She looked at the cloak as if it were a sword pointed at her. She took a deep breath. “I will not fight you, but you must make me a promise. You must not kill me afterward. Alex needs me.”

“After what?” he asked. His gaze narrowed on her face, and he understood. “You think I intend to rape you?”

“It’s what men do to women.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ve reached my sixteenth year.”

“You look younger.” In the loose, ragged blouse and skirt she wore her body appeared to be as straight and without womanly form as that of a child. She was small-boned, delicate, almost painfully thin, with a smudge darkening one cheek. Her fair hair was pulled back in a long braid and added to the effect of extreme and vulnerable youth.

She stared at him scornfully. “What difference does it make how old I am? I’m female, and men don’t care. They care for nothing.”

She sounded so certain, he felt a surge of pity for the waif. “Has this happened to you before?”

“Not to me.” Her tone was suddenly reserved. He could almost see her withdraw within herself, sidling away from the pain she would not discuss.

“And it won’t happen now,” he said grimly. “I’m not known to be above debauchery, but I don’t rape children.”

But she wasn’t a child. The delicate beauty of her features should have reflected wonder instead of raw wariness; her clear blue eyes gazed at him with a worldliness far beyond her years, and her lips were set tight to prevent their trembling. He had seen the same look on the faces of the children in the towns and villages along Kazan’s border, and it made him as angry now as it had then. “Where are your parents?”

She did not answer at once, and when she did, she spoke so softly, he had to strain to hear. “Dead.”

“How?”

“Papa died two years ago.”