"What, again, my sweet?" Maude said around a yawn. But his caresses heated her better than the embers in the hearth could. Before long, they began once more. He wondered if he would manage the second round so soon after the first, and knew no little pride when he did. Ten years ago, I'd have taken it for granted, he thought as his thudding heart slowed. Ten years from now. He shook his head. He didn't care to think about that. God and the Virgin, but time is cruel.

To hold such thoughts at bay, he kissed the Englishwoman again. "Ah, querida-beloved, seest thou what thou dost to me?" he said. But lots of women did that to him. He had two other mistresses in London, though Maude, a recent conquest, knew about neither of them.

And she had secrets from him, as he discovered the worst way possible. Downstairs, a door opened, then slammed shut. "Oh, dear God!" she exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. "My husband!"

"Thine husband?" Despite his horror, de Vega had the sense to keep his voice to a whisper. "Lying minx, thou saidst thou wert a widow!"

"Well, I would be, if he were dead," she answered, her tone absurdly reasonable.

In a play, a line like that would have got a laugh. Lope de Vega mentally filed it away. He'd tried his hand at a few comedies, to entertain his fellows on occupation duty in London, and he went to the English theatres whenever he found the chance. But what was funny in a play could prove fatal in real life. He sprang from the bed and threw on his clothes by the dim light those embers gave.

Drawers. Upperstocks. Netherstocks. Shirt. Doublet with slops. He didn't bother fastening it-that could wait. Hat. Cloak. Boots. Too cursed many clothes, when he was in a hurry. Footsteps on the stairs.

Heavy footsteps-these beefeating Englishmen were ridiculously large men. A quick kiss for Maude, not that she deserved it, not when she'd tried to get him killed.