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Unwittingly, her gaze went to Hugh, and she jerked it back to Wharton when he laughed.

“As ye wish, m’ lady. Ye’ll see, that monk’s still snoring at his station an’ we’ll slip right past him.”

She hoped so. She prayed so. Abbeys were obsessed with two things: salvation and sin. Nocturnal wanderings would automatically be assumed to be sin. She would be required to explain her actions, and how could she do that?

As she followed Wharton through the garden and across the abbey yard to the guest quarters, she kept her head down and her hood up, and with every step she trembled with fear. She’d been out in the wide world for a brief time, living hand to mouth, never knowing where the next meal would come from or whether the next place she begged at would be her last.

So many cruelties. So many horrors. They had scarred her. She had to get back into her room without discovery.

“Keep close behind me.”

Wharton spoke softly, so softly she wondered if he comprehended her fear.

“Take off yer shoes.” He paused in the overhang of the guest quarters while she did as he instructed. “If th’ sleepy one wakes, I’ll distract him while ye slip past me an’ down th’ hallway t’ yer room.”

She didn’t like the way that sounded, and she didn’t trust Wharton. “Don’t hurt him,” she warned.

“I don’t hurt ol’ monks,” Wharton answered scornfully.

He swung open the door that led to the entry, and Edlyn wondered briefly how he had opened it in the first place. When one wanted admittance, one knocked and Brother Irving looked through the high, covered peephole. If he liked the explanation given for entering the guest quarters, then he took the key from his belt and unlocked the door.

But Wharton, it seemed, made his own rules. Somehow he’d entered the guest quarters without Brother Irving’s knowledge and found Edlyn’s cell without instruction. Wharton was the resourceful sort.

Through the open door, the sound of Brother Irving’s lusty snoring made a welcome din in Edlyn’s ears. Wharton gestured for her to stay, then slipped inside the small, cold entry room and covered the single candle with his cupped palm. At his signal, she crept inside, her gaze never leaving Brother Irving. He still sat as he had when they stole past the first time—in a tipped-back chair, his chin resting on his shallow chest.

She released her breath in slow increments. Brother Irving hadn’t seen her leave and he hadn’t seen her return.

The guest quarters had been built as a long hallway with the doors of the cells leading onto it and the entry breaking it in half. The women slept in the right hallway, the men in the left hallway. Because of Edlyn’s status as a live-in dependent on the abbey’s charity, her cell was at the end of the right hallway. The candle in the entry never cast its illumination all the way to her door, and when the dusk had settled and she walked the hall alone, she imagined the ghosts of her past walked with her. That always made her run, but she couldn’t do it now. Not with Wharton trailing behind her.

Anyway, if the ghosts were smart, they would be afraid of Wharton.

Putting her hand on the door, she turned to her shadowy escort. “Lord Hugh should be well enough until morning.” Because she knew how sounds echoed along the stone walls, she spoke as softly as possible. “Don’t come to get me again.”

Wharton paid her no heed. Instead he gave the door a push and followed it as it swung in. “I’ll give ye a light.”

“A light?” She scurried in after him. “I don’t have any candles.”

“I do.”

The darkness was less intense inside the room. The window was high and small, just as in the other buildings of the abbey, but except in the coldest weather Edlyn kept it open. She welcomed the moonlight, the starlight, and the light of dawn. She welcomed any kind of light. Earlier when Wharton had leaned over her body to waken her, she had screamed a little—only because he seemed part of a nightmare and only because she couldn’t see his face. But she thought she had successfully masked her discomfort. How he had seen through her pretense and why he moved now to dissipate her fear, she didn’t know.

He struck a spark and as the wick caught, she thought of something else. “Where did you get a candle?”

Laughing coarsely, he placed the light into a pewter holder he pulled from his pocket. Then he looked around the cell. Here he would see the bare truths that governed her life.

He did, too. His gaze had encompassed everything, then he looked at her with pity—the kind of pity that made her soul shrivel.

He placed the candle on the table beside the bed and he left on silent feet.

Tucking her wrap around her, she sat down on the bed and put her shoes on the floor where she could easily reach them in the morning. She slid between the covers, snuggled down, and stared at the yellow flame as hard as she could until she blinked.

Then when she looked around, she saw it all.

The tapestries on the wall. The fine rugs to protect her feet. The constantly burning fire on the hearth. The furs on the bed.

How dare Wharton look at her with such pity? What other lady had such sumptuous riches?

She blinked again. The grand furnishings vanished, leaving only a bare room with stone walls. A narrow rope bed covered with rough wool blankets. A rickety table with a wooden water bowl. And two pallets, folded neatly and stacked in the corner.