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someone with no human emotion. She wondered if she would find a heart inside him or only a blurred and twisted vision of what a person should be.
    He shifted closer to her and planted his hands on either side of her, pinning her between arms that were the size of a smithy’s.
    She just stood there with her back against the cold stone walls, unable to move as she fought for something to say.
    “You are by the window, woman.”
    Her mind seemed to have deserted her.
    “Don’t stand too close to the opening.” He gave her a humorless smile and traced her cheek from temple to chin with one callused finger. “I’ve not had nearly enough practice tossing useless creatures into the moat.”
     

Chapter 5
    He didn’t throw Clio in the moat. But he certainly looked as if he had wanted to. Instead, he arrogantly informed her that the following morning he planned to acquaint himself with the castle. He expected her to accompany him.
    She had no chance to give her reply, aye or nay. By the time she had found her voice and realized he had been toying with her about the moat, he and Sir Roger were gone from the solar as swiftly and as silently as they had come.
    So it might have seemed odd that the next morning Clio went toward the great hall with a small jig in her step. She finished her wedge of cheese with one big bite and hummed with her mouth full as glanced back at the water clock she’d bought from a Venetian merchant at the Michaelmas Fair.
    Time was dripping away.
    She closed the door to her bedchamber and moved toward the stairs. She did a little dance down the stone steps, three steps down, one back up … three steps down and one back up, all the way down the circular staircase.
    At the bottom she hummed a nonsense song, off-key as usual, spun around, and tossed a shiny red apple in the air. She caught it with a snap of her wrist and took a huge juicy bite.
    Hmmm. So good.
    She glanced up at one of the high windows in the wall, where an iron-studded shutter stood open. The high sun sent bold yellow light spilling onto the gray floor stones and made them appear as if they were made of pure gold.
    This morning was one of those rare mornings when everything felt right with the world. Yes, it was a very good day.
    Because she was two hours late.
    During her sleeplessness the previous night, she had concocted the most wonderful idea! Rather like her own version of the delay tactics of Fabius the Cunctator. Only Clio’s Hannibal was her betrothed, the Earl of Grim, who had seen fit to leave her in a convent to languish for two years longer than promised.
    Just to keep things fair between them and to wield her own sense of power, Clio decided she needn’t rush to do his bidding. By her calculations, she could be two hours late every day for the next twenty years and still not have evened their score. Although she certainly intended to try.
    She wanted to see the earl’s face when she came into the hall. She went along a dark stone hallway where only one stub of a candle was lit and past a niche where a huge Flemish tapestry had once hung. Now there was nothing there but an expanse of plastered wall and the old iron rungs for the tapestry rod. Chips similar to those in the Conqueror’s likeness pocked the smooth plaster wall, as if those who had stolen Camrose had practiced their battle-ax skills against it.
    She mourned for the tapestry her grandmother had been so proud of. No one knew where the tapestry had gone, but she had vowed to make certain her home was restored with the fine things that had always made it a home, the furnishings so cherished by the women in her family.
    And if Lord Merrick turned out to be a nipfarthing, no matter. She would use the profits from the sale of her Welsh ale. She would not grovel to a man for the things she wanted. Should she master the recipe for heather ale, well, she need not apply to her husband for anything.
    She brushed the cheese crumbs from her saffron yellow tunic; the color