To Jenny's amazement, Friar Gregory took no offence at this biting criticism, but instead looked abashed. "I greatly fear," he admitted ruefully as he awkwardly and unsteadily came to his feet, "that I may be no better at that than I am at riding horses. The Lady Jennifer is one of my first 'flocks,' you see. I've only been about the Lord's work a short time."

"You're not very good at it," Royce stated flatly. "Is it not your goal to console rather than incite? Or is it to line your purse and grow fat on your patron's good graces? If the latter is the case, you'd be wise to counsel my wife to try to please me, rather than encourage her to tell me of her hatred."

At that moment, Jenny would have given her very life to have Friar Benedict standing here instead of Friar Gregory, for she would have relished seeing Royce Westmoreland receive the sort of thundering tirade that Friar Benedict would have launched at the insolent duke.

In that respect, however, she had misjudged the young friar again. Although he did not rise to the Black Wolf's verbal attack, neither did he retreat or cower before his daunting adversary. "I gather that you do not hold those of us who wear these robes in very high regard?"

"None whatsoever," Royce snapped.

In her mind, Jenny wistfully envisioned Friar Benedict in this clearing, his eyes bulging with fury as he advanced on Royce Westmoreland like the angel of death. But, regretfully, Friar Gregory merely looked interested and a little puzzled. "I see," he said politely. "May I ask why?"

Royce Westmoreland stared at him with biting scorn. "I despise hypocrisy, particularly when it is coated with holiness."

"May I ask for a specific example?"

"Fat priests," Royce replied, "with fat purses, who lecture starving peasants on the dangers of gluttony and the merits of poverty." Turning on his heel, he strode back to the fire where Arik was roasting the rabbits on a makeshift spit.

"Oh dear God!" Jenny whispered a minute later, without realizing she had started fearing for the immortal soul of the very same man she'd just wished to perdition. "He must be a heretic!"

Friar Gregory shot her an odd, thoughtful glance. "If he is, he is an honorable one." Turning, he stared at the Black Wolf, who was crouching near the fire beside the giant who guarded him. In that same preoccupied, almost amused voice, he said softly, "A very honorable one, I think."

Chapter Eighteen

All the next day, Jenny endured her husband's stony silence, while her mind whirled with questions that only he could answer, until in sheer desperation she finally broke down just before noon and spoke herself: "How long will this interminable journey to Claymore last, assuming that is our destination?"

"About three days, depending on how muddy the roads are."

Ten words. That was all he'd said in days! No wonder he and Arik were so congenial Jenny thought furiously, vowing not to give him the satisfaction of speaking to him again. She concentrated on Brenna, instead, wondering how she was faring at Merrick.

Two days later, Jennifer broke down again. She knew they must be nearing Claymore and her fears of what awaited her there were escalating by the minute. The horses were three abreast, moving down a country lane at a walk, with Arik riding in the middle and slightly ahead. She considered talking to Friar Gregory, but his head was bowed slightly forward, suggesting he might be at prayer, which is how he'd spent most of their journey. Desperate to talk about anything to take her mind off the future, she glanced over her shoulder at the man behind her. "What happened to all your men-the ones who were with us until we reached the priory?" she asked.

She waited for some answer, but he remained coldly silent. Pushed past the boundary of reason and caution by his cruel refusal even to speak to her, Jenny shot him a mutinous look. "Was that question too difficult for you, your grace?"

Her jeering tone pricked the cold wall of reserve Royce had carefully erected around himself to guard against the inevitable result of having her body pressed intimately against his for three endless days. Slanting her a heavy-lidded look, he considered the foolhardiness of opening up any sort of conversation with her and decided against it.

When he couldn't even be angered into speaking to her, Jenny suddenly saw a rare opportunity to enjoy herself at his expense. With childlike delight and well-concealed animosity, she promptly launched into mocking conversation without his participation. "Yes, I can see the question about your men has baffled you, your grace," she began. "Very well, let me find a way to make it simpler."

Royce realized she was deliberately mocking him, but his momentary irritation soon gave way to reluctant amusement as she continued her charming, reckless, one-way conversation with him:" 'Tis obvious to me," she remarked, giving him a look of false sympathy beneath her long, curly lashes, "that 'tis not lack of intelligence which causes you to stare at me so blankly when I question you about your men, but rather that your memory is failing! Alas," she sighed, looking momentarily crestfallen on his behalf, "I fear your advanced years are already taking their toll on your mind. But fear not," she told him brightly, sending him an encouraging look over her shoulder, "I shall keep my questions very, very simple, and I shall try to help you recall where you've put your misplaced men. Now then, when we arrived at the priory-you do recall the priory do you not?" she prompted, looking at him. "The priory? You know-the big stone building where we first met Friar Gregory?" she prompted again.

Royce said nothing; he glanced at Arik, who was staring straight ahead, impervious to everything, and then at the friar, whose shoulders were beginning to shake suspiciously as Jenny continued with sad gravity: "You poor, poor man-you've forgotten who Friar Gregory is, haven't you?" Lifting her arm, she glanced brightly over her shoulder at Royce, pointing her long, tapered finger at the friar. "There he is!" she declared eagerly. "That man, right there, is Friar Gregory! Do you see him? Of course you do!" she answered, deliberately treating him like a backward child. "Now then, concentrate very, very hard, because the next question is more difficult: Do you remember the men who were with you when we arrived at the priory where Friar Gregory was?" Helpfully, she added, "There were about forty of them. Forty," she emphasized with extreme courtesy, and to Royce's disbelief, she actually held up her small hand before his eyes, splayed out five fingers, and politely explained, "Forty is this many-"

Royce tore his gaze from her hand, swallowing back his laughter.

