"It was Sordello. He could not understand my rage at him. He kept protesting that he had saved my life. He had not."
Sophia thought of Sordello's attempt to seduce her. She clutched the wooden railing, choking bile rising in her throat.
"I am glad I killed him," she whispered. "I have never killed anyone before tonight. That I killed him was a gift from God."
Simon did not answer at once.
Then he said, "Tonight, before Daoud died, he told me that you were innocently drawn into his conspiracy against the alliance. He said he took advantage of my love for you, and that you and he were never close. But now that you've heard he is dead, you are like a woman who has lost a husband or a lover."
He stopped. He needed to say no more. She knew what he was asking.
The enormous aching void inside her made it almost impossible to think. Daoud, even as he lay dying, had tried to protect her. Simon might have suspicions, but about who she was or what she had done, he knew nothing. Manfred was dead. Tilia, Ugolini and Lorenzo—wherever they might be now—would say nothing.
She could, if she chose, become the person Simon thought she was—the person who had given herself to Simon in love at the lake outside Perugia. She need only seize the chance Daoud had given her.
In all Italy there was no place for her now. Once again she belonged nowhere and to no one. And she could be a wife to this good young man. She could be the Countess de Gobignon, with a station in life, with power to accomplish things, to change the world.
"You want to know what Daoud meant to me," she said. "Did you tell him what I meant to you?" She was amazed at how level her voice sounded.