Better him than me, Shakespeare thought as fire swallowed Edward Kelley. The mixture of shame and relief churning inside him made him want to spew. Oh, dear God, better him than me. He turned away from the stakes, from the reek of charred flesh, and hurried back into the city.

Lope Felix De Vega Carpio had been in London for more than nine years, and in all that time he didn't think he'd been warm outdoors even once. The English boasted of their springtime. It came two months later here than in Madrid, where it would have been reckoned a mild winter. As for summer.

He rolled his eyes. As best he could tell, there was no such thing as an English summer.

Still and all, there were compensations. He snuggled down deeper under the feather-filled comforter and kissed the woman he kept company there. "Ah, Maude," he said, "I understand why you English women are so fair." He had a gift for language and languages; his English, though accented, was fluent.

"What's that, love?" Maude Fuller asked, lazy and sleepy after love. She was in her middle twenties, around ten years younger than he, and not merely a blonde-blondes were known in Spain-but with hair the color of fire and a skin paler than milk. Even her nipples held barely a tinge of color.

Idly, Lope teased one between his thumb and forefinger. "I know why thou art so fair," he repeated.

"How couldst thou be otherwise, when the sun never touches thee?"

He let his hand stray lower, sliding along the smooth, soft skin of her belly toward the joining of her legs.

The hair there was as astonishingly red as that on her head. Just thinking about it inflamed him. Since the weather here will never warm me, as well the women do, he thought. Of course, the women back in Spain had warmed him, too. Had he sailed off to America instead of joining the Armada and coming to England aboard the San Juan, no doubt he would have become enamored of one, or two, or six, of the copper-skinned, black-haired Indian women there. Loving women was in his blood.