He reached for the boy’s tam, and a mane of dark curls tumbled out. Baffled, he began to strip the boy’s clothes from him one article at a time. When soft flesh spilled into his hands, he was stunned. He had uncovered a perfect specimen of femininity . . . His breath froze in his lungs. He experienced the same sensation he’d felt when he’d first set eyes on the blond woman at the queen’s reception: a ripple of recognition, like a tiny electric current passing through his brain. When he found himself reaching for her, he snatched his hand away. Things he hadn’t seen before were clicking into place. “There is no other woman,” he said. “Is there? There is no boy who conducted her to a safe place. You’re one and the same person . . . You’re the woman at the reception. You’re the blond who tried to kill me. I want you to start at the beginning and tell me all you know, or I swear I will have you locked in a dungeon and I will walk away without a backward glance.”