The man's legs brought him nearer. He stopped at the fire, nudging the dying embers with the toe of his boot, and Brenna sensed instinctively that his eyes were probing the dark recess of the bushes where she was hidden. He moved suddenly, walking toward her, and her chest rose and fell in frightened spasms as her lungs fought for air. Clamping her hand over her mouth, she tried to silence the coughing fit that was bursting within her while she stared in frozen terror at the tips of his boots only inches from her own.

"All right now," the deep voice boomed in the little clearing, "come out of there, milady. You've given us a merry chase, but the chase is over."

Hoping it was a trap and that he didn't actually know she was there, Brenna pressed further back into her hiding-hole. "Very well," he sighed, "I suppose I'll have to reach in there and fetch you." He crouched abruptly and an instant later a big hand thrust through the branches, groping around and finally closing on Brenna's breast.

A squeal of indignant horror stuck in her throat as his hand snapped open, then closed again slowly, as if he was trying to identify what he'd found. When he did identify it, he jerked his hand back in momentary shock, then thrust it forward, grabbed Brenna's arm, and hauled her out.

"Well, well, well," Stefan said, unsmiling. "It seems I've found a woodland fairy."

Brenna hadn't courage enough to strike him or bite him as Jenny had done to his brother, but she did manage to glower at him as he tossed her up onto her horse and mounted his own, holding her horse's reins in his hand.

When they emerged from the woods onto the road, Brenna breathed a prayer that Jenny had escaped, then steeled herself to look up the road to the ridge. Her heart plummeted when she saw Jenny coming toward her, mounted in front of the black Wolf on his horse. Stefan guided his horse into step beside his brother's. "Where's Thor?" he asked, but the murderous expression on Royce's face answered the question before his voice did. "Dead."

Royce rode in tight-lipped silence, growing angrier with each passing minute. Besides the deep loss he felt because of Thor, he was also tired, hungry, and thoroughly enraged because one young girl (he rightly held Brenna blameless) with red hair (he knew that now) had managed to dupe a wily, experienced guard, throw half an army into an uproar, and force him to spend an entire day and night recapturing her. But what infuriated him most was her unbending will, her stiff spine, and defiant manner. She was like a spoiled child who'd not admit she was wrong by breaking down and crying.

When they rode into camp, heads turned to watch them and faces relaxed, but none of the men were foolish enough to cheer. That two captives had been permitted to escape in the first place was a cause for embarrassment, not rejoicing, but that those captives were women was unthinkable. It was humiliating.

Royce and Stefan rode toward the pen and Royce dismounted, then unceremoniously hauled Jenny down. She turned to start toward her tent, then stifled a cry of pain and surprise when Royce jerked her back. "I want to know how you got the horses out of the pen without the guard seeing you."

Every man within hearing distance seemed to tense in unison and turn toward Jenny, waiting for her to answer. Until then, they'd behaved as if she was invisible, but now she squirmed under their swift, intense stares.

"Answer me!"

"I didn't have to sneak them out," Jenny said with as much dignity and contempt as she could manage. "Your guard was asleep."

A look of pained disbelief flickered in Royce's angry eyes, but his face was otherwise blank as he nodded curtly at Arik. The blond giant, his war axe in hand, walked forward through the men, heading for the recalcitrant guard. Jenny watched the unfolding tableau, wondering what was going to happen to the poor man. No doubt he'd be punished for being derelict in his duty, she knew, but the punishment wouldn't be truly terrible. Or would it? She didn't know because Royce snatched her arm and began pulling her with him.

As Royce marched her through the camp, Jenny could feel the hostile rage blazing at her from every soldier and knight she passed. She had made fools of them all by escaping and by eluding them. They hated her for that now, and their hatred was so virulent it made her skin burn. Even the earl seemed angrier at her than he'd been before, Jenny thought, as she quickened her pace to a near-run, trying to keep up with him before he pulled her arm out of its socket.

Her concern over his anger was suddenly overwhelmed by a more immediate calamity-Royce Westmoreland was taking her to his tent, not to her own.

"I won't go in there!" she cried, jerking backward.

