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  With his features set in a grim line, Raine watched the men as they left the camp, sulking like little children. “Those are your fine friends,” he said in an undertone to Alyx as he turned away.

  “They are no friends of mine!” she snapped.

  “Nor is Pagnell a friend of mine!” he retorted.

  Halting, she stared after his broad back. It was true, she knew. She had no right to hate him because of what another man had done.

  “Blanche!” Raine grunted. “Food!”

  With that, Alyx went tearing after him because she was very hungry. Inside the tent, Blanche placed roast boar, bread, cheese and hot wine before them, and Alyx tore into the food with gusto.

  “That’s the way, boy!” Raine laughed, slapping her on the back, making her choke. “Keep eating like that and you’ll put some size on yet.”

  “Keep working me like today and I’ll die in a week!” she gasped, trying to dislodge a piece of pork from her throat, ignoring Raine’s laughter.

  The meal finished, Alyx looked with longing toward the pallet along one wall of the tent. To rest, she thought, just to lie down and be still for a few hours would be heaven on earth.

  “Not yet, boy,” Raine said, grabbing her arm and pulling her upright. “There’s still work before we can sleep. The guards need to be checked, I have animal traps set and we both need a bath.”

  That startled her awake. “Bath!” she gasped. “No, not me.”

  “When I was your age I had to be forced to bathe, too. Once my older brother scoured me with a horse brush.”

  “Someone forced you to do something?” she asked, incredulous.

  Raine’s pride seemed to be at stake. “Actually, it took both my older brothers, and Gavin came away with a blacked eye. Now, come on. We have work to do.”

  Reluctantly, Alyx followed him, but no matter how hard she tried, she could put no energy in her steps. Like someone dead, she followed Raine through the forest, occasionally bumping into trees, stumbling over rocks, as he went around the perimeter of the camp making sure the guards were on duty and awake and removing rabbits and hares from his traps. At first he tried to talk to her, explain what he was doing, how to toss a rock and see if the guards responded, but after a while he studied her in the moonlight, noting her exhaustion, and stopped talking.

  At the stream outside the camp he told her to sit still and wait for him while he bathed. Half asleep, reclining on the bank, her head propped on her arm, Alyx watched with languid interest as Raine removed his clothing and stepped into the icy water. Moonlight silvered his body, caressed the muscles, played along his thighs, made love to those magnificent arms. Lifting herself on her elbows, Alyx unabashedly watched him. All her life had been given to music. While other girls were flirting with the boys at the town well, Alyx was composing a Latin lamentation for four voices. When her friends were getting married, she was inside the church organizing a boys’ chorus. She’d never had time to talk to boys, to get to know them—actually, had never been interested in them, had always been too busy to even notice them.

  Now, for the first time in her life, watching this nude man bathing she felt the first stirrings of . . . of what? She certainly knew about mating, had even listened to some of the gossip from the recently married women, but she’d never felt any interest in the process. This man standing before her, rising out of the water like some heavenly centaur, made her feel things she’d never thought possible.

  Lust, she thought, sitting up farther. Pure and simple lust was what she was feeling. She’d like for him to touch her, to kiss her, to lie beside her, and she would very much like to touch that skin of his. Remembering how it felt when she’d straddled his back, she began to tingle, her legs seeming more alive, even her feet growing warm.

  When he left the water and came toward her, she almost lifted her arms toward him.

  “You look lazy,” Raine commented, drying himself off. “Sure you won’t take a bath?”

  All Alyx could do was watch the course of the cloth he used for drying as it ran over his body and vaguely shake her head.

  “I warn you though, boy, you start smelling so bad you drive me from the tent and I’ll bathe you myself and it won’t be a gentle bath.”

  Eyes wide, Alyx looked up at him, her breathing changing just slightly. To be bathed by this great god of a man, she thought.

  “Are you all right, boy?” Raine asked, concerned, kneeling beside her as he frowned at her odd expression.

  Boy! she grimaced. He thought she was a boy, and what if she were revealed as a girl? He was of the nobility and she was only a poor lawyer’s daughter. “Aren’t you going to get cold?” she asked flatly, rolling away from him to stand apart, not watching as he dressed.

  When he was finished, she silently followed him back to camp, where she collapsed on her pallet but did not sleep until Raine had settled himself on his narrow cot. Content at last, she fell asleep.

  Chapter Six

  LEANING OVER THE edge of the water, Alyx studied her own reflection. She did look like a boy, she thought with disgust. Why couldn’t she have been born beautiful, with lovely features that could never be mistaken for a male’s no matter what she wore? Her hair, all a mass of curls, its color not sure of which way to go, changing with each strand, eyes turned up, lips like a pixie’s, were not what a woman’s should be.

  Just as tears were beginning to blur her vision, Jocelin’s voice startled her. “Cleaning more armor?” he asked.

  With a sniff, she turned back to her task. “Raine is too hard on it. Today I had to hammer out a dent.”

  “You seem to care much for his things. Are you perhaps beginning to believe that a nobleman could be worth something?”

  “Raine would be worth much no matter what his birth,” she said much too hastily, then looked away, embarrassed.

  She’d been in Raine’s camp for a week now, had spent nearly every second in his company and her opinions of him had completely reversed in that week. Once she’d believed he took over the camp, but now she knew it was that the outcasts forced him to take care of them. They were like children demanding that he provide for them, then acting rebellious when he did. He left his bed before anyone else and saw to the security of the people and always, late at night, he made sure the guard was alert and ready. He forced the people away from idleness and made them work for their own keep or else they’d sit and wait for him to provide for them, as if it were their due.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “Raine is worth something, although he gets little reward for what he does. Why doesn’t he leave this scurvy lot and leave England altogether? Surely a man with his wealth could make a decent home for himself.”

  “Perhaps you should ask him that. You are closest to him.”

  Close to him, she thought. That’s where she wanted to be, even closer to him. Only now was she beginning to be able to function through her blinding fatigue, to live through the strenuous training sessions each morning, but as her muscles hardened and she began to feel better, she became more involved in the camp life.

  Blanche occupied an exalted position in the camp, making everyone believe she shared Raine’s bed and had his ear for anything they wanted. Alyx tried not to consider if Blanche ever had spent the night with Raine, but she liked to believe he had more taste than to use a slut like Blanche. And something else Alyx was able to find out about Blanche: she was terrified of Jocelin.

  Jocelin, so incredibly handsome, so polite, so considerate, had every woman in camp panting after him. Alyx had seen women use every manner of enticement to lure him to their sides, but as far as she knew, Joss had never accepted an invitation. He preferred his duties and the company of Alyx to anyone else. And although he never mentioned her, he stayed well away from Blanche. When the woman happened to meet him she’d always turn tail and run.

  Besides Joss, the only other decent outcast was Rosamund, with her beauty and the devil’s mark on her cheek. Rosamund kept her head down, expecting p