlandishly dressed Mr. Roux, who looked as if he had combined the most flamboyant example of every article of Turkish dress that he could find into the same outfit. "Francois Roux is a well-known poet," she said, as if it were more than half an apology. "Charmed," the man said, with a heavy-lidded expression of carefully cultivated ennui. Alcy responded with a smile and a few murmured pleasantries in French. Not this one. Despite his eccentricity of dress, he seemed to be the delicate and artistic rather than the adventurous type. Lady Bunting drew her on. "Sir Edward Cunningham is an archaeologist of some renown, lately returned from the Holy Land." A handsome man acknowledged their introduction with a bow and a polite greeting. His face was tanned from the sun of foreign deserts, and she noticed the thin, white line of an old scar that disappeared under his high, stiff collar. An adventurer, then, and not afraid of danger. She judged the cost of his clothing in a glance, and the results of her tally were pleasing. He was wealthy, though not fabulously so, and scrupulous of his appearance. His pleasant hazel eyes sparked with respectful interest and frank admiration as he bowed, and he smiled under his neatly waxed mustache. She smiled back with what she hoped was a blend of pleasure at their meeting and a distant, noble grief. The grief was real enough, and mixed with more than a little terror, but an appearance of aloof nobility took an effort. What was happening to Dumitru now? He might be anywhere, maybe even just beneath her feet… She felt her smile wobble dangerously, and she shored it up as Sir Edward's expression grew keener. Before he could say anything, though, Lady Bunting had turned her away and was introducing her to the last guest, Mr. Robert Boyd—another wealthy Briton, this one a mere traveler, who cheerfully admitted that he had neither a muse nor a science to excuse his peregrinations. Alcy smiled gently at his jokes, but she could tell that he had not the disposition to engage in conspiracies against a foreign potentate in his own palace.

At first, Alcy simply listened as the Westerners talked stiltedly while the sultan watched, his private orchestra continuing their quiet music behind him. She had never attempted any sort of intrigue before, but she realized that however desperate Dumitru's circumstances, she must first know a little about the man or men she must persuade. She learned that Sir Edward and Mr. Boyd were both guests of the Buntings, who had taken a house in Istanbul for as long as Admiral Bunting decided to stay. He was stationed in the eastern Mediterranean, as far as Alcy could gather, and his visit to Istanbul seemed to be a quasi-official kind of undertaking, casual enough that his wife had come along yet political enough that he had already spent many long evenings closeted with the sultan and the British ambassador. She had become political… The idea was still alien to her, and yet when she turned her mind sideways, everything slotted neatly into place. The admiral and his wife had learned that she was here, a fellow British citizen, and they wished to dine with her not out of a capricious impulse or even patriotic kinship but because they were officially recognizing their knowledge—Britain's knowledge—of her existence, placing her under British protection. But what were their plans? And how much say did she have in them? Alcy doubted that either their power or their charity extended to include a Rumanian count. Dumitru's safety depended upon her alone, but she did not know if she could prove worthy of the burden. She gave the sultan a fleeting glance, and she saw him suddenly in a different light—an autocrat with fabulous powers, yes, but circumscribed in every direction by his crumbling influence without and corruption and rebellion within. No wonder he would be eager to make an example of Dumitru for undermining what little stability remained in his vast lands. "I have tried to coax some of the harem ladies out of hiding to join us in these Western entertainments whenever the sultan condescends to host them," Lady Bunting said lightly, cutting Alcy's thoughts short. "But I cannot convince them that the style of dinner means that it would be quite right to imitate our customs, and they remain convinced of the scandal of such an arrangement. As a result, our parties have been rather lopsided. It is such a pleasure to have another woman present to lighten the masculine air." "Particularly such a lovely one," Mr. Boyd said cheerfully and guilelessly. "Lady Bunting here said something of terrible travails and the like that you've undergone. I bribed the native servants for any rumors they could pick up from the palace's kitchen staff, and one told me that you had been captured by bandits. I am madly jealous! I would adore being captured by bandits. Or rather, I wouldn't, but I would adore to be able to say that I have been because it makes a dem fine tale." From Lady Bunting's frown, she had indeed mentioned Alcy's adventure—with the implication that no one should remind Alcy of it. How could she be expected to forget it, though, even for a moment, when Dumitru lay in such danger? "Come now, young Robert," the admiral rumbled, making Mr. Boyd's ears turn a little pink at his tone. "I'm sure it has been quite harrowing for the poor girl." Yet his admonition seemed to lack conviction, and there was a light in his eyes that told Alcy that he was as eager to hear her story as the young tourist, if more tactful. "If it would not be too distressing, I would also be interested in hearing your story," Sir Edward said, in a warm, comfortable voice that Alcy could not help but feel was very successful in gaining confidences. Well, hers at least was one that she was only too glad to give. "I do not mind," Alcy assured him, in a small voice that was meant to convey the sense of great emotion scarcely constrained. It was easier than it should have been, and she had to stop for a moment and roughly pull herself back together.