"And this many more," she daringly continued, holding up her other hand. "And this many more," she repeated thrice more, holding up ten fingers each time. Now!" she finished triumphantly, "can you remember where you left them?"

Silence.

"Or where you sent them?"

Silence.

"Oh dear, you're worse off than I thought," she sighed. "You've lost them completely, haven't you? Oh well," she said, turning away from him in frustration at his continued silence, as her momentary delight at mocking him was demolished by a burst of anger. "Don't worry overmuch! I'm certain you'll find other men to help you steal innocents from abbeys and slaughter children, and-"

Royce's arm tightened suddenly, jerking her back against his chest, and his warm breath in her ear sent unwanted tingles up and down Jenny's spine as he bent his head and said softly, "Jennifer, you merely try my patience with your mindless chatter, but you test my temper with your jibes, and that is a mistake." The horse beneath them responded instantly to the slackened pressure from his master's knees and instantly slowed his pace, letting the other horses move ahead.

But Jenny didn't notice; she was so deliriously relieved by the sound of a human voice, and conversely furious that he'd denied her even that for so long, that she could hardly contain her ire. "Good heavens, your grace, I shouldn't wish to rile your temper!" she said with deliberately exaggerated alarm. "Were I to do that, I might suffer a horrible fate at your hands. Let me think, now-what dire things could you do to me? I know! You might compromise my reputation. No," she continued as if considering the matter impartially, "you couldn't do that because you compromised it beyond recall when you forced me to stay with you at Hardin without my sister there. I have it!" she cried, inspired. "You might force me to lie with you! And then, you could arrange it so that everyone in two countries knows that I shared your bed! But no, you've already done those things-"

Each barbed word she spoke pricked Royce's conscience, making him feel like the barbarian he was oft called, and still she continued hammering at him with her words:

"I have it at last! Having done all that to me, there's only one thing left to do."

Unable to stop himself, Royce said with feigned unconcern, "And that is?"

"You could marry me!" she exclaimed in pretended triumphant delight, but what had begun as a jibe directed at him, now seemed to Jenny like a painful joke on her, and her voice shook with bitterness and pain, despite her valiant effort to speak in the same bright, satirical vein as she continued: "You could marry me, and in so doing, take me away from my home and country and bind me to a life of public humiliation and scorn at your hands. Yes, that's it! It's exactly what I deserve, is it not, my lord, for committing the unspeakable crime of walking up a hill near an abbey and putting myself in the way of your marauding brother!" With sham disdain she said, "Why-considering the enormity of my crime-having me drawn and quartered is much too kind! It would end my shame and misery prematurely. It would-"

She gasped as Royce's hand suddenly swept up from her waist and gently cupped the side of her breast in a caressing gesture which shocked her into speechlessness. And before she could recover, he put his cheek against her temple, and spoke in her ear, his gruff whisper strangely gentle. "Cease, Jennifer. That's enough." His other arm went around her waist, drawing her back against his chest. Clasped against his body with his hand caressing her breast, surrounded by his reassuring strength, Jenny succumbed helplessly to the unexpected comfort he was offering her now, when she faced the terrors of an unknown, and unkind, future.

Numbly, she relaxed against him, and the moment she did, his arm tightened, drawing her nearer, while the hand that had been caressing her breast slid forward to softly cup the other one. His unshaven jaw rubbed lightly against her temple as he turned his head and touched his warm lips to her cheek, his hand sliding slowly, endlessly over her breasts and midriff, soothing and caressing, while the hand that curved around her waist clasped her tightly between his muscular thighs. Faced with a future that held nothing but misery and fright, Jenny closed her eyes, trying to hold her fears at bay, and gave in to the fleeting sweetness of the moment, to the poignant sensation of feeling safe again, of being surrounded by his body, protected by his strength.

Telling himself that he was doing no more than comforting and distracting a frightened child from her woes, Royce brushed the heavy hair from her nape and kissed her, then he trailed his lips lightly up her neck to her ear, nuzzling her there before he brushed his mouth against the creamy skin of her cheek. Without realizing what he was doing, his hand slid upward, over her breast to the warm flesh above her bodice, then it delved down to cup the sweet breast beneath. And that was his mistake-whether from protest or surprise, Jennifer squirmed against him, and the sliding pressure of her buttocks against his loins ignited the very desire he'd been fighting to control for three long days… three endless days of having her hips between his thighs and her breasts tantalizingly exposed to his view, within reach of his hand. Now those three days of suppressed desire erupted, raging through his veins like wildfire, nearly obliterating his reason.

With an effort of will that was almost painful, Royce dragged his hand away and lifted his lips from her cheek. But the moment he did, his hand, which seemed to have developed a will of its own, lifted to her face. Taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he turned her face and tipped it up to his, gazing down into the bluest eyes on earth-a child's eyes filled with confusion and bewilderment, while the gist of her words revolved around and around in his brain, stabbing at a conscience that would no longer keep silent. I put myself in the way of your marauding brother by walking up a hill… and for that crime I deserve my fate… You compromised my reputation. You forced me to lie with you and then you humiliated me in the eyes of two countries. But I deserve to be drawn and quartered-Why? Because I put myself in the way of your marauding brother… All because of that… only that