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and repent what your eyes have seen and your wicked mind has dreamed.”
    Her wicked mind had dreamed absolutely nothing, but she had enough sense not to inform the abbot of that fact. He was wraith-thin with a round, protruding belly. The skin stretched over his knobby bones like parchment, but his eyes blazed. If her future was to contain this fiery zealot as well as the madman standing naked, then the sooner she found her way into a convent the better.
    “You’d best go,” Brother Barth said urgently, still holding the cloth around Nicholas’s hips. “I assure you, everything will be fine.”
    “Why don’t you strip off your clothes, my lady, and we can commune with God together?” Nicholas murmured in saintly tones. “The straw is a bit scratchy, but you can lie on top of me—”
    “Fiend! Lecher! Defiler of purity! You should be flayed alive!” Father Paulus was shaking with emotion.
    Nicholas glanced at her measuringly. “I don’t believe she’s pure, Father, since she is, in fact, a widow…”
    But the priest had already stormed from the chapel, obviously in search of someone to help him punish the wayward madman.
    “Thank God,” Brother Barth murmured with a sigh. “Father Paulus does tend to take things too much to heart. Lady Julianna, let me escort you back to your room.” He took a step toward her. Without his helpful assistance the cloth began to slip, and he immediately jumped back, pulling the loose folds back up around the fool.
    “I can find my way by myself, Brother Barth,” she said in a deceptively calm voice. “As long as I’m not needed here…”
    “I need you, my lady,” Nicholas said in a plaintive voice, a thread of laughter just barely discernible beneath his warm tone.
    She forced herself to look at him, a long, slow, measuring look, from his long, bare feet up his strong, hairy legs to the folds of material that she belatedly realized was an altar cloth. Past his stomach and chest, past vast expanses of golden, firmly muscled skin, until she met his mocking gaze.
    He wanted to shock her, she realized. He wanted to shock them all. The least she could do was refuse to rise to his challenge. “Commune with your God, Master Nicholas, and do it quickly, before you catch your death of cold,” she said calmly.
    “And before the abbot returns with the reinforcements,” Brother Barth added hastily. “He’s not a man you should underestimate.”
    “I seldom underestimate my enemies,” Nicholas said. He caught the altar cloth in one large hand, and for a moment Julianna was afraid he was going to pull it off. She refused to flinch, but instead he simply held it, leaving Brother Barth free. “Escort Lady Julianna back to her room, brother,” he said sweetly. “I’ve interfered with her sleep enough for one night.”
    Barth looked at him warily, but Nicholas seemed to have tired of his game, and he stood still and grave, watching them.
    She went willingly enough, her back straight, trying to ignore the fact that she was improperly dressed. The heavy linen shift was made of many ells of material, and there was no way anyone could have an inappropriate glimpse of her body, but she still felt vulnerable. She and Brother Barth moved through the corridors in a troubled silence.
    By the time they reached her door she could stand it no longer. “Brother Barth…” she said, pausing in the entrance.
    “Yes, my lady?”
    She didn’t know how to ask him, but fortunately Brother Barth was a wise, discerning man. “You needn’t fear the abbot, my lady. Master Nicholas will be kept safe. God protects the simple-minded.”
    If there was one thing Master Nicholas was not, it was simple-minded. She had little doubt that everything he did had layers of reasoning behind it, including the recent scene in the chapel.
    Not that she should care, she reminded herself. Her main effort, once they reached Fortham Castle , would be to keep out of the way of both the priest and the fool as much