She started to speak, telling a story that was not the tale she had spun for the knez nor the version that had somehow come down to the beylerbey's household in Sofia nor the real truth, which was far too complicated, personal, and pedestrian to make the kind of story she knew the situation needed. Instead, she told of a kidnapping that was half rescue, of a marriage of too-hasty passion, of a terrible secret— she merely hinted at this and left her listeners to fill in the details with their imaginations—that drove her from her new home, of capture and reconciliation with the implication that whatever the terrible secret was it had faded away so that it was no longer an impediment to marital bliss, and of her husband's chivalrous attempts to shelter and rescue her since then, casting their recapture in Sofia as his noble and deliberate sacrifice to save her life. As she spoke, Alcy kept a close eye upon her audience from beneath her lowered lashes. The sultan did not look in her direction, did not seem to notice her, and even his retinue was so impassive that she suspected they could not understand enough English to follow what she said. Lady Bunting had an ever-so-slightly thoughtful expression on her face, as if she were reading a little too accurately into some of the parts that Alcy glossed over, but her husband was misty-eyed and the poet was in artistic raptures —only artistic, she was certain. Mr. Boyd was predictably enthralled, but it was Sir Edward's reaction that she was attuned to the most. He focused his keen gaze upon her and listened—truly and intensely listened in a way that Alcy had never encountered before. It made her slightly nervous, and she found herself talking a little too fast at times, saying a little too much, before she locked down her emotions and got her words under control again. She finished her tale with a sense of relief, and amid the respectful murmurs that followed, the sultan waved his hand, and with a sudden blare of instruments, the food arrived. None of the Westerners seemed to think anything was amiss or bizarre about the arrangement. Lady Bunting simply rose and led them to the dining table, where she efficiently arranged everyone. Alcy sat between Mr. Boyd and Sir Edward, with Mr. Roux and the admiral across from her. Lady Bunting took one end of the table as the hostess, but she left the other end empty—symbolically for the sultan, their host? Alcy wondered. But that potentate did not descend from his dais, merely watching with cold eyes as two servants carried out a low table and set it front of him, set with the same foods that were brought to the Westerners' table. Conversation at the table remained stilted and almost unnaturally prosaic, and only the sultan seemed truly at ease, watching over them from his vantage. Admiral Bunting, Mr. Roux, and Mr. Boyd told tales of hunting prowess while Lady Bunting engaged Alcy softly upon the topic of current fashions, which she clearly knew nothing about despite the fact that she was excellently dressed by an expensive London dressmaker. Alcy sensed that the admiral's wife must feel a good deal like she did whenever she attempted to speak about hounds or coursing, and so she subtly steered the topic to the racetrack and spent most of the meal listening in silence while Sir Edward and Lady Bunting spoke volubly about various horses she had never heard of and events she had never seen. Despite Sir Edward's apparent engagement in the others' conversation, Alcy felt his eyes upon her frequently, and she prayed that she was maintaining an air of pensive yet gentle beauty. After the fruit was taken away, they all retired to the parlor side of the room again, for Lady Bunting declared that it was a silly convention for the women to retire alone, especially when there were so few of them and the "parlor" wasn't even a room away. Alcy found herself sitting between Lady Bunting and Sir Edward, while the sultan returned to his canopied divan. After a few more minutes of desultory conversation, Lady Bunting called brightly to her husband, "I say, admiral, don't you think it would be lovely if the countess were to stay with us? The palace is quite close, but it must be hard for her to be away from everything familiar." Her tone was casual, but it had a slightly

rehearsed quality, and Alcy felt the sudden tension in the air. She did not dare look at the sultan. The admiral appeared thoughtful, though he, too, had a certain tightness around his eyes. "I do think she would be more comfortable with us," he agreed. "Countess von Severinor?" Alcy had the sensation of walking on a tightrope above an abyss. "I mean no disrespect to His Majesty," she said, striving for a tone of humility without appearing ingratiating, "and the chamber he has given me is very comfortable indeed. But I am terribly homesick, and it would be lovely to be in more English surroundings once again." The sultan said nothing for a long moment, and Alcy feared that he would require that one of them make an explicit appeal to him before responding. But finally, he stirred, faced the admiral, and spoke into the taut silence. "It is natural that Countess von Severinor misses her compatriots." There seemed to be an ironic twist to the use of her title, but Alcy could not be certain that it was not merely an artifact of his accent. "Of course she should stay with you. She shall be happier there, and it is always my intention that my guests are happy. She will be sent over tomorrow." "Thank you," Admiral Bunting said solemnly. The sultan settled back without comment. After that, Lady Bunting occupied all of Alcy's attention for several minutes, her relief making her slightly manic. Alcy could not share it. Dumitru was no safer than he had ever been, and the Buntings had no ability to influence his fate through similar means even if they had the inclination. As long as he was in danger, her own life might as well be forfeit, too. And so, as the rest of the Westerners in the room relaxed, she only felt an increase of urgency as minute after minute slipped by in which she had done nothing. Eventually, a tangential comment by Mr. Roux lured Lady Bunting away into a private conversation. Admiral Bunting was engaged again in conversation with Mr. Boyd, mis time about boats, and so Alcy found herself able to address Sir Edward privately for the first time. He spoke first. "It sounds as if your trials are at an end." He had a slightly lifting, invitational note, as if he were asking her to contradict him. It was only too easy to do so. "I do not care about my own trials." The words were hushed, intense, and a shade melodramatic—and yet she would have staked her life on the sincerity of every one of them. Sir Edward merely lifted an eyebrow. "I feel rather stiff from all this eating. Would you care to go for a walk around the room with me?" Alcy blinked, nonplussed that he asked the very question she was leading up to. "Of course," she murmured, and she took his offered arm and rose. He guided her casually, discreetly over to one of the peripheral arches, where the columns provided some screening from the dais and distance from the others allowed them to speak without the risk of being overheard. "You must be frightened for your husband," Sir Edward said solemnly. This was happening all too fast. Alcy was supposed to be elegant and mysterious, to drop sad little allusions to her anxiety as she worked Sir Edward into a state of devoted fervor. He wasn't supposed to whisk her off to the side and dive into the heart of the matter without her having a chance to seal him to her. "Of course I am terrified," she said, the words coming out a little abrupt and raw. "How can I not

