?

She looked at David's eyes, the color of the thunderclouds outside. Her
hatred for herself struck her heart with hammer blows.

He stood by the window of his room, straight and broad-shouldered,
wearing a belted gown of black silk with a broad red stripe at the
bottom. His wound no longer required a poultice, and it was almost
healed. The strange Saracen treatment he had prescribed for himself had
worked.

She saw pain in his eyes, a pain of the heart. "No doubt you will miss
the count," he said in a low voice. He turned to look out the window.

He had pulled the leaded pane of glass slightly inward on its hinge,
letting into the room the cold breeze stirred up by the storm. Locks of
his blond hair fluttered around his forehead. She studied his profile,
the nose long and straight, the chin sharp, the brows seeming to frown
even when relaxed.

"You wanted me to make love to him," she said softly.

He kept his face turned. "Yes."

"You did not want me to make love to him."

"Yes."

She stood in the center of the room, about ten paces from him, her hands
clasped before her. Her shawl and her gown were cold and wet. A net of
small pearls held her hair in place, but her hair, too, was sodden with
rain. She felt on the verge of shivering, but she held herself very
still.

White light filled the room. David's body jerked, and his lips
tightened. A long, rolling peal of thunder followed the lightning,
ending in a crash so loud it hurt her head.

He was afraid of thunderstorms. She had noticed that before. There was
little rain in the part of the world where he had grown up. He was
afraid of nothing else, as far as she could see. There was nothing he
would not do, nothing he _could_ not do. If only he were Greek, what a
fighter for the Polis he would be.

But when he winced away from the lightning, she wanted to cradle his
blond head against her breasts.

The rain beat down on the walls and roof of Ugolini's mansion with
redoubled intensity. She saw a small pool of water on the wood floor,
rain blown in through the open window.

"I never did make love to him," she said, raising her voice to be heard
over the wind and rain.

"I know that." He took a step toward her.

_I am doing worse than that now_, she thought with a stab of guilt. _I
am keeping from David something he would badly want to know._

"He put his arms around me and kissed me many times," she said.

David turned fully to look at her, saying