Late sun through the open front door made Melanthe's shadow a long distorted shape. "Hold all of my people at readiness on the dock. As soon as I'm changed, we depart. Dan Gian's servants may do as they please, but I'll not wait for him past the time that I set. I wish to be at London by midnight. I'll want a supper on the boat. See to it." She almost ordered that Cara attend her, but remembered that the girl would already be off with her beloved Englishman. "Send Lisa to me."

She left him, climbing the stairs to her solar. The bareness of the house did not sadden her—she was glad enough to leave Merlesden. She had no childhood memories of the place; it had merely been convenient while the court was at Windsor, and full of Gian's presence.

But her steps were slow on the stairs. Leaving here, she broke the final thread. There would be London and Dover and then the sea, but it was here that the end came.

She passed under the arched door. The last chest lay open for her to change into traveling gear. The great bed was dismantled and gone, the stone walls bare of tapestries and the floor of carpets. Colored light poured in the oriel windows, green and gold and red and blue, intense with sunset.

A shadow stepped into it. She started. "Gian!"

But he was too tall, too broad in the shoulders. He was all black against the light but for the hard curve of his cheek and the red and blue hues on his shoulders.

Melanthe turned and slammed the door, barring it. She pressed her back against the wood. Lisa's knock came, and her perplexed call, muted through the door.

"I don't need you!" Melanthe strove to keep her voice steady. "Go to the others. Wait at the wharf!"

"Yes, my lady." The maid's voice was barely audible through the wood.

Too late, Melanthe realized that she should have given some order that would keep Gian and everyone else from the house. But her mind seemed simple, her heart sending too much blood to her brain with wild beating.

"You leave soon, I see," Ruck said.

"In faith, are you to annoy me yet, mad churl?" She thrust herself off the door, but stayed near it. "Go, before I have you arrested for trespass!"

"My lady, you stand between me and the way."

She couldn't let him leave—at any moment Gian would come. So close, she had been so close to drawing the danger safely off. Even now, if she could get Gian aboard the barks and on the river, if she could hold Ruck bound just long enough—

"I wouldn't leave here anyway," he said. "I've come for you, wife."

"You have a wooden head."

"So I've said myself, as I lay in chains of your making, my lady."

"Behoove you to mark them well!" In her agitation she glared at him with real savagery. "I don't know how you're here, but by Christ's rood, I tire of your pestering of me!"

"And I tire of your faithless deceits!" He walked nearer to her, out of the glare. His dress was nothing from a prison—he wore his black velvet, with the gold belt and marcasite, stones that were silver and pitch at once, like the face of water at night. "Where lies your heart?"

"I have no heart. Did I never say you so?"

"I had a message of you, that your great love, this Navona, had come to wed you. Allegreto has poured news of it in my ears, how you cherish his father and forget me for love of him. Is that your heart?"

She turned his words. "Have you slain Allegreto to get free?"

"No, he's safe enough, but not here to twist and turn for you, my lady. Nor Navona to harbor you."

"Gian comes at any moment."

His eyes flickered, as if he heard a sound behind her. Melanthe stiffened, gripping the door hasp, but there was nothing, no noise of feet on the stairs, no voices below.

"Faithly, does he? Then my lady has only to wait. He'll slay me, will he not?"

"Slowly," she agreed. "With the greatest agony he can serve you."

He smiled slightly. "So would I serve him, if I could."

She saw with despair that fear would not move him. He had no dismay of Gian, but she was possessed with dread of what would happen if Gian and his men found him here. It would be no quick poison this time. It would be torture, and she would have to watch.

Melanthe tilted her head back against the door. She looked at him beneath her lashes. "Come, will you be such a poor love-sotted wretch, to die for me?"

"Yes," he said simply. "I would."

"Fool!" She pressed against the door. She must have him out of here, away, and yet she could not think of how. "When I despise you! Will you torment me to my grave?"

"To your grave. Duck and tumble and guile as you will, I am still your husband, Melanthe, and I will have you."

"I never wed you, fool. How should I? It was a joke, an idle sport, monk-man, to make you forfeit your vaunted chastity!"