be?" "It was a marriage—or rather, a kidnapping—of convenience," Sir Edward drawled, leaning back against the stool of the window. Alcy stopped herself just before she snapped out a tart rejoinder. "Sir Edward," she said instead, "if you have ever been in love—and I mean truly, deeply in love so that it changes the very essence of what you are—you will understand what kind of hell I am in every instant that I stand here and he is… wherever he is." Sir Edward's expression scarcely changed. "And what is it that you want me to do about it?" Alcy just stared, stunned. Was he volunteering or refusing? And how did he know that she wanted his help? He chuckled as if reading her mind. "My dear, I have been a guest at virtually every court in Europe and half of them in Asia. You have given a very good try at dissembling, and in time, you might become skilled, though God forbid that you ever need to, but the fact remains that you are an infant at intrigue. The only people in this room who do not have a very good idea of what you are up to are Mr. Roux, Mr. Boyd, and those of the sultan's retinue who are equally incompetent at both reading behavior and understanding English." "Oh," Alcy said, feeling stunned and stupid. Sir Edward's face no longer looked open and eager. In fact, it was completely unreadable except for a cynical twist to his lips. "So my question to you is, what do you want me to do, and exactly why would it be worth whatever astronomical risk it would require for me to do it?" He cocked an eyebrow up in query. Alcy burned with humiliation. She should have chosen Mr. Boyd. He would have fallen under her spell— and probably gotten all three of them killed. No, Sir Edward was still her only hope. She took a deep breath. "I want you to save him. My husband. The count." "He is an infamous spymaster. That makes rescue even more dangerous than it would if he were only a disobediant count." He stressed the word sarcastically. "How do you know that?" Alcy blurted with dismay. Then, "The servants—" "No, the servants don't know that particular bit of gossip, or rather, they might, but I didn't ask them." Sir Edward paused for a moment, as if making a decision, and then he said, "I didn't need to ask servants about a man who is so famous in the Home Office." Alcy truly did gape then. Sir Edward the archaeologist was affiliated with the Home Office? It controlled the intelligence of the entire British Empire! "You're a spy," she whispered. "Not… precisely," Sir Edward said, his face still expressionless. "An agent, perhaps, is a better word. But now that we have established what you want me to do, let me ask again—what would be worth such a risk? I see no reason to free a loose cannon of a spy master who has probably done as much harm to Britain as good over the past six years." Alcy stood, frozen to the spot, her heart hammering in her chest. "I will give you anything that is in my power to give," she swore. He looked at her slowly, consideringly, and Alcy felt a flush of hot shame as she realized what he was

thinking. "Anything?" he asked softly. "Think carefully now." "Anything," she said firmly, keeping herself from recoiling by force of will alone. "I do not need to think." "And what would your husband do if he knew that you gave… anything?" Sir Edward asked, his eyes glittering, his voice now scarcely above a whisper. "Do not tell him," Alcy said in a strangled voice. "Whatever you do, do not tell him. He would forgive me, but he would never forgive himself." Suddenly, Sir Edward smiled, the darkness lifting from his face so fast that it made Alcy dizzy. "And that is exactly the response of a man worth saving. No," he said suddenly. "I have no intention of bedding you." "What?" Alcy demanded, as shocked by his coarseness as she was by his sudden change of heart. His expression turned ironic again, but this time, the irony was directed inward. "Do not mistake me. If you did not have an expression on your face of such noble martyrdom, that would have been an arrangement that I would have been more than willing to consider. However, there are enough women in the world who are eager to share my bed that I do not feel it necessary to coerce one who looks at me as if I were a reptile, however beautiful she may be." "You won't save him?" Alcy asked. "Whoever said anything about that?" the man countered. "Let it never be said that Sir Edward Cunningham is less than the flower of English manhood. No, I will save him for no more than a kiss of my lady's lily-white hand—which is what you originally intended, unless I miss my guess?" He continued before she could answer. "That and a portrait directed to me in Piccadilly Circus and, of course, your agreement that Severinor will, from now on, be more sympathetic, shall we say, to Britain's interests." Alcy's head was spinning, but she managed to counter, "How could it not be, now that its consort is a faithful daughter of Britannia?" Sir Edward shook his head. "Ah, you learn too fast, giving answers that have no meaning. But I do hope that you understand that if my risk is not repaid with a certain amount of reward, the Home Office will not be pleased?" "Yes, I understand," she said. "And I give you my word, since I can give you nothing else, that my husband and I will not repay your goodness with unkindliness." At that, Sir Edward snorted. "Goodness! Why, this is worth it as far as I am concerned for the portrait and the story!" He took one of her hands in both of his and kissed it through the glove. "There. The bargain is sealed. Turn away now, and look as though all your hopes have been crushed, or else I will do nothing for you. And be ready tonight—for anything." Alcy did as he said, and her expression must have been convincing, for she saw a flash of satisfaction on the sultan's face and relief on Lady Bunting's. She sat silently for several minutes in her chair, resisting anyone's attempt at drawing her into the conversation, and her heart alternately soared with hope and sank with dread. Eventually, everyone rose to leave or was dismissed by the sultan—Alcy was too distracted to observe whatever interplay occurred between the admiral and the ruler to initiate their departure. Alcy rose with them and began to walk toward the door when the sultan's voice arrested her. "Come here, countess," he ordered.

Her heart thundering, Alcy obeyed, scarcely attempting to keep the terror from her face. "What were you and Sir Edward discussing with such animation?" he asked once she stopped before him, so softly that she doubted even his surrounding retinue heard. "Marriage, Your Majesty," Alcy found herself saying. "And why would that be? Your husband is still alive," the sultan asked gently, as if coaxing a frightened bird into his hand. Alcy's heart leapt when he said that, and she prayed that she gave no sign. "But he will not remain so for long, I fear, and there is no honor in being a widow alone in the world," she said, remembering what Aygul had told her earlier that day. The sultan laughed, showing his straight, white teeth. "You would have gone far during the Reign of the Favorite Women," he said approvingly. "So, tell me, what did he say? Was he interested?" "He does not wish to entangle himself in a woman who is haunted by the ghost of her past," Alcy said, filling her voice with all the bitterness and frustration she had felt over the past month. "He is a very wise man," the sultan said. And with that, he dismissed her, and Alcy walked to the doors on legs gone suddenly rubbery. Hold on, Dumitru, she sent to him silently, wherever he was. Just for a little while longer. Hold on.

