My Lady De Burgh. Deborah Simmons

his sudden appearance here might be no coincidence,” she said, rising to her feet, and Robin’s outrage at her accusation was tempered by curiosity as she stood. She was taller than he had expected, but still the top of her head would barely reach his chin. She appeared slender, yet shapely, allowing Robin’s imagination to wander until he told himself it was most unseemly to speculate on what a nun might look like naked.

      “Sybil!” the abbess scolded. “You have no reason to speak so of Lord de Burgh, whose aid will be most welcome.”

      So her name was Sybil. Robin rolled it around in his mind, and, again, he felt that fierce sense of recognition. Sybil. Her name spoke of ancient mysteries, oracles and exotic lures tendered to unsuspecting men. Robin frowned. Luckily, he could not be counted among them, for he distrusted her on sight.

      “As penance for your speech, you will work with Lord de Burgh on his investigation into the sad death of Elisa, providing him whatever assistance he might require,” the abbess said.

      Horrified at her words, Robin opened his mouth to protest, but Sybil was quicker. “But he might be the murderer!” she exclaimed.

      Robin felt his face flush. “As well could she be!” he countered. If Sybil was the One, why did he feel like thrashing her? Surely, his brothers had not suffered this odd reaction to their intended spouses!

      “I hardly think either one of you is responsible, but you may keep an eye upon each other, if you are so uneasy,” the abbess said. “That is, if you will be gracious enough to aid us, my lord? I could send a message to the bishop, of course, but since you are already here…”

      Robin tore his attention away from Sybil and back to the abbess, knowing full well that the older woman had neatly maneuvered him. But it little mattered in this case, for he had his own reasons for agreeing.

      “Certainly, Reverend Abbess, I would be most happy to help you in any way I can,” Robin said, firmly ignoring Sybil’s complaints. She made a noise that sounded awfully like a snort of contempt, but stepped back to gesture toward the prone body in invitation, as if daring him to investigate. Did she think he would fall faint at the sight? Robin nearly laughed aloud, for he had been in battle. He was a de Burgh.

      “Who found her?” Robin asked as he knelt beside the dead woman.

      “Catherine and I,” Sybil answered in a belligerent tone, and Robin pondered what she could possibly have against him. Perhaps she was one of those nuns who held a grudge against men. Or mayhap she simply resented his intrusion into her ordered existence. Still, she seemed too sharp-tongued for a holy woman. And too beautiful. And too shapely.

      Robin glanced down at the body, the dead one, in an effort to tear his thoughts away from the live one that was claiming far too much of his interest. “Did you touch her?”

      “Of course, we checked to see if she still lived!” Sybil replied, her answer sending the nun Catherine into a new fit of wailing. Robin glanced up at the One sharply in reprimand, and her mutinous expression made him wonder if all that bravado covered up her own fears. Or her own guilt.

      Wonderful. Not only was he was destined for a nun, an abomination in itself, but a murdering nun. That made her worse than his brother Geoffrey’s wife, who had killed her first husband defending herself, but at least belonged to no holy order. Nay, Robin told himself, quite firmly, this woman was not meant for him, no matter that she seemed for all the world to be the One. She was a woman of God, and he would do well to remember as much.

      Robin shook his head and tried to concentrate upon the matter at hand. “Did you move her or was she exactly like this when you found her?” he asked. The dead woman’s form was twisted, the upper portion lying mostly on her back, while the lower rested on her side. Blood had seeped from a wound to the back of her head, but was no longer fresh. Dark, thick and drying, its condition told Robin that she probably had died during the night, certainly not within the last hour.

      “I only turned her slightly,” Sybil said, her voice still ringing with animosity.

      Robin ignored it to continue his study of the deceased. Nearby lay a large rock with blood upon its surface that appeared to correspond to the woman’s injury. Indeed, the situation of the body made it appear as if she had fallen and struck her head, though it would take a mighty tumble to do such damage. Robin looked around, his gaze lighting upon the nearby stone wall, and he mentally judged the distance from its top to the ground. If Elisa had been climbing over the top during the night and had slipped, she might well have met her death.

      “Perhaps ’tis no murder, after all,” Robin said, “But an unfortunate accident.” Although he didn’t want to speculate on the nun’s reason for clambering over the high stone barrier, Robin knew that she would likely not be the first member of her order to engage in clandestine meetings.

      “Nay! Elisa would not have been on the wall,” Sybil said, following his thoughts as easily as if he had spoken them aloud. He glanced up to see that she had crossed her arms in front of her in a stance so belligerent that Robin didn’t know whether to laugh or growl in exasperation. “Besides, ’tis too convenient,” she added. “More likely, the murderer arranged all in a effort to appease the gullible.”

      Robin bristled at the insult, but, instead of arguing, he lifted the dead woman’s head, carefully inspecting the wound to see if it matched the marks on the stone. Long ago, he had learned the secret of concentration from his father and his brother Geoffrey, and so he tried to focus solely upon what he was doing, despite the sound of the abbess herding the nuns from the scene.

      All of them, that is, except for Sybil. She remained, continuing her complaints, and even though Robin heeded not her words, she definitely was a distraction. How on earth had she come to be a nun? Obviously, this order did not hold to the tenets of silence, Robin decided, even as he heard her voice on the edges of his awareness, tempting him to stop her mouth, preferably with his own.

      Loosing a low oath that he hoped might offend a woman of God, or at least make her be quiet, Robin assessed the injury before him. During the studies of his younger years, he had taken an interest in medicine, so the sight did not disturb him. Nor was he likely to faint away as Sybil had suggested. But he did find something interesting.

      “You’re right,” he said suddenly, finally putting a stop to the incessant flow of speech from Sybil’s lips. “She was murdered,” he said into the blessed silence. The peace was brief, however.

      “What? How do you know?” Sybil asked, and he gently turned Elisa’s upper body onto her side.

      “Look here,” he said. When Sybil gamely knelt beside him, Robin tried to ignore the pleasant waft of her scent. She was too near, but there was no help for it. Gritting his teeth, he pointed to a spot on the back of the dead woman’s head. “Another blow.”

      Sybil looked at him then, her eyes wide, and he saw that they weren’t just blue, but a light, lovely color surrounded by a rim of darker blue. He felt himself swaying, nearly falling, before he caught himself. Drawing a deep breath, he looked at the dead woman.

      “She was struck twice,” he explained in a strained voice. “Obviously, the smaller injury did not kill her, and your murderer was forced to render another blow. If she had simply fallen, she would have been hurt only once.”

      “I knew it,” Sybil said beside him, her tone so rife with excitement that it roused an answering clamor within his traitorous body. Against his will, Robin felt alive, as if every humor within him was cavorting and screaming, She’s the One! He had to struggle for breath, taking in a deep draught to steady himself. And although his fingers itched to reach for her, instead he wiped them on the grass and rose to his feet, greeting the returning abbess with no little relief.

      “I am sorry, Reverend Abbess, but I fear your worst suspicions were correct. She was killed,” Robin said.

      The abbess shook her head sadly, her gaze resting for a long moment upon the dead woman before she returned her attention to Robin. “Then I must trust you to discover who did this foul deed, for we cannot have someone preying upon the