She slept as Theo’s lord had done until awakened to take the last watch.

Leaning against a wall alongside a shuttered window, hand resting on dagger’s hilt, Elias considered Honore where she stretched atop a bench.

Over the past half hour, the blanket given her by the innkeeper had slipped to her waist as restless sleep moved her on her narrow bed. Before turning her back to him this last time, she had murmured something from which he picked Finwyn’s name, then shaken her head.

Guessing her dreams were disturbed by remembrance of the attack at the stream, Elias had been tempted to awaken her, but she had resettled and spoken no more.

Until now.

She drew a sharp breath, dropped onto her back so near the edge of the bench she might soon find herself on the floor, and sent one rasping word through the gorget’s weave.

Bishop?

Elias strode to the bench, bent to turn her, and stilled when the single torch the innkeeper had left lit cast a glow across one side of a face wrapped all around in cloth. The veil had shifted upward, exposing golden hair, the gorget downward, though not so far her entire mouth was revealed. One side of the upper bow was beautifully arched, the other distorted by the table’s shadow.

Something moved so stealthily through Elias it nearly slipped past him—attraction, that which he ought not feel and certainly not so near the tragedy in Forkney.

Before he could distance himself, she moaned, and this time he heard clearly, “I need him. For Hart.”

Guessing he figured into what she dreamt, Elias waited. But once more she rolled away, exposing to light the bruise on the side of her nose dealt by Arblette. It had faded enough that one almost had to look for it to see it.

He drew the blanket up over her shoulder, but as he turned away, he sensed a change about her. And stilled.

Honore sprang open her eyes. Had Elias’s presence awakened her? Was it him she felt almost as strongly as if he hunkered on this side of her? Reminding herself to breathe, she narrowed her lids and, past the dim beneath the table, saw the corner where two of the brethren slept upright, the other two on benches.

Leave me be, she silently entreated the knight who stood over her, but he remained unmoving as if aware she had awakened.

Feeling the gorget’s edge across the seam of her lips, she thanked the Lord she faced opposite. Otherwise, Elias might satisfy his curiosity over one of those things hidden from him. Though her lower face was the least of these, she was increasingly self-conscious as she had been made to feel years past when trust in one she believed would overlook her imperfection proved a painful mistake. Afterward, she had rebelled against hiding how God had touched her in a way He had not touched them and cast off the gorget. But not for long.

At the apologetic request of the abbess who relied on the funds provided by Lady Yolande, once more Honore had covered her face outside her dormitory so noble ladies and others easily given to superstition and distaste must not so often cross themselves or hasten opposite.

Yanking herself back to the present, Honore silently bemoaned that Elias had yet to retreat. What did he want? To allay suspicions over what else she hid?

Once more, her conscience berated her for naming those things merely hidden. Whether by word or omission, they were lies. She could not be certain of Brother Christian’s identity, but she suspected the truth as strongly as she believed Finwyn was likely Hart’s father. But the same thing that made false of her over the boy’s parentage made false of her over the tallest of the brethren. She needed Elias’s aid, and were she to reveal her suspicion, he might turn from her as quickly as if given greater cause to question he had fathered a foundling.

Discomfited by the softening gorget absorbing the moisture of her inner lip, Honore hoped what she did next would move Elias away.

She sighed long, slid a hand up her face to shift the gorget higher, scratched her temple. Then she let her hand drop alongside her face.

“Honore?”

It was not her name that made her gasp. It was the speaking of it so near.

“Oui, you are awake,” he said low where he bent over her.

“I would return to my rest,” she whispered.

“I apologize for awakening you. You were restless and talking in your sleep. I only meant to ensure you did not fall from the bench or lose your blanket.”

One moment she was touched by his kindness, the next jolted. Her back had not always been turned to him? The blanket now over her had slipped? Might he have seen what she did not wish seen?

“You are kind,” she rasped.

“Turn to me, Honore.”

She stiffened.

“So our words may stay between us.”

She longed to retort their voices would not carry at all did he allow her to sleep, but she doubted it would send him away.

Hoping he did not wish to discuss Brother Christian, as avoided when Cynuit and the squire entered the inn, she ensured the gorget was in place and shifted around.