Chapter Twenty-three

Alcy was led back to her room in the heart of Topkapi Palace, but only for the night, Lady Bunting had assured her. Alcy believed it—one way or another, she would not be sleeping at the palace again. Back in her room, she declined anyone's assistance to get ready for bed, sending Aygul away and stripping off her dinner dress herself. She loosened her corset, which had begun to feel like a vise after so many weeks of laxity, and slipped into one of her traveling dresses instead, fastening the back after a long and frustrating battle with the buttons. And then there was nothing to do but blow out the lamp, lie under a pile of blankets on one of the divans, and wait. She was certain she could not sleep, but she must have dozed off, for one moment she was staring though her window at a square of star-speckled sky, and the next there was the shadow of a man standing over her. It was not Dumitru. For the tiniest fraction of an instant, she thought that it might be him, but the form over her was not familiar, and her mind rejected that possibility as fast as she thought it. "Hurry, your ladyship," the man said softly in accented English. It was not Sir Edward either, then. She slipped out from under the covers and stood, wrapping a shawl and veil around herself and picking up her shoes. The man moved noiselessly across the room, and Alcy decided to keep her shoes off for the sake of silence. The stone between the rugs was bitterly cold through her stockings, making her feet cramp and curl, but she ignored it. The man led her out of the room and through the twisting path that she had already traveled twice that

day. The rooms that had been resplendent in daylight or by the light of a lamp were frightening now, their intricate shadows seeming to shelter a hundred watchers. Alcy's stomach was tight with fear and cold, and she stayed close behind her guide. Finally, the man pushed open a door, and Alcy found herself facing the court with a sedan chair sitting only a few yards away, surrounded by bearers in palace uniforms. "Come," her guide muttered, "and do not speak. You are now a sultana, visiting your dying sister with your attendant." Alcy obeyed, wrapping the veil more firmly around herself before she stepped out of the shadow of the doorway so that only her eyes and forehead would show in the moonlight. The guide opened the door of the sedan, and she entered. A single seat, barely wide enough for two people, filled the back of the tiny space, with just enough room for the door in front of it. Windows surrounded the little box on all sides, but they were closely curtained. The guide shut the door, and she seated herself, her heartbeat fluttering with fear. Without warning, she rose into the air, wobbling slightly as the bearers set the long poles upon their shoulders. Alcy heard her guide mutter orders in the language of the Ottomans, and the sedan started forward smoothly, swaying slightly with the gait of the men who carried it. She did not dare to look out, did not dare to breathe, just held as still as she could as if she could make them silent and invisible by will alone. They stopped, and Alcy felt the sedan lower again. She parted the curtains slightly, fearfully, and she saw her guide standing patiently in front of the bearers on the grass of another part of the court. There was nothing for her to do but wait, too. Dumitru did not sleep again. He debated for a while about whether he should eat the food—Alcy's message proved only that she had arranged for it to be sent, not that no one had adulterated it along the way—but he eventually concluded that he would have to eat whatever poison or drug the Ottomans might feed him eventually, anyhow, and so he decided to enjoy the meal since it might very well be his last. Alcy had given him the means of causing his own end, but with it an enigmatic admonition: Use it if you must. Use it—if you must. And when must he use it? Before the torturers came for him and took the knife away? After they crushed his feet but before they destroyed his hands? When the pain began, or when it became too great to bear? If you must. Or did she, foolish woman that she was, intend that he never have to use it at all? There were footsteps again, startlingly clear in the silence of the prison. Dumitru tensed with the knife in his hand. No good to try to escape. Should he plunge it into his own neck now and put an end to it? Or should he hide it away and risk losing even that release? The footsteps stopped in front of his cell. Use it if you must. After an agony of indecision as the gaoler jingled his keys, Dumitru leaned over and dropped the knife into the slops bucket, where it splashed into the urine he had already deposited there. The key was in the lock now, and he jerked away the instant before the door opened. The man on the other side smiled as his lamplight fell onto the empty bowl and half-full jug. Not the gaoler from before—a different man. "Someone likes you," he observed in court Arabic. He tossed something at Dumitru, who caught it in his shackled arms. It was fabric—an armload of fabric. "Someone

really likes you. I will get those off." The man half shut the door and brought out a different key, efficiently freeing Dumitru's wrists. Dumitru sorted through a cloth and found a Western-style skirt with a Turkish shawl and veil. He was to be smuggled out of the palace as a woman from the haremlik. "I am too tall," he protested. The man chuckled. "With luck, no one will see you that closely. With luck, no one will see you at all." Dumitru retrieved his knife, wiping it dry on the skirt before slipping it into the waistband. "With luck," he agreed. The journey to his cell had seemed to take years, but the journey out was over in a matter of moments. The guardroom was empty—the guards must have been bribed to be elsewhere. Could Alcy have really done so much in so little time? he wondered. Or was this some sort of sick joke that the sultan had orchestrated for his own entertainment? Before he had decided which it was, he was standing in the cold inner courtyard again, a sedan chair sitting a few yards away in the shadow of a tree. "Hurry," the man said to him, a note of irony in his voice. "Your mistress's sister is dying." Dumitru needed no more prompting. One of the bearers opened the door, he stepped inside—and met Alcy's eyes, darkly brilliant in the moonlight. The door clicked shut, and she yanked him down fiercely into her arms, pulling off both their veils and kissing him with all the force in her body. Her mouth tasted like freedom, fierce and wild, and he wanted never to let her go. Finally, she pulled away, putting a finger against his lips. He realized that they were moving. He nodded and pulled his veil back up, and she did likewise, both of them sitting back against the single seat. They stopped. The sedan must have reached the inner gates. Dumitru tensed, his hand straying to his knife. A challenge was issued, and one of the men with the sedan replied with a rustle of paper—official documents or merely official-seeming documents? He didn't know, didn't dare to speculate. After a moment that seemed to last an eternity, there was the sound of a gate creaking open. He held his breath, looking at the strip of white skin that was all that was visible of Alcy in the dimness. They moved forward, second after agonizing second. In his mind's eye, Dumitru saw them approaching the gate, under it… and then they were through! They must be through. Alcy closed her eyes and sank back against the seat, and Dumitru began to breathe again. One more gate to go, and they would be in the city proper. Again they stopped, and again came the challenge and the reply, and again they heard the sound of a gate opening. Their bearers walked forward, the sedan swaying with every step, and then they were out, in the heart of the dark city and halfway to freedom. "You're alive," Alcy breathed inanely, happily in his ear. "Did they hurt you?" "No," Dumitru whispered back. "They didn't have a chance. How did you do it? What did you promise —and to whom?" She made a tiny sound that was somewhere between a giggle and a sob. "Quite by accident, I tried to dazzle a British spy. I promised him anything"—before Dumitru could react, she put a restraining hand against his chest—"and he asked for a portrait of me and for your future cooperation with British interests." He took a moment to digest this. "He seems an admirable sort of spy." "I don't think so," she said, her cynicism clear even in her near-noiseless whisper. "How cooperative

