Morning was coming late to the Kendal's.  Graff wished it would hurry up.  He didn't mind looking at fog from the casements of the Duke's palisade, but it was another matter when it started to soak into his cloak.
   His companion - ha! companion. She was more like a slave driver, really; he had sworn nearly as many oaths to her as he had to the duke himself, and she let him know it as often as it suited her - so his companion, stood a few steps away.  Her damp black curls hung like tendrils over her face.  She hadn't bothered to clear any of the strands that the slight eastern wind had placed there.  But that was not bothering Graff near as much as her gaze, her unblinking gaze into the fog.
   She was staring west, over the Yerin Woods, or maybe even to the close reaches of the Plains of Yale.  It was as if she had eyes keener than a falcon's, and they were cutting right through the fog.  He'd had the leisure to study her gaze, because she fixed it on him the one time he started to hunker down under a magnolia.
   Graff shifted his feet, but it was for a chill in the wind.  Yes, a chill in the wind, nothing to do with thinking about those eyes.
   Thus far the morning light had only served to make the fog seem thicker, more white.  Soon, he knew, it would start melting away.  The birds were getting restless in the trees.
   And then there was a sudden shift in the wind.  Graff's cloaked whipped at his shins, and the lady's hair was flung from her face in an ebony mane.  Just as quickly the wind resettled, and the lady turned quick on her heel, heading back down the small mountain of the foothills as if all of this was part of her morning ritual.  Graff was sure she hadn't even flinched in that wind.
   They were mounting their horses at the bottom of the rise when she spoke. "I will have an audience with the Duke when we return."  Graff was nodding at the dismissal - he wanted to melt with relief - when she added, "You shall join me."
   He pulled back what freedom he had already given the reins, and she brought her own horse alongside his.
   "Give me your hand."
   She removed his glove and began tracing lines over his flesh with a finger, he half falling from his saddle.
   "You have sworn many oaths to me, Baron Hilbert."
   It was disconcerting; as she spoke her eyes never left his hand and her tracings, and it almost sounded as if her voice didn't either.
   "I need you now..." she paused, lifted her finger, then clasped his hand full in hers and trapped his eyes in her gaze, "to forswear all other allegiance, except to me.  Will you swear to me now."
   The question mark was nowhere to be found.
   But somehow his voice was. "I so swear."