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spent most of her days. “Out!” she ordered the elderly woman sewing beside the fire blazing in the hearth, despite the warmth of the afternoon. It was suffocatingly hot in the small paneled room and the air was thick with the acrid reek of the clarified pig’s fat smeared on the Lady Maude’s chest to guard against chills.
    The woman gathered up her embroidery and looked doubtfully between her young mistress, lying on a cushioned settle drawn up so close to the fire as to be almost in the inglenook, and the Lady Imogen, who stood tapping one foot impatiently, her brown eyes glittering with rage.
    “Out! Didn’t you hear me, woman?”
    Lady Maude’s companion curtsied hastily and withdrew.
    “I give you good day, Cousin Imogen,” a thin voice murmured from beneath a mound of shawls and rugs on the settle.
    “Don’t you
dare
wish me a good day,” Imogen declared, somewhat idiotically. She approached the settle. The girl lying there regarded her solemnly but without fear. Her dark reddish brown hair was rather lank, her complexion had the lifeless pallor of one who is chronically short of fresh air and exercise. But her eyes were a brilliant blue.
    “I will not stand for this nonsense another minute. Do you hear me, girl?” Imogen bent over Maude, spitting her rage into her face.
    Maude flinched and turned her head aside. But she said in the same reedlike tones, “I must follow my conscience, cousin.”
    “Conscience! Conscience! What has that to do with anything?”
    “I cannot believe, my lady, that you would discount the power of conscience in your life,” Maude said gently. “I know you act according to your own.”
    Imogen’s color deepened. How could she deny it without digging a hole for herself? “You
will
obey,” she said coldly, straightening. “That is all I came to tell you. You
will
obey those who have authority over you. And I will use whatever methods are necessary to ensure your obedience.” She turned to the door.
    “You could break me on the rack, madam, but I will not act against my conscience.”
    The thin voice followed Imogen out of the room and she ground her teeth in frustration. Gareth would have to deal with the girl. It was for him to compel her obedience. He was her official guardian although typically he had always left the hard work to his long-suffering sister.
    Who had nursed the girl through her incessant ailments? Who had overseen her education? Who had taught her the meaning of her social position, the obligations of her lineage? Who had had first responsibility for the ungrateful brat’s welfare?
    Imogen, furious, posed these rhetorical questions to the air and quite without regard for the truth of the matter. The number of hours she had actually spent involving herself physically with her young charge’s welfare could be counted on the fingers of both hands.
    Once more alone, Maude plaited the fringe of the shawl lying across her lap. Her features while not exactly weak were not drawn with a strong line, but there was something arresting in the blue eyes.
    “Berthe.” She spoke without looking up from herplaiting as her elderly companion returned. “Fetch the priest tonight. I will make my conversion this night and then there is
nothing
they can do to me. The advisor to Protestant King Henry cannot marry a Catholic.”
    “Are you certain you’re ready to take such a step, mignonne?” Berthe bent over her, laying a hand on her forehead.
    “I have taken instruction, and now I am ready to convert,” Maude stated with a stubborn flash in her eyes. “Before Lord Harcourt returns, I will make absolutely certain that I am ineligible to play this part they would have me play for their own advancement.”
    “I will send for Father Damián.” Berthe smiled, stroking the lank hair back from the girl’s forehead. Her dearest wish was about to be fulfilled. For twenty years she had struggled to save the soul of the girl she had nursed and cherished as if she were