would you be if he had asked for more?" Dumitru let out a puff of air that was as close as he could come to a silent snort. "I would want to kill him." He paused. "You're right. He really is a bastard." "Shhhh," she said, leaning into him. "He's a bastard who has just saved our lives." They rode in a tense silence. For several minutes, there was no sound but the footfalls of the sedan bearers and the occasional dog, barking far away. The streets that had teemed only hours before were now unnaturally silent and empty, and Dumitru had an unreasonable certainty that their footsteps could be heard throughout the city. Then, in the distance, came a new, clanging sort of sound. An alarm? Dumitru pushed back the nearest curtain a fraction of an inch, but he could see nothing but deserted street. He let it go. One of their guides muttered a curse, and a brief argument broke out between the men as they pressed onward: Should they run? They decided against it, but Dumitru sat up straighter, his hand straying to the hilt of his knife. "Is that for us?" Alcy's whisper was tense but steady. "The men don't know," Dumitru replied. Honesty made him add, "But they think it probably is." The sedan bearers walked slightly more quickly, a jerkiness to their gait that had not been there a moment before. Alcy pressed into the back of the chair and Dumitru sat forward. For a long moment, everything beyond their small circle seemed silent. And then he heard it—footsteps approaching in rapid cadence. How many were there? Dumitru wondered. And were they coming for him and Alcy? The footsteps came closer, and someone called a halt in guttural Turkish. Their guide responded. Alcy looked at him, but Dumitru shook his head helplessly—he could not understand a word, and even if he could, he could not have relayed it to her then. After nearly a minute, the sedan rocked as the bearers lowered it. The soldiers who had stopped them were going to risk the death sentence for dishonoring a sultan's daughter by searching a sedan carried by the palace guard. This was it. They would not be so bold unless they were searching for the fugitives. Dumitru drew his knife. Footsteps approached the sedan door, and it swung open. Dumitru unleashed a stream of high-pitched invective in Ottoman Arabic, mimicking a woman's outraged response. The soldier at the door jerked back instinctively, then leaned forward, his hand extended to pull back Dumitru's veil—and reeled back under Dumitru's weight with a knife in his heart. Blood flowed in a hot and sticky rush against Dumitru's hand, and he jerked back instinctively, pulling the knife free as the soldier dropped to the ground. The sedan bearers exploded into action as the soldiers—they were soldiers, Dumitru saw—cried out in alarm at the sudden loss of their captain. There were seven of them now, but Dumitru leapt and cut down another before any could draw a weapon as the sedan bearers dispatched three more. The last three turned to flee, but Dumitru's guide unsheathed a wicked-looking blade and ran one of them clean through. The other two disappeared up the street, shouting and firing their pistols wildly behind them. "Get in the sedan," Dumitru's guide ordered tersely, sheathing his sword again. "I will run," Dumitru countered, wiping his blood-mired hand upon the veil that now lay loosely around his shoulders. "It will make the sedan lighter."

The bearers returned to their positions and lifted the sedan back onto their shoulders. "Dumitru?" Alcy's voice was edged with panic, and she leaned out of the sedan, looking for him. "I am here. I am fine," he said. "Close the door and hang on. We're going to run." They did. The bearers set a brisk pace despite the weight of the sedan, and Dumitru jogged along behind them. In the distance, the commotion grew, soldiers shouting and firing their guns as citizens near and far flung open their windows and cursed everyone indiscriminately. Their guides had stopped weaving through the streets and now ran, straight and sure, in a single direction. "Where are we going?" Dumitru demanded. "The sea," his guide said. "Through the gate!" They turned sharply, and Dumitru found himself facing a gateway in the ancient sea walls of the city. There was no door in the half-ruined arch, and the men picked up speed, sprinting for the bottleneck and through. On the other side, the bare land sloped down to the sea where a longboat waited, pulled up onto the shore with four men inside. Beyond them, a merchantman sat quietly at anchor out in the black water, a dark silhouette against the stars. "Go," his guide said, and he disappeared back through the gateway and into the shadows of the city. The bearers set down the sedan, and Dumitru opened the door. "Come on," he said, reaching for Alcy. The hand that took his was frigid but firm. She stepped out of the sedan, blinked in the moonlight, and then made a startled exclamation and sprinted for the longboat. Dumitru kept pace beside her. When she reached the edge of the water, he swung her up into his arms and carried her the last two steps to the boat. He set her inside and stepped in himself, stooping long enough to wash his hand and his knife. The instant he sat, the sailors sprang into action, pushing off the bottom and rowing strongly toward the ship. Behind them, the bearers swung the sedan between them, and on the third swing, they let it go at the peak of its arch so that it sailed out over deeper water. It hit with a splash and sank, and the men melted back through the gateway and into the darkness. Dumitru looked over the sailors' shoulders to the tall merchantman in front of them, growing closer with every stroke. "Those men who attacked us," Alcy said in a strangled voice. "They died, didn't they?" He looked down. She was staring at him with frightened eyes, her veil hanging loose from her face. He had lost both shawl and veil in the flight. "Most of them, yes," Dumitru admitted, holding her tighter against him, remembering the heat of the men's lifeblood on his knife hand with sickening vividness. "I wish they hadn't, yet I'm so glad that you did kill them to stay alive," she said. "I know," Dumitru said. He had never killed a man—had never, in all his years of playing at being a spy, ordered one killed, either. "I wish there had been another way." "Self-defense. We did what we must, just as they did as they were ordered," she said, and Dumitru gave her another squeeze for her taking on a portion of the bloodguilt that he now bore with that we. Brave, noble Alcy. "I love you," he murmured into her hair.

