"You're right," he remarked with deliberate crudity, recalling she'd kicked him in the groin. "It's your feet that should be bound."

He sounded so disgruntled that amused satisfaction made her lips twitch. Royce saw it and could not believe his eyes. Grown men, warriors, quailed in his presence, but this young girl with the haughty stance and stubborn chin was actually enjoying defying him. His curiosity and his patience abruptly evaporated. "Enough polite trivialities," he said sharply, advancing slowly on her.

Jenny's amusement vanished and she retreated a step, then she stopped and made herself hold her ground.

"I want answers to some questions. How many men-at-arms does your father keep at Merrick castle?"

"I don't know," Jenny said flatly, then she spoiled the effect of her bravado by taking another cautious step backward.

"Does your father think I mean to march on him?"

"I don't know."

"You're trying my patience," he warned in a silky, ominous voice. "Would you prefer I ask these questions of your tender little sister instead?"

That threat had the desired effect; her defiant expression turned desperate. "Why wouldn't he think you're going to attack him? For years, there have been rumors that you're going to do it. Now, you have an excuse! Not that you need one." Jennifer cried, frightened past all reason when he began advancing on her again. "You're an animal! You enjoy killing innocent people!" When he didn't deny that he enjoyed it, Jenny felt her insides cringe.

"Now that you know that much," he said in a dangerously soft voice, "suppose you tell me how many men-at-arms your father has?"

Jenny hastily calculated that there must be at least 500 left. "Two hundred," she said.

"You stupid, reckless little fool!" Royce hissed, grabbing her arms and giving her a hard shake. "I could break you in half with my bare hands, yet you still lie to me?"

"What do you expect me to do?" Jenny cried, quaking all over, but still stubborn. "Betray my own father to you?"

"Before you leave this tent," he promised, "you'll tell me what you know of his plans-willingly or with some help from me you won't enjoy."

"I don't know how many men he's gathered," Jenny cried helplessly. "It's true," she flung out. "Until yesterday, my father hadn't seen me in two years, and before that he rarely spoke to me!"

That answer so took Royce by surprise that he stared at her. "Why not?"

"I-I displeased him," she admitted.

"I can understand why," he said bluntly, thinking her to be the most unbiddable female he'd ever had the misfortune to encounter. She also, he noticed with a start, had the softest, most inviting mouth he'd ever seen and, very possibly, the bluest eyes.

"He hasn't spoken to you, or paid the slightest heed to you in years, and yet you still risk your very life to protect him from me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

There were several, truthful and safer, answers Jenny could have given, but anger and pain were numbing her brain. "Because," she said flatly, "I despise you, and I despise everything you represent."

Royce stared at her, caught somewhere between fury, amazement, and admiration for her defiant courage. Short of murdering her, which would not give him the answers he sought, he was at a loss as to how to deal with her, and although strangling her held a certain appeal at the moment, it was out of the question. In any case, with Merrick's daughters his captives, it was possible Merrick might surrender without putting up a struggle. "Get out," he said shortly.

Needing no further urging to leave his hated presence, Jenny turned to flee from the tent, but the flap was down and she stopped.

"I said, get out!" Royce warned ominously, and she swung around.

"There's nothing I'd like better, however, I can't very well walk through canvas."

Wordlessly, he reached out and lifted the flap, then to her surprise he bent low in an insulting mockery of a bow. "Your servant ma'am. If there's anything at all I can do to help make your stay with us more pleasant, I hope you won't hesitate to call it to my attention."

"Untie my wrists then," Jenny demanded to his utter disbelief.

"No," Royce snapped. The flap dropped down, smacking her in the backside, and Jenny bolted forward in angry surprise, then let out a stifled scream when an unseen hand shot out and caught her arm, but it was merely one of the dozen guards who were posted just outside the Wolf's tent.

By the time Jenny returned to their tent, Brenna was ashen with fright at being left alone. "I'm perfectly all right, I promise," Jenny reassured her as she awkwardly lowered herself to the ground.

Chapter Four

Fires burned at periodic intervals in the valley where the Wolfs men were still encamped that night. Standing in the open doorway of the tent, her wrists bound behind her, Jenny thoughtfully studied the activity going on all about them. "If we're going to escape, Brenna-" she began.

