Love’s Pyre, Liar’s Trial

The Rys household ran on a rule about virtue. A woman known for it could be trusted with the family's affairs, and a woman whose reputation was damaged could not. When the head of the family handed control to his widowed daughter in law Isabella, who was called the lotus by people who spoke about her chastity, his wife lost the power she had actually been holding. To get it back she sent her bodyguard, a good looking man she trained herself in how to work on women. He came at Isabella with staged accidents and injuries he arranged to receive. Isabella's body carried a red lotus mark that surfaced when she was aroused, and it kept surfacing. The two of them were nearly caught more than once. He fell in love with her for real. She found out she had been used, and set a trap: she led him into putting poison in the head of the family's medicine, then exposed him at once. At the trial she proved her own innocence by a blood test. She forgave the woman who had aimed all of it at her, and let the bodyguard go so he could show whether his feelings were genuine. Three years later he came back and asked her to marry him.