His green eyes held steady. "You have as many deceits as a fox has turnings, my lady, but you're well skewered on this joke of yours."

She laughed. "I love another man. You're nothing to me."

He took a step at that. She sought desperately for a way to turn it to advantage.

"Melanthe—"

"I loathe and scorn you!"

He lowered his hand. With a sharp turn he paced to the far end of the chamber, lost again in shadow. The rays of the sun were longer and lower. Gian must come, any moment he must come.

"You never told of Wolfscar to them," he said, his voice coming with a soft echo from the dark comer. "Why not, lady?"

"Why?" She shrugged. "But why should I? I didn't wish to make my lover jealous."

She could not see him, but she sensed that she had found a chink. An inspiration came to her, if she only had time to employ it. She reached to her throat and released the catch on her silken mantle. It fell to the floor, and she kicked it from her.

She stood in the light and stretched her arms luxuriously overhead. "But Gian isn't here yet. Perhaps I'll bedevil your chastity one more time before I go."

She turned, looking toward him, unable to see past the shafts of colored sunlight. He said nothing.

With a wicked smile, she moved toward him. "One kiss," she murmured. "For farewell, monk-man."

He caught her hand before her eyes adjusted, pulling her up against him. "Is this loathing and despite?" he asked low.

She lifted her eyes, the sun-haze still in them, his face dim and veiled; his mouth on hers all feeling. He kissed her hard. She breathed him, familiar heat and plain scent, a man's unadorned skin and the taste of him on her tongue—memory and delight and pain. The last time. The last time his arm pressed her into his chest, the last time his fingers slid upward behind her throat, straining her closer still.

She almost lost herself in it, but the declining sun burned on her eyelids. Her hand crept up his shoulder. She pressed the point of her dagger beneath his ear.

He jerked at the prick of it, his breath hissing inward.

"Now," she said, "you'll do as I bid. Your hands crossed behind you."

His dark lashes hid his eyes as he looked down upon her. Slowly, slightly, he shook his head. "No, Melanthe."

She breathed deeply, holding the tip against his skin. "Do you think I've not the skill, or the strength?"

"Not the will."

"Fool! Don't try me!"

His mouth was a taut line in the half light. "I try you. Do it, if you will."

She gripped his sleeve, turning the blade, pressing harder and praying.

"You think to tie and imprison me until you go," he said bitterly. "But you must slay me, Melanthe, if you will to be free, for I won't concede it while I breathe life."

She cut him. He flinched, but he held her, his arms tightening as a bright trickle of blood ran down his neck. She was trapped in his embrace.

"Fool! Fool! If Gian comes now, he'll flay the skin from you alive."

"What does it matter to you, who hates and loathes me?"

She heard horses. Hoofbeats sounded in the courtyard, and the voices of men. "He's come!"

Ruck seized her tight. "Decide, my lady. It's beyond lies now."

"He is come!" she cried. She tore herself from him. "Go!"

"It's he you want, then?"

Her mastery shattered. "Go!" she screamed. "You fool, do you think it is between you? He'll slay you—I cannot bear it, God curse you, he's killed all that I ever loved only because I loved it. Go! The kitchen, the postern door—"

But he did not go. Melanthe stood in the midst of the streaming light clutching the dagger, staring at the blind shadow of him, hearing the sounds below.

"He knows, he knows," she moaned. "He'll find you here—how did you come? You were safe, I made you safe, go, go now, if you ever loved me...please—I can't bear it." She could see nothing, only light and the window, the last sun pouring past her in rainbow hues. "I cannot bear it."

He caught her wrist, wrenching the blade from her. His body made an outline against the light, the rays shifting and dancing around him. She heard the knife clatter on the stone floor.

"Melanthe—" He held her hands up, and she saw blood on them, felt the sting where she had cut herself. "He is dead."

"Go," she whispered, but it was hopeless, too late. She could hear them in the hall and on the stairs.

"Navona is dead, Melanthe."

She shook her head. "He is not dead. He comes."

"No, my lady." He held her hands. She couldn't see his face. She wanted to see his face, but tears and light and dark were all she had.

There was a scratch on the door. She shuddered. She could not move. "He's here," she whimpered.