She lay for a moment, warm and relaxed in the deep feather bed, gathering her bearings as the memory of the previous evening and night came back with full force. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked around the chamber. She was alone, as she’d guessed. The bolster that Ivor had put down on the bed was no longer in place, and she realized he had put it back against the headboard. It was the silence that she found unnerving. On any ordinary morning, the village would be alive with sounds as people went about their daily business, but there was now just an eerie silence. She listened for sounds from below, footsteps, a chair scraping along the floor, a poker riddling the coals in the range, but there was nothing. It felt alarmingly as if she were the only person left in the village. Which was, of course, ridiculous. She kicked aside the covers and got out of bed. Her eye was drawn instantly to the dried red stain on the sheet, and she grimaced at the memory of what she’d had to do.
