The YIELDING by Tamara Leigh

set in the ceiling. Even if he dragged his broken leg up the strewn stairway and made it upright, his reach would fall short of the door.
    The last of the tinder’s flame nearing his fingertips, he continued to peer around the crypt, taking in the pallet from which the lady had retrieved the skin, next the discarded splints. The latter would not provide enough wood to sustain a flame for long.
    He blew out the tinder, drew the wine skin from his belt, and took a long swallow. It was time to return his sword to hand.
    He eased forward, each jolt to the leg causing him to gnash his teeth, but at last he reached the splints. Careful to keep his leg positioned so it would not require resetting, he made the exchange.
    Sword once more honorable, he considered the pallet—that woman’s sorry bed this past month that evidenced she was reduced to the squalor of the meanest villein. Still, she possessed determination, meaning no matter how blue her eyes, no matter how they illuminated her face, he must not forget it.
    Deciding that even if the pallet proved infested, it was preferable to reclining against the column, he rolled onto his uninjured knee, pressed his palms to the stone floor, and slowly straightened despite his leg’s vehement protest.
    Curse Lady Beatrix for this laming! Curse her for the lie—aye, most of all the lie told of Simon!
    With each halting step, he swore against her until he finally reached the dimly lit pallet. He put a foot to it, turned his back to the wall, and eased himself down the rough-hewn stone.
    A scent struck him. Woodruff and…fennel? He drew another breath. Aye, and other scents so faint their names could not be called to remembrance. Though Lady Beatrix made her bed in a crumbling crypt, it seemed she was not reduced to squalor—at least, not entirely.
    Michael pressed a hand to the woolen blanket that encased the stuff of her pallet. The sweet scent wafted stronger, though not in any way offensive. He nearly smiled.
    Wondering what, besides a skin and psalter, the lady kept, he lifted a corner of the pallet and searched a hand beneath. A purse clattered its contents as he drew it forth— his purse—then came a coil of rope.
    He looked to the packs he had left near the column. When she returned, he would ask her to deliver them to him. And perhaps this time she would draw too near.

    “You wish to know of your family?”
    Arresting her retreat, Beatrix stared at the rope she had come down a minute earlier.
    “’Twas for tidings of them that you risked Broehne Castle, was it not?”
    She looked over her shoulder at where he sat on her pallet. It bothered her that he had claimed that which she had every night lain upon. Then there was the matter of the wooden splints that had returned his sword to him.
    “Was it not?” he pressed.
    Not what? She looked to where she had tossed the skin of water alongside his uninjured leg. Of what did he—? Ah, her family.
    “I l-learned all I must needs know.” A lie, but surely he would demand a price for the telling of whatever he knew— if he knew anything.
    “What did you learn?”
    She started toward the rope.
    “You know the reason they have not come for you, do you not?”
    She swung back around. “What do you know of it?” She was but ten feet distant from him when she realized she advanced on him, just as he wished her to do. She hastened to the rope.
    “I am in need of my packs,” he snapped.
    Heart bumping against her ribs, she looked from D’Arci on her pallet to the packs. If she retrieved them, it would put her distant from the rope, but would it give him enough time to come between her and escape? He had gotten himself across the crypt.
    If not for the dagger, she would have refused him. She pulled it and, holding him with her gaze, hurried to the column. D’Arci did not move when she stepped toward him and tossed the packs at his feet. Keeping the dagger before her, she backed away.
    “Too, I am in need of