We're prisoners here together on the mountain, you and I, and your chaperon, servant and sometime ruler, Suzanne Picard, who I find is not as grim as she looks." There was a spark in his eyes as he looked at her, and an answering fire leaped up in her own.

He was in very truth a perfect and gentle knight, who would gladly come so far and through so many dangers for her and for her alone.

He was her very own champion, and as her dark blue eyes looked into the gray deeps of his her soul thrilled with the knowledge of it.

Deep red flushed her from brow to chin, and then slowly ebbed away.
"John," she said, putting her hand in his, "no woman has ever owed more gratitude to a man." "And I am finding repayment now for what I was happy to do," he said, kissing her hand again in that far-off knightly fashion.
Again the red tide in her cheeks and then she swiftly left the room, but John threw himself in a chair before the great fire and gazed into the coals.

Wide awake, he was dreaming.