“Some Elf‑knight,” she said, when Judith was out of earshot, scampering into the house to let Cook and the maid know the company had come. “You look like an overdressed university lad, if you ask me, which you haven’t. Will you eat beef and bread and apples like a mortal man?”

“Madam,” Kit said, stamping the snow from his boots. “And glad of it. Mistress Shakespeare, you keep a fine house.”

“I do when I can,” she answered, and hung his cloak on a peg once he handed it to her. “Will wrote to say you were here on his business – ”

A note of suspicion in her voice, and not unwarranted. Kit let his gaze wander as she led him to the hearthside, concealing a swelling blister of sorrow. Will’s an idiot not to come home more often. Had I a family such as this– “And he told you I was an Elf‑knight?”

“Nay, he told me my rival was an Elf‑knight under a curse, who could not endure a mortal touch. ‘Twas not too difficult a study to know of whom he spoke, once presented yourself at my door in your hobgoblin cloak and your boots of green chamois.”

“Ah.” Kit kept the little bubble of–not homesickness, exactly–behind his smile as she led him to a chair by the fire and pressed a mug of warmed wine into his hands. “Your rival, madam?”

“Not his words,” she admitted. “But you’re no elf, Master Marlin, or I am very much mistaken.”

“Changeling,” Kit said with a shrug he meant to be casual. He closed his eyes, afraid of what Mistress Shakespeare might glimpse in them, and then opened them again, uneasy when he could not see. “It makes little difference in the end; I was born mortal, but it seems I am mortal no more.”

Mistress Shakespeare glanced over her shoulder, assuring their privacy, before she sat across the hearth from Kit. She lowered her voice so it would not ring through the house. “What is my husband to you?”

Kit’s breath stopped half in and half out of his chest. “My” – he swallowed wine to cover his hesitation, and managed only poorly, by the look in her eyes – “oh, there is no one easy word, madam. What did he say to you of me, to put that savagery in your gaze?”

Silence, and the dent of her teeth in her lip. Her skirts, twisted between her fingers, showed him a flash of red flannel petticoats. “He said he loved you.”

“Ah.” There is no answer that can make that better.“Mistress, and I him.”

She shrugged. Her skirts fell smooth. Her small foot twisted on the hearthstone, clad in a shoe of good blue leather, the stitching stretched over the rise of her great toe.

“I could mend that for you,” Kit said, pointing with his chin.

She started, expression darkening as if he indicted her housewifery, and then saw the angle of his gaze and looked down, extending a hearty ankle to inspect her shoe in the firelight. “A seamstress, are you?”

“I can darn a stocking, too,” Kit said. “Such it is with students.” The wine was sugared, sweet and thick. It heated his cold feet at least as much as the fire did. “Especially the overdressed ones.”

A laugh, but not a warm one. Aye, and she’s a reason to love thee, Kit?She tucked her shoe away under her skirts and dusted her hands together, as if about to rise. “Your supper will be a little while longer – ”

“‘Tis no matter,” he said, sipping his wine, trying to puzzle out what the even tone of her comment meant. Is she inviting some sort of a battlefield alliance, I wonder? Or running her banner up over Will’s castle?“The company is good.”

She blushed dark; Kit rather enjoyed imagining Will’s reaction to his flattery. He smiled wider when she absently brushed fingers across the pouch resting against her bosom. “I wanted to hate you,” she said.

“You would not be the first. Or likely the last.”

“He came home – Master Marlin, why did you send him home again? And healed. Half healed, at least. …”

“Aye, and I wish I could claim his health my doing,” Kit said. They matched gazes a little while, and Kit finished the wine. “Madam, I thank you. That was very pleasant.”

“And unpoisoned, ” she said, with a little shrug and half a chuckle. She leaned to lift the cup from his fingers, turning it with her own. “This time, at least. You did not tell me why.”

Her answer was so dry he had to laugh before he hoisted himself to his feet and swept a bow. “Mistress Shakespeare. I beg your sympathy, madam, and I pray you understand that there is nothing in me so base as would take a man from his wife and children. Even could I.”

Mistress Shakespeare lowered her voice. The firelight fell across her face; Kit liked the way it outlined the high, arrogant arch of her brow. “If he knew them better, that might be more of a promise, Master Marlin.”

Ah. Touch й . And the heart of the matter.“Madam,” Kit said, as kindly as he could through an ache and a coldness that ran from his throat all the way down to his fingertips, “Will’s heart is yours. No matter what else transpires – ”

“Words are easy,” she answered, but she didn’t rise.

“They are. And they are yet all I have, and all I have ever had.” Kit sighed, and stared down at his boots. Hanged for the lamb is hanged for the ewe.“Did Will tell you why he sent me?”

She swallowed, a little bobble behind the worn silk of her throat, and whispered, “Hamnet.”

With his witch’s sight, Kit wouldn’t have had any problems walking through the woods after sunset, as long as there was some little starlight. But he was not eager to go among Faerie oaks in the darkness and the dark of the moon, and less eager even to drag Annie Shakespeare out into the snow and the night. “Tomorrow. When it’s light. Can you show me where he died? That is all I need of you; I can stay the night at the inn.” Aye,” Mistress Shakespeare answered, and gathered her skirts to rise, his cup still dangling from her fingers. “Your supper will be ready. Come join us at board, Master Marlin. And then Peter, our lad in service, will show you up to bed. There is no need for any lover of my Will’s to share a buggy inn bed.”

She turned then, and Kit stopped her with the quick brush of fingers across her sleeve. “Madam …”

“Master Marlin?”

He coughed, a prickling throat. It was all inadequate, anything he could say, any flowery line he could quote, in the face of her grace and her strength and her composure. “If I had someone such as you at home, I would not leave her a moment.”

She regarded him evenly, only the corners of her eyes giving a trace of a smile. “As well‑favored as you are,” she said. “How can it be that you do not?”

*  *  *

Snow creaked over crunching leaves as Kit left Mistress Shakespeare at the edge of the Arden wood and tromped forward, feeling her gaze on his back. His rucksack swayed against his shoulder. There was no path under the trees. Their black branches shone wet and rough against a dawning sky of pale porcelain blue; the white powder underneath was trellised with fallen laceworks of snow, but only Kit’s footprints marred it.

Not even a crow or a fox. And canst blame them?He glanced around, tugging the velvet collar of his cloak higher as if to ward the gaze of chilly eyes from his neck. The trees leaned over, their wind‑stirred fingers interlaced like bones. Kit found himself ducking as if through low doorways whenever he looked up, and drawing shallow breaths that tasted of moss and musk and mildew.

His right eye showed a smoky power moving within the coarse‑barked trunks. The trees were young, saplings scattered among a few old giants; the wood had been cut in living memory, and Kit wondered if that were the reason for the appalling stench of hate and old blood clotting his senses.

The bit of ribbon had bunched in the palm of his glove. He tugged his digits free and wiggled his hand out, checking over his shoulder to make sure Will’s wife was out of sight behind the barren oaks. Her silhouette had vanished. He stretched the band of scarlet velvet between his fingers – one hand gloved, the other bare –and blew a cloud of steam into the still morning.