He laid her on the hard pallet and followed her down, taking her mouth with his again, fierce in his demand and his need. Anne responded with no reservations. All the anger and the fear and the desperation that she had felt that evening fused into one huge explosion of passion. She knew she ought to hate him, but she did not. She wanted the safety and promise their past had offered them. What she felt for him was dangerously akin to love.

She could feel Simon’s hands shaking as he dealt with the hooks and bows and loosened her bodice. He bent to kiss the side of her neck as he slid his hand within her shift. A lock of his dark hair brushed her cheek and Anne trembled with need. In the mixture of fire and candlelight his expression was hard, concentrated, desire distilled.

He brushed her shift aside and bent to cup her breast, taking one rosy nipple in his mouth. Anne moaned and writhed beneath his touch, running her fingers into his hair and holding his head down against the hot damp skin of her breast. She was naked to the waist now, her bodice undone, her hair spilling across the pallet.

She felt Simon’s hand on her thigh beneath the heavy weight of her skirts. The air was cold against her skin. Then he eased back for a moment. Anne felt the loss and reached blindly for him, her mind still a swirl of confusion and desire. He was not there. She felt cold and lonely.

She opened her eyes. Simon was sitting on the edge of the pallet bed, his hands braced beside him as though he was forcibly preventing himself from taking her in his arms again. He was breathing very fast and very harshly. And although his face was half-turned from her, Anne could see the same shock that she felt inside reflected in his expression.

The truth hit her then like a blast of winter air. Simon Greville had been about to take her, there in his quarters, like a soldier tumbling a camp whore in a ditch. And she had been about to let him do it. Simon Greville, her sworn enemy. It had happened so fast and so irresistibly. Now that sanity was returning to her she could not understand it at all.

The colour flooded her face; she made an inarticulate sound of shock and struggled to get to her feet, her hands shaking as she swiftly rearranged her bodice and dragged the fur-lined cloak about her. She held it wrapped tight to her like armour. She wanted to run away.

Simon had also got to his feet.

‘Anne,’ he said, calling her by her name only for the first time that night. His voice was husky with passion and she shivered to hear it. She thought that he looked as dazed as she, and she knew that in another second he would gather her up in his arms and carry her to the tumbled truckle bed and make love to her. He was as much deceived by the ghosts of the past as she.

She shook her head sharply. ‘Do not. Do not say anything.’ She huddled deeper within the cloak. She felt desperately cold and alone.

‘I made a mistake,’ she said. ‘I thought we could go back, but we cannot.’

They looked at one another and Anne could see in his eyes that both of them were poignantly aware that they would never meet like this again. Perhaps they might never meet again at all, if Gerard Malvoisier won the day. Simon might die in the heat and pain of a bloody battle. Anne knew she could perish along with her people if the Manor was taken. This sudden and unexpected sweetness between the two of them, this dangerous temptation, was a moment out of time. She told herself fiercely that it was the product of memory only and the result of the heat and passion of the night before battle.

‘Take care,’ she said, ‘on the morrow.’

She opened the door and the snow swirled in for a moment and she stepped outside. It was cold out in the night and she wanted to run back to the warmth and safety of that room, and, treacherously, into Simon’s arms. But she knew that when they met again—if they met—she would be Anne of Grafton and Simon Greville would be the victor. Everything would be different. There would be bitter hostility between them. Once more he would be her enemy.

‘Madam!’ Edwina met Anne as soon as she reached the top of the tower steps and was about to open the door of her chamber. In the torchlight the woman’s face was strained. ‘General Malvoisier is here,’ she said meaningfully. ‘He has been asking for you.’

Anne paused a moment as she felt the customary surge of aversion sweep through her body. Trust Malvoisier to have come looking for her on the one occasion when she had managed to slip away from his vigilance. Had he guessed that she had stolen out of the house and gone to visit his enemy? She shuddered at the thought and tried to calm herself. Closing her eyes briefly, she put her hand against the cold wood and pushed open the door of the chamber.

‘Thank you, Edwina.’

There were so few seconds in which to prepare herself. Gerard Malvoisier was standing with his back to the fire, feet spread apart, hands clasped behind him. He was a large and fleshy man who commanded the room through his height and girth, and because he had the air of one who knows himself superior to other mortals. His bloodshot eyes were narrowed in his reddened face where the veins mottled the skin. Years of good living had stolen much of his youth and vigour, and now Anne could smell the alcohol on his breath, even across the room. She felt that probing gaze search her face and drew her cloak a little closer. Her lips still stung with Simon Greville’s kisses and her skin was still alive to his touch. Would Malvoisier be able to read any of that in her face? Thank God she had paused inside the tower door to rearrange her hair and make sure her gown was secure. For a moment she allowed herself to remember Simon’s hands on her body and his lips against hers, and she suppressed a shiver at the same time as she suppressed her wayward thoughts. Time enough to think on that when the current danger was past. Squaring her shoulders, she slipped off the cloak and turned to greet Malvoisier with every assumption of ease.

‘Good evening, sir. In what way may I assist you?’

Anne was always formal with Sir Gerard Malvoisier. It was one of the many ways that she kept him at arm’s length and held her fragile defences together against the threat of his presence. She saw him frown with displeasure as he took in her tone.

‘You may tell me where you have been for a start, madam.’ His voice was brusque. ‘Your chamber women did not appear to know where you had gone.’

Over his shoulder, Anne saw Edwina make a slight shrug of apology and spread her hands wide. The other occupants of the room, Anne’s cousin Muna, a slender girl of eighteen, and her devoted servant John Causton, stood mute. Muna’s head was bent and her eyes on the ground. Anne knew that her cousin hated Malvoisier as much as she did herself, but that she had the sense to hide it behind a show of dumb deference. As for John, every line of his body seethed with dislike. Malvoisier lashed out at him often, goading him until Anne knew not how John resisted retaliating. Somehow he kept quiet. When Malvoisier was about they all played their parts.

‘I have been in the church,’ she lied coolly, ‘praying for a just outcome on the morrow.’

She could not be sure if Malvoisier believed her. There was an unconscionable amount of snow on her cloak to be accounted for on the short journey across the courtyard to the church. Malvoisier took a step towards her. It was clear that he was drunk and pugnacious, spoiling for a fight.

‘And what would be a just outcome, Lady Anne?’

Anne opened her eyes innocently. ‘Why, that is in God’s hands, sir. I trust in him.’

Malvoisier made a noise of disgust. He had no time for divine intervention. ‘We shall prevail tomorrow. After all, we hold Sir Henry Greville and will show that cur of a brother of his what he must do to get his flesh and blood back.’