"And I cannot begin to say how much I love you," she whispered back, "because I don't even think I can quite understand it myself." In less than a minute, they reached the ship's side, and they clambered up a swaying ladder onto the deck. "Welcome aboard the Good Queen Bess," a cheerful voice called in English as a man in an officer's uniform bore down on them. "We'll be under sail as soon as the dinghy is secured. We want to be in open water by the time it occurs to the sultan that it would be a good idea to close the Straits." Then he strode away again, shouting incomprehensible orders as sailors swarmed purposefully around them and the deck suddenly glittered in the light of a dozen unshielded lanterns. "It truly is over, isn't it?" Alcy asked, sounding dazed. "Something is over," Dumitru agreed. "But I think this is more of a beginning than an end." "Whatever it is, as long as it involves a bed with clean sheets and you in it, I will be well pleased," Alcy said in the half-shy tone she used when she was trying to be brazen. Dumitru laughed—the first real laugh he'd had in weeks. It felt exhilarating, and he pulled his wife against him and looked into her eyes in the lantern light. "I am guessing that our captain will be able to arrange that in short order," he predicted. Alcy smiled, her eyes lighting with contained laughter and something deeper, more incredible, that wanned him from the inside out. "What is it?" he asked. "You're still wearing a skirt," she said. "So?" he demanded. "All the Turks wear skirts." "But you are not a Turk," she said. And then she kissed him breathless. Sweet, foolish, brave, wonderful Alcy.

Read on for a preview of Lydia Joyce's next breathtaking gothic romance

Voices of the Night on sale April 2007 February 1860 Maggie shivered, wrapping the sooty shawl tighter around her thin shoulders as she hunched behind the

brute bulk of Johnny. Fog pressed down upon the city, smothering it, pulling the smoke from the chimney pots to swirl in the streets under the weight of the brown and breathless sky. It was a black fog, a killing fog, and Maggie and the other chavies had coughed up soot every morning that week, when Johnny kicked them awake. That morning, Moll had coughed up blood. Dawn had been an unfulfilled promise, a slight lightening from tomb black to dirty gloom, extinguished mere hours later as maids lit the morning coal fires in grates across the city and the smoke floated up and settled back down again, great snowflakes of soot falling with the sickly drizzle. The bobbies strolled along their accustomed patrols, swinging kerosene lanterns even at ten o'clock; by two, the lamplighters were at work, their progress marked by a trail of dirty, sulfurous, glowing orbs that illuminated nothing but more fog. Now Maggie judged from the pinching in her stomach that it must be gone past four, and the premature dusk had slipped into an unnatural night. Johnny stood at the base of a street-lamp, against the parapet of the bridge, shining his thief-lantern's unshuttered light into the thick brown soup, where it was sucked into nothingness, and nothing shone back. She was scared, more scared than she'd been since Little Thorn wouldn't stop crying when his brother ran away and Johnny had shaken him until his eyes had rolled back into his head and he had a fit. Johnny wanted a man dead, and he wanted Maggie to do it. Her wrist already ached with the weight of the pistol, her free hand keeping her shawl closed tight to conceal it. She had watched Johnny prime and load it in the doorway—it was old, older than he was, and so large that Maggie had to steady the barrel with one hand so that she could make her short fingers stretch to reach the trigger. "Dat Danny's a bloomin' mean bugger," Johnny had growled, enjoying her fear, "but all my lieutenants got to do their part, eh. It's th' initiation, it is, an' there ain't no excuses, even if you is a chit." Maggie did not want to be his lieutenant, but he didn't give a body a choice—if he asked, you could either be his lieutenant or his rival, and she knew what happened to his rivals: This did. A gun on a bridge or a knife in a doorway, and some other poor chavy on the other end of it, who didn't want to kill anybody any more than she did… She should have stayed out of pick-pocketing. That was boys' work. Then Johnny would never have discovered her talent with locks, nor would she be here now, lying in wait for a man she hardly knew. But even this was better than the hell many of the other girls were living. Maggie's mind shuddered away from the pulp that had been made of Sally's face that week, first by a John and then by Johnny—and, almost worse, the mute, dead acceptance of it in her eyes. "I fink I hears sommat," Johnny hissed, and he slid the cover over the lantern so that the utter, stifling darkness wrapped around the streetlamp they stood under, shrinking the world to a width of no more than twice the length of her outstretched hands. Maggie gripped the gun harder, keeping it under the cover of her shawl. Even in the choking darkness, the city teemed, and the last four approaches had been false alarms. Someone was approaching on foot, and whistling. Maggie knew the tune—an aria, her favorite aria from an opera that had just opened two nights before. The whistler's rendition was playful, even cheerful, and his heels hit the pavement with jaunty crispness. This could not be the man she was meant to kill, not someone who whistled arias. And then he stepped into their gritty orange ball of light, and Maggie saw the neat mustache, the eye

