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She leaned her hip against the wall and folded her arms over her chest—only realizing then that her tunic was still slit down the front.

She clutched the edges together and wished she weren’t at such a disadvantage.

It would have been easier to face her fate with dignity if she’d been fully dressed.

“Well,” she said, nonplussed. “What are you going to do about it now?”

“Find my bed and sleep.”

Her mouth fell open of its own accord. “That’s it? That’s all?”

“What else do you suggest?”

“I thought,” she said huffily, drawing herself up, “that you’d be giving some serious thought as to how you might best put me in my grave!”

There was no answer. But after a moment or two, there was a hand, thrust out of the darkness toward her.

No comment. No invitation. Just a hand.

Ali honestly couldn’t tell if she would be placing herself in a hand that would subsequently strangle her or merely help her down the stairs. Damn him, she’d been fretting over his reaction for years and now all he could do was hold out his bloody hand? As if there were nothing amiss with it!

But the hand was empty. No knife, no sword, no bottle of poison.

A safe hand, if you didn’t think about whom it was attached to.

A hand a girl might easily put her hand into, under different circumstances.

She considered for several minutes what she might do, but in the end, when the hand began to beckon to her in a most impatient fashion, she crossed the parapet and put her hand in Colin’s. So she would die. Everyone did.

But then his warm, callused fingers closed very gently around hers and pulled her through the doorway.

If she’d expected either a kiss or a knife across her throat, she received neither. Colin released her hand as quickly as he would have if she’d had the plague, then started down the stairs in front of her, giving her nothing more than a short nod of his head in the direction of down.

She followed him past Marie’s solar, where horrible screeching was going on, down the stairs and to the little chamber she’d shared with him for two nights.

“You truly intend to go to bed,” she said, stunned.

“What else?” he asked as he opened the door, stripped off his sword and without hesitation made himself comfortable on his pallet. Ali stood at the doorway, gaping at him.

“But—”

“Come in and close the door.”

“I cannot sleep here with you!”

“Why not?” he asked. “You did last night.”

“That was different.”

He sat up and dragged his hands through his hair.

“Aliénore,” he said, sounding enormously weary, “you are as safe with me tonight as you have been for the past innumerable days. I will defend you against all enemies and protect you with my very life willingly. That is all. You can sleep in perfect peace.”

“Will you kill me in the morning?”

He lay down with a groan. “If saying you aye means you’ll bolt the door and go to sleep, then aye it is.”

She considered for several moments. Locked inside with him, or wandering the halls with Marie potentially able to escape her bindings and Sir Etienne possibly roaming about with more stealing on his mind and her in mind to do it?

She came inside and bolted the door, then leaned back against it. “You won’t slay me without a goodly bit of trouble, you know.”

“I should hope not,” he muttered, “as I gave you all your bloody training.”

“Jason had a hand in it too.”

He snorted and rolled over, pulling the blanket over his head.

She sat down on her blankets. “I don’t want to die.”

“Tomorrow, Aliénore,” came the muffled reply. “We’ll discuss it all tomorrow. You cannot fight any sort of battle on the amount of sleep we’ve had this night. We’ll both feel much more sensible in the morning.”

She lay down and stared up into the dark. “Did you kill Sir Etienne?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Did you hurt him?”

He sighed and removed the blanket from his face.

“Badly. Not as badly as I would have liked, but he’ll still be many days recovering. I had much to see you avenged for.”

That was something, at least. She sighed and closed her eyes. Perhaps in the morning, things would be clearer.

At least the sunlight might show her the arc of Colin’s blade as it sliced across her belly.

She supposed that it would be a very long time before she managed to sleep. After all, it wasn’t every day that a woman found herself revealed to her very fierce and ruthless betrothed in a such a manner.

And it wasn’t every day that a girl vanquished her stepmother so thoroughly.

Of course, that didn’t begin to answer all the other questions she had. Apparently Colin didn’t want to kill her right away, so did that mean he could be persuaded never to do it at all? He had vowed to protect her with his very life so she might sleep in safety.

And he also snored loudly enough to wake the dead, but she supposed that was something she could accustom herself to in time.

Assuming he left her alive long enough to do it.

Well, her flight was finished. She waved a fond farewell to the convent, to the possibilities of being an alewife or the mate of a pig-herder. She was discovered, revealed, shown to be who and what she was in the most glorious and unmistakable of ways.

And what was that business of his having known?

Well. He might have his questions, but she had a few of her own. She found her sword at the foot of her pallet, dragged it up next to her, and put her hand on its hilt.

And she slept like the dead.