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here in the corridor in such scanty attire, her red hair loose and uncovered.
    ‘Let me fetch a robe,’ she muttered, turning away, but it was too late.
    Torchlight suddenly danced on the walls, long shadows leaping and shifting. She heard brisk footsteps along the corridor, and saw the guard returning with the physician.
    Margerie shrank back into the shadows as the men approached, wishing she was as decorously robed and slippered as her friend. Instead she must look like the lewdest of creatures, barefoot and with her shift shamelessly outlining the curves beneath.
    It was Doctor Elton, of course.
    He came out of the darkness, looking straight at her. The guard was saying something but she could not hear him. The doctor examined her, his dark gaze pausing on her bare feet and ankles before moving up to the swell of her hips and breasts. Oh for a robe to cover them! Worse still, chilled by the cool night air, her nipples had stiffened and were pressing uncomfortably against the simple bodice of her shift.
    His eyes narrowed as though noting the response of her body, and the wanton manner in which her loose hair was tumbling over her shoulders and throat, and his mouth tightened.
    ‘Mistress Croft,’ he murmured, and bowed his head to both women. ‘Mistress Langley.’
    When he looked up, she read disapproval in his face and could have screamed in frustration. Though what had she expected? The doctor already thought her a whore. It should not matter to her what he thought, yet it did. Now he had found her out of bed in the middle of the night, her body on show to every passer-by, with only the flimsy excuse that she had suffered a nightmare.
    Doctor Elton was not in his physician’s robe tonight. Instead he wore a dark doublet and hose, his codpiece drawing her eye, his thighs strong and muscular in tight black hose. He had a way of holding himself that told her how confident he was in himself, and how little he feared the dangers of court life. It was rare for a man below the rank of lord to show no fear at the royal court, and she wondered again how he had been so cool and calm in the king’s quarters when he had neither wealth nor status to protect him.
    ‘Sir,’ Margerie began, then met those serious eyes and found herself floundering, her breath suddenly stolen away, ‘I regret that . . . that you were roused from your bed for no good reason.’
    ‘I would call you an excellent reason to be roused from my bed, Mistress Croft,’ he countered, watching her.
    His words resonated in her head, taunting her with sexual meaning, and for a moment she did not know where to look.
    Her mouth became suddenly dry, her breathing short, and Margerie knew herself possessed by lust for this man. Hot shameless lust . Yet while she felt sure the doctor would not resist her advances if she were to offer herself to him, the thought of becoming this man’s mistress, a whore by any other name, felt wrong. As though his attentions would shame her more than any other man’s.
    Kate had been holding her hand, but she dropped it now, curtseying to the doctor. ‘Sir, my friend was found wandering in her sleep tonight, in a state of some distress, and could not be roused when spoken to. I was able to wake her in the end, but she could not remember anything except going to bed. I fear she has some malady of the brain.’
    A malady of the brain?
    Margerie glared at Kate. ‘No, I am sure it is nothing of the kind.’
    She turned to the doctor, wishing fervently that he would go away before he caught the raw desire she was feeling, her voice sharper than she had intended.
    ‘I suffered a nightmare, that is all,’ Margerie told him firmly. ‘It seems my nightmares are powerful and fool me into behaving as though I were awake. But now you see me perfectly well, with no ill effects from my bad dreams, so we can all go back to bed.’
    He was undeterred by this explanation, taking her wrist between finger and thumb, his face unreadable as