patch, the hair that was flaxen under a beaver hat. "Do it!" Johnny snarled, grabbing her by the arm and wrenching her forward. Maggie raised the gun. She saw surprise on Danny's face, exultation on Johnny's. And she saw other faces, of people who were not there, bruised and empty and in pain—Sally's and Little Thorn's, Moll's and Long Jenny's, Fat Billy's and Sweet Polly's. And then she swung the gun and pulled the trigger. The report reverberated against the walls of fog, deafening her as the pistol jumped and jerked back against her hand, and Johnny's eyes went wide at the new, round hole in his forehead. He fell back, hit the parapet of the bridge, and went over. Maggie gasped against the pain in her wrist. The pistol dropped to the ground with a leaden clatter, and she ran the three steps to the parapet and looked over. But the fog had already curled back, swallowing the brief disturbance of Johnny's body as if it were no more than a rock tossed into a void. There must have been a splash below, but Maggie did not hear it. In a day or two, one of the scrawny mud larks with their dragnets and leaky boats would find the body downstream and pull it from the river, dutifully turning it over to the authorities after stripping it of everything of value. It might eventually be identified, or it might not, but whatever else happened, Johnny was gone for good, and his chavies were free. Free. Maggie backed away from the edge, and her heel struck the dropped pistol, sending it skittering a few feet across the filthy cobbles. She picked it up—wincing at the weight on her sore wrist and quickly switching it to her other hand—and started to toss it after Johnny. But then she hesitated and slipped it back under her shawl. A pistol was worth too much just to throw away. "I thank ye kindly, wee colleen." Maggie turned quickly to see Danny still standing where he had stopped when she raised the gun. He was wearing a smile under his mustache like another man might put on a hat. Maggie was shaking inside, but she tipped up her chin and looked him squarely in the face. "You owes me, Danny O'Sullivan." His smile did not change. "I could use a girl wi' that kind o' spirit." "I don' want to be used by nobody," Maggie said. "I want to be let be. Me an' mine. We don't need no gang tough or no kids-man. Not Johnny, not you, not nobody." "Sounds fair't' me," Danny said, shrugging. "I'll be sure't' let you know when we're even again." "We won't never be even. You owes me your life," Maggie countered. His single, blue eye twinkled. "Ah, but Maggie, me colleen, here even lives can be bought and sold like day-old fish on a costermonger's barrow." With that, he brushed by, and a few seconds later, the fog swallowed him. And Maggie shivered.

Chapter One

Four years later Charles Crossham, Lord Edgington, stormed up the gilded Baroque staircase. How could Millie have been so spiteful, so selfish as to destroy five months of his planning in a single fit of pique? He would not stand for it, by God. Not from his own benighted sister. He strode down the gallery, the cold marble clicking under his boot heels, and flung open the door to her sitting room, planting himself upon the center of the pastel Aubusson rug that overlay the carpet in front of the hearth. Millie looked up from her novel, startled, as he fixed her with a baleful glare. "I heard what you did at the Ferrars' ball." Her gray eyes went wide. She was ensconced in her favorite chair, a delicate thing of cream silk nestled near the filtered light of the lace-swathed window, which glowed with the chill winter light. "What did I do?" Her voice was a trifle breathless, her hands gripping her book so that its spine creaked in protest. Charles' stomach clenched that she could even ask such a question. God, but he wanted to take her and shake some decency into that self-centered little brain of hers. "You humiliated Miss Barrett, destroying her chances for a successful Season." Millie relaxed slightly. "Oh, that. Miss Barrett—or whatever her name really is—has no upbringing and no connections. Colonel Vane might claim she is a poor relation, but we all know she is someone's shame, and all I did was say it aloud so we didn't have pretend anymore. She was farmed out to the country, and that is where she belongs. To have her at a London ball degraded us all." "Lily Barrett is a decent, shy girl who does not deserve your vitriol or your prejudice," Charles snapped, stepping forward involuntarily. Millie shrank back a little, but she had inherited a full measure of their father's stubbornness. "The little thing is the most awkward, uncouth girl I have ever met. Why do you care about her? I'd be half inclined to suspect she was your shame, dear brother, if only you were old enough." His shame! Millie was closer to the truth than she could imagine. How could such a quiet, unassuming girl as Lily Barrett share half her blood? And half his, for that matter? Charles had a sudden temptation to let his sister know precisely how accurate her jab was. But no. That would do no good. She wouldn't allow herself to believe it, and she would only hate Lily Barrett all the more. "You will undo this," he snapped instead. Millie drew back a little more at the force of her words, but she did not back down. "It would soil me to associate with such a creature. Whatever you do to me could not be as bad as that." Charles ground his teeth. His sister was more than a little frightened of him, but she was still as obstinant as a mule. After her last scrape had killed the lone cow of a poor tenant's family, he'd gone so far as to deny her food until she agreed to make it right out of her own allowance. She had held out for four days until she collapsed, at which time the doctor had made it clear that enforcing Charles' dictum any further would put Millie's health in mortal danger. Though she had enjoyed that nominal victory, Millie had eventually conceded after additional, less extreme privations, for she had been shaken by her brother's willingness to act upon his threats.

