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Eden?”
    “ I might remind you that while woman was supposedly created from Adam's rib, man was created from mere dust!”
    His grin was condescending, infuriating her even mor e. "And I shall remind you that woman is not the image of God, since she was created in the image of Adam, whereas man alone is the image of God!”
    Her lips formed a caustic smile. "Your knowledge of the missals is enlightening.”
    "I was tutored by an abbot. ”
    "A misogynistic monk, to be sure.”
    "A monk who knows the truth in Scripture, mistress.” He turned on his heel and left her standing, astonished and outraged.
    Chengke, an old Chinese sage who had once graced Montlimoux, would have said that her yin power was being challenged. But then Chengke, who had come to her parents’ court by way of Arabia, believed in a lot of things that the Catholic Church found heretical. In her experience, her yin power, that feminine and principal force of nature in Chinese cosmology, was not always something she could draw upon at will.
    She though t of Chengke's teaching of finding the middle way between extremes.
    But how would she achieve that when Paxton's way was that of the warrior?
    She had no answer. All she had to guide her was Chengke's counsel and was that enough to withstand the brute force of the sinister Englishman?

 
    CHAPTER III
     
    She knew that a warrior was inclined to force and violence, and because of this violent nature, the violence had a chance to dominate and possess the soul.
    But whose? His own or hers?
    Chengke, who had claimed to have lived during the late Chou period, four hundred years before Christ, had neglected to tell Dominique that important piece of information. She only knew she felt out of balance, her mind disturbed, a tunnel’s vortex of slow darkness. Fear had numbed her.
    She glanced up at the high table, where Paxton of Wychchester sat in her chair, dis-playing male avarice and its egotistical concept of ownership!
    Beside his officers sat one of the village's burghers, the portly Guillaume de Sigors, who had made his wealth in cloth—and whom she had only recently knighted. How galling! The opportunistic Guillaume and his wife were the first vassals of the comté to curry favor with the foreigner in the six days since his arrival. How many more of her people would go over to the Englishman?
    Where was Denys? Buying marble in Carrera? Contracting with a master glazier for the hospital ’s stained glass? Had her missive yet reached him that within a fortnight's time she would publicly be forced to cede both her county and her chateau?
    She and he r household were virtual prisoners in the chateau. Her every thought was predicated on how to rid the county of the savage foreigners. Alas, she could only hope that Denys returned in time. A man of the people, he might be able to arouse Montlimoux’s inhabitants to action. Mayhap, some of the county’s foremost knights would attempt to raise an army in Montlimoux's defense.
    She suspected the English lieutenant was prepared to counter any such rebellion. Late into the nights, he worked alongside his red-bearded captain in her Justice Room. Baldwyn had revealed to her that upon occasion the lieutenant had summoned him to consult about land routes, bridge crossings, and the nearer seaports.
    Once, even she had been summoned from her bedchamber to identify the keeps of petty castellans on a local map he had procured from her document cupboard. When she had entered the Justice Room, the Englishman ’s back had been to her as he poured over the map, spread out on the escritoire. A ring-tailed cat rubbed itself against his hose-encased calves.
    Barely acknowledging her, the man had snapped questions, saying, "Here? And here?”
    Distastefully, she had watched his large hands, shadowed with hair and scarred, splay across the map's scrolled edges. Inadvertently, she had blurted, "Your given name Paxton, it little befits your calling.”
    He had glanced up from the