"Go ahead," she said.
"I'm going to accept Miguel's commission and leave here to assassinate Duke Winslow, as ordered."
She gasped. "Assassinate—"
"That's the terms of our agreement," he said. "One Duke more or less doesn't matter to me. I'll go to Winslow's court and try to find out what happened to your father. Somehow I'll give Winslow what's due him. Then I'll return here and claim you as Miguel's agreed, and we'll go looking for your father together. If you're willing, give me a kiss."
She hesitated for just a moment, then lifted his face from her ear. Their eyes met. She was pale, he saw, and frightened; the aloof haughtiness of the court lady had been almost completely replaced by an appealing little-girl terror.
He looked past her to the brooding eyes of Don Miguel glowering down at him from the row of paintings on the wall. After Winslow—Miguel, he thought with sudden savagery. The unprovoked thought surprised him.
"Very well," she murmured. She touched her lips lightly to his, and then gave herself to him with a sort of desperate abandon that astonished Kesley.
After a moment or two, he slipped from her grasp and looked around the room, wondering if he'd find a concealed television camera or something similar. There was nothing. The battery of screens and lights on the far wall seemed dead, as they had been since Miguel had shut them off.
Finally he cupped his hands. "Miguel!"
The Duke reappeared almost instantly, followed closely by the chubby form of Archbishop Santana. The Archbishop once again performed the sign of the cross piously as he entered.