"Never. But I recall you from somewhere. I--" Dizzily, he looked away as a burst of sudden pain flooded his mind. He shuddered and felt sick. "What's the matter?" she asked anxiously. "I--don't know." "You look ill. You've gone completely pale." She put her arms around him as if to steady him, and her warmth sustained him through the moment of terror that had overtaken him. It was as if he had struck some particularly sensitive nerve, and the resonances were carrying agony through his body. When it was over, he mopped the beads of cold sweat from his forehead. He looked up at her and saw that her glacial remoteness had been replaced by a sort of feminine warmth, almost a maternal solicitude. "Would you like to find your father again?" he asked in a low voice. She nodded. "So would I. I don't know why, but I feel Daveen holds the key to the hidden areas of my life, the inconsistencies. I'd like to find him for myself. And for you." "Would you?" "First ask, _could you_? Your father may be dead, for all I know." He took her hand. "Narella--you don't want to stay here with Miguel?" "No," she said. "Good. Listen carefully. Does Miguel have big ears?" She frowned. "I don't understand." "Never mind. Come here." She came close and he pulled her up against him. This time her lips rose willingly for the kiss, but he brushed her pale cheek instead and let his mouth graze lightly along her face until it reached the tip of her earlobe. "Does Miguel have this room wired for sound?" he whispered. "Can he hear what we say?" She nodded almost imperceptibly. "Probably," she whispered back. "That's what I thought. Stay close to me, then, and hear what I have to say. If he's watching he'll think we're making love." "Go ahead," she said. "I'm going to accept Miguel's commission and leave here to assassinate Duke Winslow, as ordered." She gasped. "Assassinate--" "That's the terms of our agreement," he said. "One Duke more or less doesn't matter to me. I'll go to Winslow's court and try to find out what happened to your father. Somehow I'll give Winslow what's due him. Then I'll return here and claim you as Miguel's agreed, and we'll go looking for your father together. If you're willing, give me a kiss." She hesitated for just a moment, then lifted his face from her ear. Their eyes met. She was pale, he saw, and frightened; the aloof haughtiness of the court lady had been almost completely replaced by an appealing little-girl terror. He looked past her to the brooding eyes of Don Miguel glowering down at him from the row of paintings on the wall. _After Winslow--Miguel_, he thought with sudden savagery. The unprovoked thought surprised him. "Very well," she murmured. She touched her lips lightly to his, and then gave herself to him with a sort of desperate abandon that astonished Kesley.