But their mother had indulged in a punitive fit of hysterics that was triggered anytime Charles came within sight of her for the next two weeks, and Millie had sulked for a month. Charles was not looking forward to a repetition of that battle, even if he was certain he would eventually win. "Why do you want me to do it, anyhow?" Millie continued. "You know no girl like that could ever pass for one of us." Charles smiled coldly as he realized that she had just struck upon the answer to his dilemma, however unintentionally. It was a convoluted solution, but any level of intricacy was preferable to another all-out war under his roof. "What if you were wrong—if a girl like her could pass for one of us? Would you undo the damage then?" "Why not?" Millie gave a derisive toss of her head, sending her ash brown curls to bouncing. "I don't know how you could prove such a ridiculous thing, but if you can do it—why, I would even agree to sponsor her debutante ball!" "I will hold you to that," Charles warned. Millie settled back in her chair with her book, at ease again, certain she had escaped the confrontation unscathed. "I wouldn't expect any less from you, dear brother." Charles snorted and turned to leave. He paused with a hand on the elaborate doorknob and looked over his shoulder. "Oh, Millie?" "Yes, brother?" She glanced up from her novel. "I also learned about the wagers you lost at the Ferrer's ball, and paid off your debts yesterday. You won't be seeing your allowance again until I have been recompensed for both the sum and the trouble that you caused me." Charles paused, as if just thinking of an alternative. "Unless, of course, you would like to discharge your debt through an act of kindness to Miss Barrett." Millie snarled, reaching behind herself and yanking out a violet needlepoint pillow, which she flung at his head in answer. Charles caught it easily and dropped it to the floor. "I suppose not," he said mildly, and then he left, shutting the door behind him, his boot heels clicking crisply down the gallery again as he retraced his steps. The ranked generations of his family watched him coldly from their gilded frames. In the expressions of the young Crosshams burned the light of their decadence, the smiles smugly self-indulgent and the eyes sharp with avarice and lust. The same people in later portraits were ravaged by jaded dissolution, their limbs gout-thickened and the bitterness of old disappointments occasionally softened by the misty look of those who float the hours away in dreamy hazes of laudanum, opium, or absinthe. Their gazes seemed unrelentingly hostile as they bore into his back—he who had betrayed them with his rigidity and economy, that balked everything the family had ever been. Everything he himself had been raised to be. The barony had been careening toward destruction for two hundred years and more. His generation should have been the flood, the acme and nadir of their legacy of corruption, one last whirl of debauchery and profligacy before the runaway train of their intemperance flew over the cliff beyond the end of the tracks. But Charles had seen the cliff and leapt off the train, and now he felt as if he were wandering through the wilderness alone, with no track to guide him, no history—not his own or his family's—to tell him what he should do or where his rusty duty lay waiting to be picked up. So he did what he felt he must, acting from impulses he hoped were wise when he knew, deep down, that he hadn't the slightest idea of what wisdom was. And taking care of his father's bastard had been one of those impulses.

That task, at least, was simple enough, even if Millie had thrown a barrier in his way. But he would win the little bet with his sister, and then Lily Barrett would be better off than before, with Millie and therefore their mother as a sponsor of her debutante ball, ensuring her reception into society and giving her an opportunity for a decent marriage with the tidy dowry he had set aside for her—the dowry his creditors knew nothing about. All Charles needed now was a moldable, pretty young thing from a sufficiently disgraceful past to play the part of a country squire's beautiful, innocent daughter, and any Edgington male knew exactly where to get that: the opera. Maggie stepped into the grimy alley, and the stage door shut behind her with a final thud. Sally unfolded her arms and pushed off the wall she had been leaning on. Maggie scanned the area automatically. The alley was empty except for them, though the ends where it intersected with the street were already so hazy that in another hour they would be invisible. Dusk was falling fast, and a fog was rising from the river and mixing with the soot that sank from the chimneys into the heavy air. "Well? What'd 'e say?" Sally prompted. "Nuffink." Maggie couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. Ever since she had been sacked from her singing gig for "hupsetting an himportant gennleman," it had been impossible to find new work. She had been blacklisted, and she had no idea why, but she had a pretty good guess as to who had done it—the only person with enough power in those parts to enforce such a rule. She should have blown Danny's brains out on that bridge, too, when she'd had the chance, she thought with a viciousness born from her frustrated despair. "Mr. Hawkins didn't even want to see me, and when I made 'im, 'e says 'e ain't got no room for another burlesque singer. I says I'll do anyfink, and 'e says there ain't nuffink that's enough to make up for making certain gennlemen mad." "Anyfink?" Sally's deep blue eyes shadowed with dark ghosts of the past. "Maggie, you ain't never—" "Don't you tell me what I've done and what I ain't," Maggie snapped, turning her back and walking quickly back toward Tottenham Court Road. She heard Sally's footsteps behind her, the other girl's longer legs keeping up easily with her own short ones. "We're running out of blunt, Sally. 'Arry ain't 'ad no copy work for days, and Nan keeps getting soused instead of staying with the barrow, and I ain't seen Frankie in a week. We're already behind on the rent. If I don't do somefink, old Widow Merrick will toss us all out, and den we'll really be doing anyfink anybody asks us to because we won't 'ave no choice no more." They reached the street, and Maggie stalked down the crowded pavement toward Church Lane. She heard a snuffling noise, and she knew that Sally was crying. "You ain't never had to sell yourself afore, Maggie. You don't know what it's like, all those men, huffing and puffing on top of you—" Maggie stopped and whirled so suddenly to face her friend that Sally nearly collided into her. Traffic streamed past them on either side, but Maggie ignored it. "I ain't selling myself to all comers in Haymarket, Sally. I am trying to make a business deal, eh! And I am out of ways to try an' sweeten it except frowing myself in as a little bonus." "I won't let you do it for me—" Sally began, but Maggie cut her off again. "Den are you going to keep me from doing it for Moll? Or how about little Jo?" she asked savagely. "Do they deserve to live on the street 'cause of your high-and-mighty ways?" Sally was crying in earnest now, tear tracks making clean streaks in the dirt on her scarred cheeks. "Moll

and Jo are Nan's problems, not yours. You're me best friend, Maggie, and I cain't stand to see you doing this to yourself." Maggie wanted to cry, too, but she didn't. She couldn't remember how. It had been too long. "You know I can't just let 'em down like that," she mumbled, pulling Sally's angular frame against her in an awkward hug. "We've been together for years. Dey're me family, too." "Maggie's chavies," Sally agreed softly. A porter with a crate on his back spat a curse at them as he squeezed past, and she sighed and let go as Maggie turned to continued down the street. "What are you going to do now? That was the last dance hall within five miles o' Church Street." "I'm going to go to the one singing place where Danny ain't got no say," Maggie said firmly. "The opera 'ouse." Her voice rang with confidence, but inside she recognized that declaration for what it was—a surrender, an admission of defeat, a hopeless, last-ditch effort to leap at a dream that could never be hers. Her voice had not been good enough for the opera four years ago, and nothing had changed since then. But what else could she do but try again? There was nothing open to her anywhere else. She would audition again, she would fail again… and then she would disappear so that her taint wouldn't drag down the chavies with her. It was the last gift she could give them.