The rain beat down on the walls and roof of Ugolini's mansion with redoubled intensity. She saw a small pool of water on the wood floor, rain blown in through the open window.
"I never did make love to him," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the wind and rain.
"I know that." He took a step toward her.
I am doing worse than that now, she thought with a stab of guilt. I am keeping from David something he would badly want to know.
"He put his arms around me and kissed me many times," she said.
David turned fully to look at her, saying nothing.
"Whenever he took me in his arms, I thought of you."
He closed his eyes.
When she was with David she never grieved over the turns her life had taken. She never felt sorry for herself, as she did with Simon, because she had not married and could not marry. Simon had actually said he wanted to marry her, and in the end she had believed him. That seemed like a dream now. A pleasant dream, but an impossible one.
For an instant she tried to picture herself, a woman of Constantinople wed to a Frankish lord and living in a castle in the north of France. If such a preposterous thing should come about, she would be enormously wealthy and powerful—though she had not really thought about that when she was with Simon. She was not herself when she was with Simon. And now, when she was herself and able to see things clearly, the wealth and power still did not matter, because they would give her no pleasure if she had to live among barbarians.