for David
drew no line between body and spirit. If she had all the things she had
just been longing for--a husband, a family, a home--and David appeared
out of nowhere and looked at her with those glowing eyes of his and told
her to come with him, she would abandon everything for him. When she
looked at David, she saw a pillar of pure fire burning inside him. There
was a power in him that called out to everything that was strong in her
and demanded that she accept no other man for her mate.

"You think that my title, my family, is an obstacle to our marrying,"
Simon said. "But it is not. If you knew who I really am, you might not
want to marry _me_."

She laughed a little at the thought of him not being who he so obviously
was. "Are you some peasant lad who stole the place of the true Simon de
Gobignon, then?"

"It is something like that."

"In God's name, Simon, what are you talking about?"

His nostrils flared. He drew air in a great gulp through his mouth. He
took a step toward her, and she tensed, lest he seize her again, but he
kept his hands at his sides.

"The last Count de Gobignon was a traitor to his king, to his
countrymen, to his own vassals. He betrayed a whole army of crusaders
into the hands of the Saracens. He died in disgrace. His grave is
unmarked. So foul was his treachery that no man of good family in France
will permit his daughter to marry me."

Sophia found that hard to believe. There must be many great barons in
France who would forget the crime of the father, no matter how horrible,
when the son was so attractive and, especially, so rich.

"Simon, you have so much to offer a wife." She would have laughed at the
absurdity of all this, but the tortured expression clearly mirrored a
tortured soul.

"Oh, surely, there are barons who would sell their daughters to the
devil for a bit of land," he agreed. "I meant that I could not marry the
women I chose. But there is worse, Sophia. I could lose everything if
what I am about to tell you were known, but that is the least of it. It
puts my life in your hands and the lives of my mother and--my father."

_Your life is already in my hands_, she thought, her eyes hurting from
looking so intensely into his. But then the full meaning of what he had
said bore in on her.

_His father?_

"Simon, are you telling me that you are not--"

"I am not the son of the Count de Gobignon. My father was a troubadour,
the Sire Roland de Vency, with whom my m