"Escape?" her sister repeated, gaping. "How in the name of the Blessed Mother can we possibly do that, Jenny?"

"I'm not certain, but however we do it, we shall have to do it very soon. I heard some of the men talking outside, and they think we'll be used to force Father to surrender."

"Will he do that?"

Jenny bit her lip. "I don't know. There was a time-before Alexander came to Merrick-when my kinsmen would have laid down their weapons rather than see me harmed. Now I don't matter to them."

Brenna heard the catch in her sister's voice, and though she longed to comfort Jenny, she knew Alexander had so alienated clan Merrick from their young mistress that they didn't care about her any more.

"They do love you, however, so it's hard to know what they'll decide or how much influence Father will have on them. However, if we can escape soon, we could reach Merrick before any decision is made, which is what we must do."

Of all the obstacles in their way, the one that worried Jenny most was the actual trip back to Merrick, which she estimated to be a two-day journey on horseback from here. Every hour they would be required to spend on the road was risky; bandits roamed everywhere, and two women alone were considered fair game even by honest men. The roads simply were not safe. Neither were the inns. The only safe lodgings were to be found at abbeys and priories, which was where all honest, respectable travelers chose to stay.

"The problem is, we don't stand a chance of escaping with our hands bound," Jenny continued aloud, as she gazed out at the busy camp. "Which means we either have to convince them to untie our wrists, or else manage to escape into the woods during mealtime when we're not bound. But if we do that, our absence will be discovered as soon as they come to collect our trays before we're very far away. Still, if that's the only chance that presents itself during the next day or two, we shall very likely have to take it," she announced cheerfully.

"Once we slip into the woods, what will we do?" Brenna asked, bravely quelling her inner terror at the thought of being alone in the woods at night.

"I'm not certain-hide somewhere, I suppose, until they give up looking for us. Or else we might be able to fool them into thinking we went east instead of north. If we could steal two of their horses, that would increase our chances of outrunning them, even if it made it more difficult to hide. The trick is to find some way to do both. We need to be able to hide and outrun them."

"How can we do that?" Brenna asked, her forehead knotted deeply in futile thought.

"I don't know, but we have to try something." Lost in contemplation, she stared unseeing past the tall, bearded man who had stopped talking to one of his knights and was studying her intently.

The fires had dwindled and their guard had collected their trays and retied their wrists, but still neither girl had come up with an acceptable scheme, even though they'd discussed several outlandish ones. "We can't just remain here like willing pawns to be used to his advantage," Jenny burst out when they were lying side by side that night. "We must escape."

"Jenny, has it occurred to you what he might do to us when-if," she amended quickly, "he catches us?"

"I don't think he'd kill us," Jenny reassured her after a moment's contemplation. "We wouldn't be any use to him as hostages if we were dead. Father would insist on seeing us before agreeing to surrender, and the earl will have to produce us-alive and breathing -or else Father will tear him to shreds," Jenny said, deciding it was better, less frightening, to think of him as the earl of Claymore, rather than the Wolf.

"You're right," Brenna agreed and promptly fell asleep.

But it was several hours before Jenny could relax enough to do the same, for despite her outward show of bravery and confidence, she was more frightened than she'd ever been in her life. She was frightened for Brenna, for herself, and for her clan, and she hadn't the vaguest notion how to escape. She only knew they had to try.

As to their captor not murdering them if he caught them, that much was likely true; however, there were other-unthinkable-male alternatives to outright murder that he had at hand to retaliate against them. Her mind conjured up an image of his dark face all but hidden by at least a fortnight's growth of thick, black beard, and she shivered at the memory of those strange silver eyes as they'd looked last night with the leaping flames from the fires reflected in them. Today his eyes had been the angry gray of a stormy sky-but there had been a moment, when his eyes had shifted to her mouth, that the expression in their depths had changed-and that indefinable change had made him seem more threatening than ever before. It was his black beard, she told herself bracingly, that made him seem so frightening, for it hid his features. Without that dark beard, he'd doubtless look like any other elderly man of… thirty-five? Forty? She'd heard the legend of him since she was a child of three or four, so he must be very old indeed! She felt better, realizing he was old. 'Twas only his beard that made him seem alarming, she reassured herself. His beard, and his daunting height and build, and his strange, silver eyes.