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then. Becoming aware that Marie Claire was addressing her, Miri thrust aside her troubling memories of the past.
    “. . . and perhaps now you will understand why I am so concerned about the reputation you are getting as this Lady of the Wood. I fear that Simon Aristide has never given up searching for your family since you all fled Faire Isle. Not that I am afraid he would harm
you.
He always harbored a certain tenderness where you were concerned.”
    “Tenderness? The man is not capable of such an emotion, although once . . .” Miri trailed off. Once she had believed that there was so much good to be found in Simon, that he was merely lost, misguided, wounded. If she could have coaxed him out of his darkness, she could have healed him. But her experience of injured animals in the wild had led her to the painful understanding that some creatures were damaged beyond even her ability to help, a flat empty look in their eyes. She had seen that look in Simon’s face. The man no longer had a soul.
    As she fed the last of her bread to the eager ravens, Miri was struck by the full import of Marie Claire’s words. She spun about to regard the older woman intently. “If you are not worried that Simon would harm me, then what
are
you afraid of?”
    Marie Claire shifted uncomfortably, avoiding Miri’s eyes, but Miri read her silence all too well. She felt the blood rush into her cheeks, a hot sting of guilt and shame.
    “You fear that if our paths crossed, I’d be weak enough to trust Simon again. Perfectly understandable. I put my family, you, this entire island at risk because I believed in him.” She swallowed hard. “I—I was even foolish enough to fancy that I loved him.”
    “Oh, my dear.” Marie Claire crossed the room and caught Miri’s hands in a gentle grasp. “That was not foolish. There is a great virtue in trying to find the best in people. No one is entirely black of heart, not even Aristide.”
    “How can you speak one word in his defense?” Miri cried. “After all that he cost you, the closing of the abbey, your position, almost your life?”
    “That was not entirely Aristide’s doing. The church never cared for uppity women and I am afraid the sisters of St. Anne’s were always too independent for the archbishop. His Eminence had long wanted to disband our order.”
    “And Simon’s witch-hunting gave him an excuse.”
    “His Eminence never really needed one. And as for Aristide, rather than threatening my life, he saved it.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Did you never wonder how I managed to escape from St. Anne’s with the place surrounded by witch-hunters and the king’s soldiers? It was only because Aristide allowed it, calling off the guard long enough for me to get away.”
    Miri blinked, a little stunned by Marie Claire’s revelation of this softening on Simon’s part. She scowled, struggling to dismiss it. “It was just a careless mistake on his part.”
    “Monsieur Le Balafre is not a man given to carelessness.”
    “Then—then he must have been hoping that if he let you go, you would lead him to the rest of us.”
    “Then why did he make no effort to follow me?” Marie Claire countered.
    “I don’t know,” Miri replied miserably, drawing away from her. She had already wasted far too much time and heartache trying to sort out the contradictions of her acquaintance with Simon Aristide. The boy who had been so kind and gentle with her, who had seemed like her friend. The arrogant young man who had intimidated and threatened her, warning her that he meant to destroy her brother-in-law, that he would be just as ruthless to her if she sought to prevent him. Simon had always hated the Comte de Renard, suspected him of the worst kind of sorcery. But when he had had his opportunity to kill Renard, Simon had deflected the shot because Miri had been in the way.
    Gabrielle had always been wont to complain,
“Why can’t the blasted man make up his mind to act like a proper villain and