Swearing under his breath, the earl reached out and tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of flour, her buttocks pointing skyward, her long hair falling to his calves. Lewd laughter and cheers rang out all over the clearing as the men witnessed her public humiliation, and Jenny almost gagged on her fury and mortification.

Inside the tent, he dumped her onto the heap of fur rugs on the ground, then stood watching her as Jenny scrambled to a sitting position, and then to her feet, watching him like a small, cornered animal. "If you defile me, I'll kill you, I swear it," she cried, mentally recoiling from the fury that turned his face to steel and his eyes to glittery silver shards.

"Defile you?" he repeated with scathing contempt. "The last thing you awaken in me right now is lust. You're going to stay in this tent because it's already heavily guarded, and I don't have to waste more of my men's time watching yours. Furthermore, you're in the center of the camp, and if you decide to make a run for it, my men will cut you down. Is that clear?"

She glowered at him but remained stonily silent, and her arrogant refusal to submit to his will enraged Royce yet more. His fists clenched at his sides, he fought down his rage and continued, "If you do one more thing to inconvenience me or anyone else in this camp, I will personally make your life a living hell. Do you understand me?"

Looking into that harsh, sinister face, Jenny fully believed he could, and would, do it.

"Answer me!" he ordered murderously.

Realizing that he was already pushed past reason, Jenny swallowed and nodded.

"And-" he began, then broke off abruptly as if he couldn't trust himself to say more. Turning, he snatched up a flagon of wine from the table and was about to drink from it when his squire, Gawin, entered the tent. In Gawin's arms were the blankets he'd fetched earlier from the ladies' tent-blankets which he'd been handing out to the men before he realized they'd been slashed, not mended. The boy's face was a study of anger and disbelief.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Royce snapped, the flagon arrested halfway to his lips.

Gawin raised his young, indignant face to his master. "The blankets, sire," he said, turning his accusing gaze on Jenny, "she slashed them, 'stead of mending them. The men would have been cold enough with only these blankets for protection, but now…"

Jenny's heart began to pound in genuine terror as the earl very slowly, very carefully, lowered the flagon and put it on the table. He spoke and his voice was a raw whisper, rasping with rage. "Come here."

Shaking her head, Jenny retreated a step.

"You're making it worse on yourself," he warned as she retreated another step. "I said, come here."

Jenny would have sooner jumped off a cliff. The tent flap was up, but there was no way to escape; men had been gathering out there since Royce had carried her into the tent, waiting no doubt to hear her whimper or scream for mercy.

Royce spoke to his squire, but his dagger gaze remained on Jenny. "Gawin, bring needle and thread."

"Aye, milord," Gawin agreed and scurried over to the corner, retrieving both. He put them on the table beside Royce, then stood back and watched in surprise as Royce merely lifted up the scraps that had once been blankets and held them out to the red-haired witch who'd destroyed them.

"You're going to mend every one of them," he told Jenny in an unnaturally quiet voice.

The tension left her body and she stared at her captor with a mixture of bafflement and relief. After causing him to spend a day and night chasing her, after killing his beautiful horse and destroying his clothes, the only punishment he meant to exact from her was to make her mend the blankets she'd ruined. That was making her life a living hell?

"You'll not sleep with a blanket until every one of these are repaired, do you understand?" he added, his voice as smooth and hard as polished steel. "Until my men are warm, you'll be cold."

"I-I understand," Jenny said in a wavering voice. So restrained was his manner-so parental-that it did not occur to her that he meant to do anything further to her. In fact, as she walked forward and reached a shaking hand toward the tattered strips of cloth he held, the thought flashed across her mind that rumor had grossly exaggerated his ruthlessness-a thought that was shattered an instant later: "Ouch!" she cried as his big hand shot out like a striking snake and locked around her outstretched wrist, yanking her forward with a force that knocked the air from her lungs and snapped her head back. "You spoiled little bitch," he bit out. "Someone should have beat that pride out of you when you were still a child. However, since they didn't, I will-"

His hand lifted and Jenny threw up an arm to cover her head, thinking that he meant to strike her in the face, but the huge hand she'd expected to hit her yanked her arm down. "I'd snap your neck in two if I hit you like that. I have another target in mind-"