"Why are you angry? I don't like it when you're angry." This extraordinary statement from Jake silenced them both.

They looked at the child, who was regarding them both with lackluster eyes.

"We're not angry, love," Gabrielle said cheerfully. "Papa's just jealous of my saddle of hare." She smiled at Nathaniel, inviting him to join in with a response that would reassure the child.

But Nathaniel was not to be soothed. "And you have a most misplaced sense of humor, ma'am." He banged out of the parlor, leaving Gabrielle to deal with Jake.

She stared crossly at the closed door and then shrugged. The strain was telling on both of them; it was probably better if they did keep out of each other's way for a while. She turned her attention to Jake and his need for a wash and bed.

Nathaniel's irritation made his role of reclusive servant even more convincing. When their polite inquiries received only monosyllabic responses, the inn servants left him alone to his dinner. Judging from the empty tray brought down from Gabrielle's chamber, she had thoroughly relished her own repast, he noticed. Not that his own tastes were so overly refined that he couldn't enjoy the hearty peasant fare in the kitchen. He'd eaten a lot worse in his time, and the rough red wine was tolerable.

The pallet in the dormitory loft, however, was a different matter. Nathaniel had no: the slightest intention of spending the night suffocated by the garlic snores of unwashed peasants. Clean straw in the hayloft was infinitely preferable.

Gabrielle, from the parlor window, saw him cross the yard from the kitchen door, the swinging agility of his stride unmistakable in the golden glow. Then the door closed and the yard was in moonlight. At the stable he paused, a lantern dangling from his hand. He looked up at the inn toward Gabrielle's window, where she stood in the shadow. Then he went into the stable. The door closed and as she watched, a soft light appeared in the small round window of the hayloft.

She had little difficulty understanding his refusal to share the servants' sleeping quarters. Had he been expecting her to be watching… hoping she was, even? It didn't take much imagination to interpret that backward look as an invitation. It had been days and days since they'd lost themselves in the glorious maze of passion.

She turned back to the room, nibbling her fingernail as a current of excitement ran through her, chasing away the fatigue of the long and arduous journey. She could go to him when the inn went to bed. Who would ever know? Jake was so deeply asleep, it would take the last trump to wake him.

She filled the bowl with water from the ewer, stripped off her clothes, and sponged herself from head to toe, shivering in the chill but relishing the sensation of washing away the salt and sweat and wretchedness of the previous night's miserable crossing and the day's jolting carriage ride along muddy lanes.

She'd have liked to wash her hair, but that was impractical with present facilities, so she made do with brushing it until some of the burnished luster had returned, then slipped into a nightgown, thrust her feet into a pair of velvet slippers, and threw a hooded cloak over her shoulders, drawing the hood over her hair.

The inn was dark and silent as she left the bedchamber, quietly turning the key on the sleeping child and dropping the key into her pocket. She'd opened the window a crack, and if Jake awoke and cried out for her, the sound would carry across the yard to the hayloft, where Nathaniel would, as always, have his own window open.

A lamp burned dimly on the stairs, and the steep oak steps creaked as she flew down them. Was Nathaniel waiting for her? Her own excitement was such that it was impossible to believe her lover wasn't sharing it a few feet away, across the stableyard.

Nathaniel, however, was sleeping the sleep of the just amid the sweet-smelling hay. Not for one minute had it crossed his mind to expect a visitor hell-bent on indulging an addiction. He was tired himself after the rigors and alarms and excursions of the past twenty-four hours and, since the opportunity for a night's sleep had been forced upon him, he had every intention of taking full advantage of it.

Lust was the last thing on his mind and far from his dreams as he slept lightly under the shaft of moonlight shining through the small round window.

But he heard the faint sounds from the stable below. They were not the ordinary shufflings and shiftings and whickerings of a dozen beasts. He didn't take the time to decide how he knew they were not. Without conscious decision he was out of his straw nest and crouching by the top of the ladder that rose from the stables through a hole in the floor. He had a knife in his hand. Not the pocket knife he'd used to cut veal and ham pie, but a wicked stiletto with a blade so thin and sharp, it would slide between a man's ribs and pierce the heart in one smooth insertion.

A dead body would be hard to explain, so fortunately for Gabrielle he was prepared to look before he acted. The hooded head of a cloaked figure emerged at the top of the ladder.

Nathaniel recognized the set of the head a second before the unmistakable scent of her assailed his nostrils. He held his breath on a wild surge of fury that for a moment knew no bounds as he thought of where they were-in the heart of Normandy with his life, his son's life, and the lives of seven agents in France dependent on his safety or, failing that, his ability to keep his tongue still in the ultimate extremity.

What the hell did she think she was doing? She was a spy. She lived on the edge of danger. She knew about unnecessary risks. But he also knew that she took them. He'd told Simon that she was undisciplined and that if she'd proved genuine, then he'd keep his own rein on her.

If she'd been one of his own agents, he knew exactly what he would would have done. And since she was playing the part, then he'd play his. The rage was replaced with a cold clarity of purpose, more ruthless and infinitely more dangerous than the hot flood of anger.

Gabrielle eased herself into the loft on her knees and looked around. And then a hand was clamped over her mouth with suffocating pressure and she was wrestled to the floor, the hand still across her mouth, her face buried in tickling straw. She struggled violently, twisting her body, trying to get leverage with one hip to throw him off, but he threw a leg across her thighs. Her feet drummed on the floor. It didn't seem to matter that she knew it was Nathaniel, that she believed he wouldn't hurt her. She continued to fight in a red mist of atavistic panic at the petrifying knowledge of her own weakness against the strength of this opponent.

She dried to cry out, to tell Nathaniel it was only her… Gabrielle… only Gabrielle How could he not recognize her?

She felt him grab a handful of her hair at the back of her head, and her face was pulled roughly upward. She opened her mouth on a sobbing breath, and something was thrust between her teeth, a wad of material that filled her mouth and choked off all sound. Then her head fell forward onto the straw again. His knee on her backside held her pressed to the floor as her hands were jerked behind her, her wrists bound with swiff efficiency.

It was all over in a matter of seconds, and she lay bound and gagged on the floor of the hayloft, stunned at the ease with which he'd handled her body, as easily in this assault as he handled her in love.

As instinctive terror receded, she was conscious only of amazement at the strength in Nathaniel's slender frame, the deft competency of his movements, the ruthlessness of it all. Because he did know who she was. He had to have known from the minute he laid hands on her.

And Gabrielle knew what was happening. He believed she'd forgotten the deadly serious nature of their shared enterprise, and the spymaster was punishing an errant recruit in a way that couldn't fail to impress upon her the seriousness of her offense. She lay still and compliant, waiting for it to be over.