Laurent was on the reclining couch, his feet tucked up under him in a relaxed, boyish posture. A book of scrollworked pages was open before him. There was a goblet on the small table beside him. At some point during the night, a servant must have spent the requisite half hour unlacing his austere outer garments, for Laurent wore only pants and a white shirt, the material so fine it did not require embroidery to declaim its expense. The room was lamp lit. Laurent’s body was a series of graceful lines under the shirt’s soft folds. Damen’s eyes lifted to the white column of his throat, and above that the golden hair, parting around the shell cup of an unjewelled ear. The image was damascened, as beaten metal. He was reading.