it was possible to feel such utter loneliness and desolation surrounded by so many people.
Raffe bounded up the stairs to Ma Margot's chamber two at a time. He knocked on the heavy oak door, but didn't bother waiting for an answer before he burst in. The chamber was empty. The shutters, as always, were tightly shut and only a single candle burned on the wall behind the serpent chair. A hooded sparrowhawk perched on a block of wood on the table. The bird flapped its wings angrily as the draught from the open door ruffled its downy breast feathers. Raffe instinctively reached out a finger to stroke it, soothing it with murmurs of reassurance, but a vicious peck from the curved beak made him withdraw his finger with a curse, and he sucked it, trying to stem the flow of blood.
A low chuckle made Raffe jerk round. Ma was standing in front of the curtain.
'She's been taught to defend herself even when she is hooded. Haven't you, my angel?'
Raffe's temper reboiled with the throbbing of his finger. 'What's this I hear about Hugh coming here? Talbot didn't tell me that.'
Ma shook her head warningly, then twitched back the curtain. Luce was standing behind it, her shift clutched in front of her, but otherwise as naked as the day she was born. She was panting slightly. Her face was flushed and her eyes danced brightly in the candlelight. Ma smiled up at her and jerked her head towards the door. With a wink at Raffe, Luce slid as lithely as an otter from the room.
Ma mounted the steps to her own serpent's chair.
'Sit, Master Raffe, you're making the bird nervous. Now come, you know we never discuss our customers. Not, that is, unless they wind up dead at your friend's hands.'
'Elena didn't kill Raoul!'
But even as Raffe said it he knew he sounded like a man who was lashing out from uncertainty. He couldn't even convince himself of the truth of that. This was the second time in a few months Elena had been accused of murder. Was that just unlucky? Both times he'd so desperately wanted to believe that she was innocent, but then once he'd thought she was a virgin and all that time she'd been sneaking off behind his back to trysts with that lout Athan, even when she swore to him she was not going to see a man.
Part of him had dreaded seeing Elena again and yet he couldn't keep away. He hadn't been able to bring himself to look at her at first, because he knew that Raoul had had the pleasure of her. He had wanted to punish her, make her the whore she was, but now that it had happened, he was terrified of seeing that look of hardness in her eyes, that loss of innocence that had still remained even after Athan had bedded her. He wanted to seize her and shake her until she told him every single filthy thing that she and Raoul had done together. He wanted to know in each minute detail how she had looked when Raoul had touched her, what she had said, what she'd thought, what she felt.
Yet Raffe knew that if Elena had told him, he would have pressed his fingers to his ears and run away screaming. He had tried to convince himself that nothing she had done with Raoul would have been done willingly. Yet there was a worm that burrowed into his head, a worm of jealousy and doubt that made him lash himself over and over again with the thought that she might have surrendered herself to Raoul as willingly as she had once done to Athan. Even the smallest whimper of pleasure, the tiniest thrust towards Raoul's body would have been an act of betrayal.
And yes, Elena could have given herself entirely to Raoul and still have murdered him. He'd known women in the Holy
Land, fragile, delicate beauties who could whisper words of undying love and press their soft lips to a man's mouth. And then, as they fondled his manhood with one hand, with the other they'd pushed a knife between his ribs, as coldly as any battled-hardened soldier. Women could be far more ruthless than men when they had made up their minds to kill.
Raffe's face was burning, and he was suddenly aware that Ma was watching him with that usual knowing smile of hers. He was seized with the desire to wring her filthy neck, but