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With a surge of terror, Elizabeth asked, “Do you feel well?” She put her hand on Anne’s forehead. “Do you feel hot or clammy? Is your stomach starting to cramp?”

“Nay!” Anne cried, pushing Elizabeth away. Her face paled. “It cannot be—poisoned! I have been eating it for over an hour.”

Elizabeth nodded, her breath coming too fast in relief. She closed her eyes. “Surely you would have been suffering by now. Thank the lord.”

She heard Anne flop onto the bed.

“What a fright!” Anne said with a groan. “And it was delicious food.”

“I should have known you wouldn’t pass up a meal.”

Anne threw a cushion at her. “I’ll share this second meal with you.”

“I have no time to eat. There’s so much to do! But first, it seems we have someone who wants to help. Mayhap if the person does it again, you can pass up a note asking his identity.”

Anne giggled. “I can’t tell you how startled I was to hear the basket clunk against the closed shutters. It happened when you were all at mass in the chapel.”

“That makes sense.”

“Who else would want to help you? The castle residents know you’re masquerading as me.”

“Not everyone,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully, thinking of Sir John. But surely the man was too injured to lower baskets from the top of a tall tower. And why would he, when he knew that Elizabeth was bringing food at every meal?

“Bannaster’s soldiers want to give me food?” Anne said in disbelief. Then she studied Elizabeth more closely. “You think it might be the bailiff and his clerk. Why would he—unless you’ve been telling him, a stranger, about our troubles? And why ever would you be doing that?”

“Because he…wants to help,” Elizabeth said, wincing. “But it could not have been him. He is too injured.”

“Wants to help?” Anne said incredulously.

“I find myself telling him things about our situation, but he is far too intelligent not to figure it all out for himself.”

“So he’s intelligent, as well as handsome.”

“I never called him handsome!”

Anne grinned. “You didn’t have to.”

“He’s certainly not as handsome as William was. If William were alive⁠—”

“If William were alive, you’d be married to him by now.”

Elizabeth sighed, feeling sadness creep over her again, making everything seem futile.

“Forgive me,” Anne said, sitting down beside her on the bench and putting her arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders.

“Nay, there is nothing to forgive. I have been full of self-pity of late.”

“I would think if anyone deserved to feel that way, it should be you.”

“It’s difficult to be down below, to see everyone…going on with their duties, with their lives, without me.”

“You’re right there with them!”

“I’m something they have to avoid, so that they don’t accidentally reveal my identity. Milburn and Adalia are running the castle adequately now. I think I make things harder on the servants. Perhaps it would be easier if I just⁠—”

“Accepted your fate? Married a man who has stolen you, who wants you for your wealth, for this castle and a title, so that he can control your people, and subvert what your father intended?”

Elizabeth gave a small smile. “You have a very persuasive way of making me forget about pitying myself.”