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  When Pagnell had killed her father, she’d done what she could to survive. Survival! That meant nothing to someone like Raine and his powerful brothers. War, revenge, honor, these childish games of kidnapping each other were things that had never entered into her life.

  “May I join you?” Jocelin asked. “Like to share your thoughts with me?”

  Her eyes glistened. “I was imagining Raine behind a plow. If he had to worry about his fields growing he wouldn’t have time to think of murdering this Chatworth. And if Chatworth were driving a team of oxen he wouldn’t have had the energy to kidnap Raine’s sister.”

  “Ah, make everyone equal,” he said. “Rather like King Henry wants. Give all the power to one man and none to anyone else.”

  “You sound like Raine,” she accused. “I thought you’d be on my side.”

  Jocelin leaned against a rock and smiled. “I am on no one’s side. I have seen both ways of life and the poverty of the lower class doesn’t appeal to me nor the . . . the decadence of the upper class. Of course, there are people in the middle. I think I should like to be a rich merchant, a buyer and seller of silks, and grow a fat belly.”

  “There were rich merchants in Moreton, but they weren’t happy either. They were always worried about losing their money.”

  “Rather like Raine is worried about losing his honor?”

  Alyx smiled at him, realized he was leading toward something. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “That all of us are different, that nothing is all good or bad. If you want Raine to understand your ways, be patient. Screeching at him will do little.”

  She laughed at that. “Screeching, is it? Perhaps I am a bit loud.”

  Jocelin gave an exaggerated groan. “You do realize that you are as stubborn as he is, don’t you? Both of you are so sure you’re right, that your way is the only one.”

  For a quiet moment, Alyx considered this. “Why do you think I love him, Joss? I know he’s lovely to look at, but then so are you. Why would I love Raine when I know nothing can ever come of that love? The best I can hope for is to be made his family musician, to serve his . . . his wife and children.”

  “Who knows what makes us love?” Joss said, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “It was almost as if I’d known Raine before I met him. All the way into the forest I kept thinking how I hated all the nobility, but as soon as I saw Raine—” She laughed. “I really did try.”

  “Come on, let’s go back. I’m sure Raine will have work for us to do. And try to remember that he needs comfort now as much as lectures on what a mule he is.”

  “I will try,” she said, taking his hand as he helped her up.

  In the shadows of the trees stood a woman everyone seemed to have forgotten—Blanche. Her face contorted into ugliness when she saw Jocelin take Alyx’s hand. For the last few days Alyx and Raine had been tearing at each other as only lovers can. They seemed to think the inside of the tent gave them privacy, but their two voices were so loud that stone walls wouldn’t have sheltered them. The people in the camp wagered on who was going to win the arguments, saying the boy could hold his own. They cheered when Alyx said her class of people had too much work to do to talk about honor.

  But there were things the people didn’t hear, things that only Blanche heard as she fastened her ear to the tent wall: that Alyx had been declared a witch because of some man’s lust, that Alyx loved Raine, and at night were the unmistakable sounds of lovemaking.

  Once she’d had a good position in a castle, Edmund Chatworth’s castle, and she’d had Jocelin for a lover. Now, in the rare times when Joss did look at her, his lips curled into a snarl and his eyes glowed with hatred. All because of that disgusting whore Constance! Constance had taken Joss away from Blanche, away from women everywhere. Jocelin, who used to laugh and sing, who took three women to his bed at once and made them all happy, was like a celibate priest now. Yet recently, he’d been looking at that devil-marked Rosamund with more than a little interest.

  And now she was losing Raine—great, handsome, powerful, rich Raine. And to what? A skinny, shorthaired, flat-chested boy/girl. If I were to wear men’s clothes, Blanche thought, no one would mistake me for a boy. But that Alyx had no curves and her face looked like an elf s. So why was Raine panting after her? She was no highborn lady but of the same class as Blanche. Before Alyx came, Blanche was Raine’s personal attendant and once, oh lovely night! she’d shared his bed. Now it was never likely to happen again—unless she could get rid of Alyx.

  With a new, determined look on her face, she turned back to the camp.

  * * *

  For weeks Alyx worked to keep Raine from declaring war on Roger Chatworth. The letters that went from Montgomery Castle and back again began to be exchanged weekly. More than once, Alyx thanked the Lord Raine couldn’t read, because at the bottom of her letters to Gavin, she added a postscript of her version of the truth. She told Gavin how Raine’s anger grew each day, how he was driving himself harder and harder on the training field, preparing himself for battle with Chatworth.

  In return Gavin wrote of Bronwyn’s having been found, of her baby due in August. He wrote of their youngest brother’s rage at his sister’s death and how Miles had been sent to relatives on the Isle of Wight, in hopes that their uncle could cool Miles’ temper. In a lighter vein, Gavin said that their uncle was the one in a rage now since his ward had fallen in love with Miles and was vowing to follow him to the ends of the earth.

  “What is this brother of yours like?” Alyx asked, curious.

  “Women like Miles,” was all Raine would say. There was no humor about him these days. Even his lovemaking had a desperate edge to it.

  Another brother, Stephen, wrote from Scotland. The letter, to Alyx’s mind, was odd, filled with anger against the English, talk of the year’s poor crops.

  “Is your brother a Scotsman?” she asked.

  “He is married to the MacArran and has taken her name.”

  “He has given up a good English name for a Scot’s?” She was incredulous.

  “Bronwyn could make a man do anything for her,” Raine said flatly.

  Alyx bit her tongue to keep from making a snide comment about the idle, rich women Raine had always loved. Once she did say something of the sort and made Raine smile.

  “Judith,” he said with such longing that Alyx winced. “In my life I have never spent a day working as hard as she does each day.”

  “Chivalrous of you,” Alyx had snorted, disbelieving what he said.

  It was in April that things began to happen. The camp of outlaws seemed docile all through winter, but as the trees began to bud and there was a breath of fresh air about, they began to fight. Not fight each other head on, but sneak up quietly and club someone.

  Raine’s work increased a hundred fold. He was determined to keep order in the camp.

  “Why do you bother?” Alyx snapped at him. “They aren’t worth your time.”

  For the first time in a long while, she saw one of his dimples appear. “Can’t teach honor to one of their class, is that it? Only we are privy to those feelings.”

  “We?” she snorted. “Since when have I become one of your satin-clad ladies? I’ll wager I can handle a sword as well as your Judith can handle a needle.”

  For some reason this seemed to highly amuse Raine. “You’d win that bet,” he laughed. “Now come here and give me a kiss. I know you’re the best at that.”

  Gladly, she clung to him. “Am I, Raine?” she asked seriously. She tried to live each day as it came, but sometimes she thought of the future, of seeing Raine with his lady-wife, of herself in the shadows.

  “Now, what’s that look for?” he asked, tipping her chin up. “Am I so difficult to be around?”

  “I’m just afraid, that’s all. We won’t always be in the forest.”

  “That is something to be thankful for!” he said passionately. “No doubt decay has set into my house in these last months.”