She has no idea how much she revealed to me.
He sang another troubadour song, "White Hands." She let him draw off her red silk slippers, and he almost cast away all his promises to himself as she curled her toes against the palm of his hand. He forced himself to stand up and pace the room while she lounged back on her bed, her head propped up on her elbow, watching him with that delicious smile of hers.
She questioned him about his life, and he offered her a simple version of it, telling her nothing about his secret illegitimacy and the dishonor of the man whose name he bore. It struck him while talking to her that perhaps these two sins that had shaped his life—Amalric de Gobignon's treason and Nicolette de Gobignon's adultery—had given him the strength to resist the temptation to assail Sophia's virtue. He told her how he had spent much of his youth in the household of the King of France and how this had led to Count Charles d'Anjou's giving him the task of protecting the Tartar ambassadors.
And thus, inevitably, their talk got around to the Tartars.
"Why did you accept this task from the Count of Anjou?" she asked. "You have a lofty title, huge estates, everything you could want. Why trouble yourself with all this intrigue?"
Having decided not to tell her the truth about his past, Simon now could not answer her question both honestly and fully. He could not say that he had committed himself to this mission to clear the stain of treason from the name of de Gobignon and to prove that he had a right to the title.
So he told her of another reason, equally true.
"I am in part an orphan, and the king was like a second father to me. It is his wish that Christians and Tartars join together to liberate the Holy Land. And I would do anything for him."
Sophia frowned. "I find that hard to understand. As for me, I hate the Tartars."
Simon's mind pounced on that. Could she be more involved in Ugolini's scheming than she had admitted?