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Her duke’s treacherous children had tried to throw her out without a pence, and when she’d fought for her dower, they tried to have her killed. It hadn’t been easy. It hadn’t been pretty. But she’d won the money and the lands stipulated in her marriage contract and ascertained the thread of steel in her backbone at the same time.

Now Hugh looked at her as if he saw into her past, at the struggle she’d been forced to face at the age of seventeen, and she recognized the balance between them had shifted. He’d been lying behind this oven for just one day less than a fortnight, and for the first time since he had woken to find himself in her care, they spoke not as patient and caretaker, but as man and woman.

With a faint gasp, she turned her head away and stood, then fled back to her herbs.

Behind her, she heard him say, “Marriage to your duke proved to be a prosperous union for you.”

Plunging the pestle into the mortar filled with dry leaves, she ground them into dust. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know how frightened she had been. Or else he didn’t care. God grant him the delicacy to allow this conversation to die.

An imbecilic hope, for he immediately asked, “Do you plan to take your vows as so many noble widows do?”

She dropped the pestle into the mortar. It clattered on the smooth stone bowl and a poof of green dust spun through the air. To cover her clumsiness, she crossed to the oven. She shook the long-stemmed plants she had placed there to dry. The faded leaves rattled, and a few of the yellow buds fell off. With an exclamation of satisfaction, she whisked them over to her table.

She shouldn’t answer, but she already knew his methods. If she didn’t reply now, he would ask the question again later, and still later, until he’d worn down her resistance. So she said simply, “No vows.”

“Why not?”

“They won’t have me.” It was a plain statement of fact.

“Who keeps you from it? Is it that woman who comes every day to badger you? Or her wretched servant who watches when she should not?”

For a man who remained hidden under rags whenever she had a visitor, he saw remarkably well. “Lady Blanche has no influence here, although she would like to have.” Edlyn sighed. “No, ’tis I who have too many duties to fulfill in this world ere I could ever enter the cloister.”

“If God calls, surely earthly duties must be dismissed.”

“God has not called.”

She heard him say something, she didn’t know what, then he covered his eyes with his arm. Because he was tiring? Or to hide his expression from her? She watched him suspiciously.

“How long has it been since the death of your duke?” he asked.

“I was fifteen when I wed him. I was seventeen when he died. And that was eleven years ago.”

“What a tight-lipped, suspicious woman you have grown to be!” He lifted his arm, and she saw the exasperation he usually concealed. “You tell me nothing.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I wish to know.”

“As if that matters!”

He ignored that, and using bluntness as he would a broadsword, he slashed at her discretion. “How many other husbands have you had in those eleven years?”

Incensed that he believed he had the right to pry, determined to put him in his place, she answered him as bluntly as he had asked. “One.”

He struggled to sit up.

She watched, her chin thrust forward.

“Where is he now?” he demanded.

“He’s dead.”

He must have expected that, for he placed his next query without pause. “What was his name?”

“You’ll know it, I’m sure. He was no doubt a comrade of yours.” She turned back to her work and flung words over her shoulder. “His name was Robin, earl of Jagger.”

“Robin…earl of Jagger?” His voice was hoarse with anguish and fury. “Are you taunting me?”