As he eased back on his haunches to give her space, she pushed onto an elbow. “Of what would you speak that cannot await morn?”

Lowering his voice further now they were face to face, he said, “The brethren trouble me. The urgency prompting their leader to enlist my aid so none thwart their departure makes me certain they are the reason all are searched at the town gates.”

“As I am also certain.” She hoped her agreement would make him more receptive to the answer she must give.

“You are sure you do not recall a Brother Christian at Bairnwood?”

A man by that name she did not, but there was another whose visit was unforgettable—he who, not then of the Church, was accompanied by a boy of greater consequence than himself. But that man and the one sleeping in the corner might not be the same.

Still you deceive, her conscience stabbed.

“I do not recall a Brother Christian,” she clung to her determination to aid in finding Hart. The boy needed her, did he not? Just as he had been nearly a son to her, she had been nearly a mother to him. And even if this man was his father, he would present as a stranger, all the more frightening after whatever Hart endured. Hers would be the familiar face and arms the boy needed to put him back together, and that was only possible if Finwyn did not reach him first and ensure he was never found.

Honore tried to look nearer on the knight to read his expression, but though his features were more intimate with torchlight than hers where she remained in the table’s shadow, all she knew for certain was they appealed as much in the night as they did in the day. And if she did not uproot her growing attraction she might once more be pained by something dangled so far above her heart she could never reach it.

“Methinks I ought to reconsider the bargain with Brother Christian,” Sir Elias rent the silence.

She sat up, dropped her feet to the floor. “If we do not depart with him, there is no guarantee even you alone will make the crossing on the morrow, and if already Finwyn is in France…” She drew a shuddering breath. “I am afeared it will be too late to recover Hart. But if it is not and we chance more days in which he can be further exploited—”

Elias moved from his haunches to his knees, leaned in, and set a hand over her gorget-covered mouth. “Quiet.”

Realizing her voice had risen and tears rimmed her eyes, she stared into his face and felt the knuckle of his thumb beneath her nose and the warmth of her breath on it. Though once more tugged toward him, more she was moved to despair over the numbering of her fears. Fear for Hart’s fate. Fear she would greatly regret what she withheld from Elias. Fear of defying those who sought to prevent the brethren from leaving England. Fear of what would become of her foundlings if ill befell her.

She had told herself she knew enough of the world inhabited by this knight that she could move through it, but it was so thick with danger, intrigue, and uncertainty that the weak of her longed to be inside Bairnwood’s walls.

“Whisper,” he instructed and eased his hand from her mouth.

“Forgive me, Elias, but I…” She winced over denying him his title. “There is much to lose.” That last came out on a sob, at the end of which she found herself drawn forward. Though she kept her seat on the bench, he pressed her head beneath his chin and her face against his throat.

She knew she should resist being embraced by one she had accused of trespass, but she softened as the scent and feel of him carved forbidden paths through her. Thus, her only struggle was of keeping her hands from sliding around his neck.

“You are right,” he rasped. “Too much to lose.”

Then he would keep the bargain made with Brother Christian? Would see them aboard the skiff and across the channel?

“Tell me,” he spoke into her hair, “how came Hart by his name?”

Her heart lurched, not with alarm but gratitude for what she perceived an attempt to move her mind from the ill of his world to the good.

“I am guessing it refers to a male deer,” he prompted.

“Oui. Returning to the abbey with the babe delivered unto me, I happened upon a red hart at the stream…” She caught her breath as new ugly memories flung themselves across old beautiful ones.

“You prevailed,” said the one who had pulled her from that stream. “Think on that.”

That which made possible she was here with him. She nodded. “Though I had to pass near the hart to cross by way of the fallen tree, it did not bound away. It watched us, and when I reached the opposite side and the babe began to coo, the deer stamped and snorted. Thus, I determined to name the babe Hart.”

“A good tale. Hold to it, Honore.”

She did, whilst he held her so long that imaginings of forever having his arms to run into warmed her as much as it worried her to want something she could not have.

Ending the embrace, he said, “Sleep,” then left her to her bench.