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“She doesn’t want t’ marry ye.”

“So you think Edlyn is a woman who knows what is best for her?”

Wharton’s reaction was automatic and unthinking. “O’ course not!”

Hugh hid his half-smile. “Nor do I. She is an exemplary woman, but she’s only a woman, and she’ll only be happy when she accepts the guidance of a man. Men are, by definition, the wiser gender.”

Wharton clearly itched to argue, but how could he? Every word Hugh said was true. Wharton bobbed and bowed, and satisfied he had squelched his servant’s little insolence, Hugh stepped outside.

Outside. He hadn’t been outside since the day of the battle. He’d been stuck in that stuffy dispensary, dying in slow degrees until Edlyn had worked a miracle. And she had worked a miracle. He remembered little of his illness, but he remembered that.

Now the stone wall around the garden protected him from anyone who might be out so late. The night air smelled as sweet as freedom, and he squinted up at the sky overlaid with clouds. The rain, more than a mist yet less than a shower, wet his face. He had heard it on the thatch earlier, but knowing and experiencing were two different things.

Fearing to leave his master out in his weakened state, Wharton shuffled out to stand beside him. Wharton hated water of all kinds. He said it would kill a man to drink it and wither his cock if he washed in it, so Hugh took a fiendish delight in keeping him wet.

“Lady Edlyn seems rather”—Wharton trod carefully in view of Hugh’s previous displeasure—“different than yer usual fare.”

“How so?”

“She’s old.”

“Twenty-eight, if I did my numbers correctly, and handsome still.”

“Ye deserve a virgin in yer wedding bed.”

“Deserve?” Hugh barked a laugh, then held his side until the pain faded. “Did I deserve to almost die?”

“Nay, master!” Wharton coughed pathetically, trying without words to indicate the dreaded lung disease that would afflict him if they remained in the mist any longer.

Hugh ignored him. “Deserve has nothing to do with the trials and rewards of life.”

“If ye take Lady Edlyn t’ be your wife, I know which she will be.”

“A trial?” Hugh walked a little farther into the garden. The night was as dark as any Hugh had ever seen. The clouds blocked all light from the stars. Unlit and silent, the abbey waited for the dawn.

The scent of burnet warned him he’d wandered off the trail, and he moved hastily back on the hay-strewn path. Edlyn, he knew, would not thank him for crushing the new plants that she’d sown. “Aye, she’ll be that. The world had not yet tested the Edlyn I knew at George’s Cross, and she looked at me with an adoring countenance. This Edlyn will fight—she has fought—for what is due her.”

Wharton followed Hugh, staying carefully on the straw to avoid the mud. “Fighting’s not attractive in a woman.”

Hugh had agreed with Wharton at one time, and that time had been only a fortnight previously. Now it seemed long ago, and he didn’t understand Wharton’s hesitation. “What good is a woman who can’t defend what is hers?”

Driven beyond courtesy, Wharton said, “She doesn’t like ye.”

“She’s a challenge,” Hugh agreed.

“She doesn’t care fer invalids. She thinks a man flat on his back inferior t’ a man who stands steady on his two feet.”

In the safety of the darkness, Hugh allowed himself a smile. “I thought of that, but I can’t believe it. She is so sensible, so matter-of-fact, so strong, she must be able to recognize strength in others.”

“She is strong.” Wharton obviously considered this to her detriment. “She lifted ye when ye were unconscious.”

“That’s not what I meant, but aye, she has strong arms and good hands.” Her nails she kept short, the better to work with. Her long fingers and blunt palms were capable and expressive, and Hugh had found himself watching those hands and wondering whether they would be capable and expressive when she thrashed beneath him on a mat or in a bed.

“Ye like ’em delicate,” Wharton reminded him.

“Delicate doesn’t interest me now.” Dismissing his former requirements, Hugh finger-combed the beard on his jaw as he thought. “I have the strength, and she doesn’t seem to know the role I have taken in the management of the kingdom, so her indifference must have its origins in another source.”

“When she knows who ye are, she’ll snuggle up fast enough.”