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least Nicholas was speaking to me once more.
    “I am overdue to the palace.”
    “And towing her into court looking like a lamb dragged through the countryside will earn you no favors with the Queen, my lord.”
    “I suppose we could stop at Lytham House.”
    “You do not have to profess your undying love to her, but it would not hurt relations between you to be gracious, my lord. And as Lytham House sits in the middle of your path to Whitehall, you might be accused of being unfeeling if you did not.”
    Curse the man, he was right. I had been known to show more kindness to mere servants. But if I looked on her, if I talked to her, then how could I escape the enchantment of her beauty? “If we stop, it will be you who oversees the unloading.”
    “Of course, my lord.”
    “And it will need to be done with all haste.”
    He nodded.
    “And it is you who will show her to her chambers.” I had not been in them since Elinor had gone. And I saw no use in visiting them now.
    “The rooms have been redone, my lord.” He paused. “As you had asked.”
    Nicholas gazed at me in expectation. “If you have a question, then ask it!”
    “The countess might feel more warmly welcomed to Lytham House if it were you who did the welcoming, my lord.”
    “There is no time. Perhaps on the morrow . . .” Perhaps on the morrow she will have grown ugly. Perhaps on the morrow I will have grown blind.

    I saw the city long before we entered it. It had smudged the horizon with its walls and soiled the sky with the smoke of coal. We entered the city through Bishopsgate after a short delay due to a waiting line of carters. The farther into the city we went, the greater was the assault upon my senses. Voices in all tone and timbres shouted their wares. Around me dodged all manner of people, some porting goods on their backs, others driving livestock before them. And from all sides of the street rose a stench so great it threatened to smother me. Trapped in a maze of buildings, absent any breeze, the reek of rotting food and human waste thrown out into the streets invaded the air. And the hooves of our horses and the feet of the sellers only served to mix it into the mud lying atop the pavement and drive it further into the foundations of the city.
    Joan lost short time in retching.
    By clamping my teeth together and endeavoring to ignore the filth around me, I was able to preserve my own dinner. We came to an intersecting of five streets, where the buildings had been pushed back to save room at their center for a market. A place of flesh and fish, it was vibrant with odors and blood, flies thick upon the sellers’ offerings. We rode round the stalls and still we kept going. But quite soon the earl turned off onto a quieter street lined with enormous houses. At one of them he turned into the gate and trotted up into the courtyard. And there, at last, we could escape the worst of the stench.
    Grooms came out to collect our horses, and as I sat there, staring about me in amazement, the earl walked up the stairs to a massive door and disappeared inside.
    Nicholas reined his horse beside my own, dismounted, and then offered me his hand. “Welcome to Lytham House, my lady.”
    I placed my hand in his and he helped me gain the ground. After having ridden so hard for so many days, I should have wanted only to collapse upon a bed, but the sight of the magnificent building in front of me swept all thoughts from my mind.
    It was a new house and handsome, built of brick with a cobbled courtyard. The roof was heavy with huge, fantastical bricked chimneys and a cupola in the middle that flew the earl’s coat of arms. The arched windows were outlined in dressed stone and echoed the shape of both the arched gate and door.
    “It was built to honor the Queen.”
    I looked for some sign of that honor but could find none.
    Nicholas cleared his throat, and I turned back to find his eyes sparkling. “It was built in the shape of an E.” He gestured me in