Page 47

“You stood by me,” she said.

“Would you have me quarrel with my wife before a tenant?”

She lifted her head. “I would have you mean it.”

He kissed her instead of answering. She knew he had escaped the question; she put her arms about him nevertheless. She had been frightened for Agnes. She was tired. For a little while she wished to be nothing but a woman whose husband wanted her near him.

Then he took her wrist and turned her hand toward the candle.

“What did you say over the thread?”

“The words you have heard before.”

“I heard Robert before the door shut. Others will hear him tomorrow.”

“He has a living wife and son.”

“He may thank God for them and still fear you.”

“Do you?”

Nicholas ran his thumb over the marks Agnes’s fingers had left upon her skin.

“I fear what you will say when somebody asks you a question you ought not to answer.”

“I answered Robert plainly.”

“Then learn not to.”

She tried to draw back. His hand closed.

“Elspeth. No more talk of what you believe before the servants. No more arguing with the parson. You know what times these are.”

“I have told no one what I told you.”

“See that you do not.”

His mouth touched her wrist again, precisely where his fingers had hurt it.

Elizabeth woke pulling against her coverlet.

Morning light showed the green curtain beside her bed. Her wrist was free. There was no man in the room, no rain at the window, no child crying beyond the door.

She sat up and looked at her hands. They were her hands. The little mark beside her finger came from yesterday’s needle, and she remembered exactly how carelessly she had earned it.

In the dream she had loved him. That distressed her almost as much as his grip. She remembered the comfort of his body and her eagerness when he bent to kiss her. Those feelings had arrived with the old room, as complete as the fear which followed them.

Mrs. Reynolds had shown her an account of a birth. She had named a husband. A dreaming mind might make much from so little.

But who had supplied the rosemary upon the pillow?

Elizabeth went to her desk. Upon one side of a sheet she wrote what she had read; upon the other, what she had dreamed. She did not mistake either list for proof of the other.

When Sally brought hot water, she asked for Mrs. Reynolds.

The housekeeper listened without interrupting. At the mention of Nicholas’s hand she glanced at Elizabeth’s wrist.

“Did Mara write of rosemary?” Elizabeth asked.