Six months. They felt like years.

Honore of no surname lowered her forehead to the floor. Gripping her beads, she prayed, “Almighty, You are all. You see all, hear all, feel all.” She drew a shaky breath. “You can do all. I beseech Thee, wherever Hart is, turn him back. Deliver him to these walls unharmed and smiling his sweetly crooked smile. Bring him home.”

To give the Lord time to consider her request in the hope He would finally act on it, she waited some minutes before setting before Him others in need of grace and healing.

When the bells called the sisters to prayer an hour later, she pressed upright. Soon the chapel would fill with holy women, one of whom Honore was not and would never be. She engaged in work of a different sort—of equal import, possibly greater.

She stepped out the side door and paused to allow the sun’s heat burning away the clouds to warm places grown cold whilst she prostrated herself. It felt wonderful, tempting her to delay her duties, but she was too long gone and Lady Wilma had been generous enough with her time.

Honore bounded down the steps and headed around the rear of the chapel to sooner reach the dormitory. And halted a step short of colliding with a squat nun.

“Forgive my recklessness, Sister Sarah.” She nodded deferentially. “I am late to—”

The nun raised a staying hand, and when Honore seamed her mouth, tapped her own lips.

“Dear me!” Honore gasped, belatedly realizing how loudly she had spoken, in the habit as she was of compensating for a muffled voice whilst moving about the abbey grounds. She drew up the thick linen cloth draped against her neck which respect for the Lord—and the abbess’s assurance He thought her beautiful—made her lower before addressing Him in His house.

“I was at prayer,” she said as she arranged the gorget not over chin as most often done by those of the abbey but over mouth. “In my haste to relieve Lady Wilma, I neglected to set myself aright.” She reached beneath her head veil and adjusted the gorget’s ties at the back of her crown to ensure the covering did not slip. “I thank you, Sister.”

It was not cruelty that bade the nun remind the younger woman of what was best kept concealed. It was kindness, Sister Sarah well-acquainted with the superstitious at Bairnwood, especially those who resided within the convent due to advanced age, a babe whose birth must be concealed, or to escape an unwanted marriage. The most disapproving of these nobles was the elderly Lady Yolande whose generous gifts to the abbey bent Abbess Abigail to her will—that will being to keep from sight as much as possible those unfortunates she believed born beneath a moon across which the devil cast his shadow.

“Tell, Honore,” Sister Sarah said, “how fares your good work?”

“Well, Sister.” It was true, though it felt otherwise these six months.

The nun inclined her head. “I pray thee a good day.” She sidestepped and continued to the chapel.

Resuming her course to the dormitory, Honore muttered, “You must cease this grieving. It does him no good. It does you none. Hart is gone. Pray for him and leave him to the Lord who can protect him far better than you.”

Easy to say. Difficult to do. The loss of the boy hurt deeply, and worry over him nibbled at her every edge. If she did not gain control of her emotions, she might find herself eaten all the way through.

Honore jumped out of the path of a cluster of nuns also destined for the chapel. As they passed, she fell beneath the regard of a middle-aged woman bringing up the rear, one not yet garbed as a bride of Christ. But soon, the novice’s family having supplied funds to make a place for her at Bairnwood.

Honore held the woman’s keen gaze, refusing to be cowed by one who was her equal—or nearly so. Had Honore wished to become a nun, for a dozen years now she would have worn a habit. Instead, she had been permitted to use the monies paid for her keeping in a way surely as pleasing to the Lord.

As the novice neared, she shifted her eyes to the gorget concealing the bottom half of Honore’s face, then lowered her gaze further.

Honore closed a hand around the short string of prayer beads usually tucked into her bodice. As noted months past, it was similar to the ones hung from the girdle of the novice who moved past her.

Slipping the beads beneath the neck of her gown, Honore continued to the farthest dormitory which housed the abbey’s female lay servants.

As soon as she entered the building whose northern end had been converted from a dozen individual cells into one great room a decade past, Lady Wilma hastened forward. “Settle yourselves, children,” she called over her shoulder, “else no honey milk with your dinner.”

As groans and mutterings answered her, Honore noted the woman’s anxious eyes. “What is amiss, my lady?” she asked as she lowered the gorget beneath her chin, it being unnecessary in this blessed place where all were accepted regardless of what the world deemed imperfection.

The woman halted. “That raggedy lad was here.”

Honore drew a sharp breath. She had hoped not to see Cynuit again, that the abbey’s plans to render the boy’s master useless would be completed before she was called upon to once more leave the safety of these walls.

“His master bids you meet him two hours ere matins,” Lady Wilma continued.

Midnight, then—a perilous hour, especially if the dense mist of these past nights returned.

“He told you are to bring twice the amount of coin.”

“Twice?” Honore exclaimed.

“For two.”

“Twins?” Honore’s thoughts flew to two such babes born in the village of Forkney a year past—rather, the rumor of them.

“I asked the same. The boy said he did not know.”

“Is he still here?”

“He is not. I fed him a good meal, gave him a coin, and sent him away. Poor lad. That master of his near starves him.”

How many times had Honore offered Cynuit a home here? As many times as he had declined. And now he was too old to be granted sanctuary.

She nipped her lower lip. She did not want to go to the wood, especially after what had happened the last time, but she must.

Lady Wilma touched her shoulder. “Methinks you ought to take big Jeannette with you.”

She wished she could. But dared not.