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“You look the same,” he said. “Pretty as ever.”

“Wharton.” Hugh laid on his side on the pallet and in a rich voice spoke persuasively to his servant. “You’ll need to leave before the sun rises much higher in the sky, or someone here might recognize you.”

Like a she-wolf guarding her pup, Wharton squatted beside Hugh. Setting his jaw, he looked annoyed. “I don’t like leaving ye here day after day in th’ hands o’ that woman.”

From her place at the long table, Edlyn looked at the ceiling as if her much-needed forbearance would appear through the thatch. That woman, Wharton called her. She’d saved his master and protected his own life, and he resented her more bitterly than ever before. It was, she suspected, because Hugh so clearly wanted to spend his time alone with her.

She didn’t want it, Hugh did, and so she tried time and again to tell Wharton, but Wharton wouldn’t listen. As far as Wharton was concerned, his master was perfect, so the fault must lie in her.

Hugh indicated nothing but courteous regard for his servant when he said, “Lady Edlyn has taken good care of me, Wharton, and as you well know, I will need you here and awake tonight to help me.”

“To help you what?” Edlyn asked idly.

Wharton began, “T’ help him—”

“—In case I’m stricken with illness,” Hugh finished with glib assurance.

Edlyn looked from Wharton’s angry, guilty face to Hugh’s smooth one and wondered what they were hiding.

“Guess I’d best be leaving then.” Wharton rose and shook out his legs. “I’ll be tramping about in th’ woods.”

“And gathering information?” Hugh asked.

“From any chance-met traveler,” Wharton agreed.

Again they were sharing a secret, keeping something from her, but she didn’t care. She’d dealt with little boy intrigue before.

Nodding and bowing, Wharton backed away from the long prone figure behind the oven. Then with a sneer at her, he slammed out.

Hugh scarcely waited until Wharton had cleared the door before he began his attack. “Your duke didn’t live very long.”

Edlyn stared at her hands as they sorted dark green leaves into brown wooden boxes. “Two years,” she answered, hoping that would satisfy his curiosity but knowing it would not.

“Two years. Not long at all.”

She could feel Hugh’s gaze; it made the muscles in her back contract as if she were braced for the stab of a knife. Funny that she suspected Hugh, seemingly so calm, of being more dangerous than the volatile Wharton.

“Was he a good husband?”

“He was a dear.” Edlyn didn’t know if it was the dragon’s blood or pure bloody determination, but once Hugh began to heal, he healed rapidly. He wanted to rise, insisting he needed exercise. Knowing it was too soon, she refused to let him but wished him gone nevertheless. Healing, he was a presence in the dispensary—rather like a lump in her throat that strangled her but was impossible to dislodge.

“A handsome man, and true?” he asked.

She gave a crack of laughter, then submitted to temptation and walked to his side. She told him she had to attend to her duties, but she would be glad to listen to him as he talked. But he didn’t talk. He continued his interrogation, and occasionally, with her mind on the mixture of herbs before her, she said too much.

Now she stood, hands on her hips, and looked down at him, relishing the inherent domination of her position. “I was less than a gnat for you when we lived at George’s Cross, was I not?”

If it affected him that she stood while he reclined, he hid his chagrin well. Instead, he watched her with those fathomless eyes and said, “I remember you well.”

“Do you?” Never in the last days had he given any indication he remembered that confession she had given while under the influence of that wretched dragon’s blood, and her early panic had eased. Now she squatted and looked him in the eye. “Then you are a foolish man. I married a duke so old the ceremony and the celebration after brought him to his knees with a pain in the head and a paralysis of his body. He was kind to me, but he never even completed the role of husband.”

“He never bedded you?” Again he showed no emotion.

She hung her hands over her up-thrust knees. “He attempted to, and we told his family he had succeeded. He didn’t wish to have his inability revealed, and I feared they would strip me of my dower portion when he died.”

“Did they?”

She smiled, a mere curving of the lips. “They tried.”