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Why wasn’t she still angry with him? She ought to be. He’d said terrible, hurtful things to her yesterday. “I’m serious, Beatrice. You shouldn’t be doing that. And you shouldn’t be working like a servant, either.”

“But I like it,” she answered cheerily. “And have I not heard you say more than once that a good commander doesn’t shirk any tasks he asks his men to do?”

Her eyes sparkled as her tone grew gently wheedling. “Besides, isn’t your hall more pleasant and comfortable when it’s clean?”

He fought to hold on to his necessary anger. “The fact remains that you shouldn’t have been climbing on a ladder. It’s much too dangerous.”

She raised a golden brow. “Whereas you never do dangerous things?”

“I’m a knight. It’s my duty to take risks.”

“And it’s my duty to get this hall into a livable condition.”

“You were supposed to be leaving.”

“We can’t go in the rain—or haven’t you noticed the weather?”

“I have.” He recalled the other reason he should be angry with her. “But if I hadn’t, it might have been because somebody put something in my wine to make me sleep last night.”

“And did you sleep?”

“Of course, and you know it, since you were the one responsible.”

“Yes, I was,” Bea brazenly admitted, and without a particle of contrition. “You looked so exhausted I used a potion the apothecary taught me to make after he’d tended to Merrick.”

She grinned as if she’d just won first prize in a joust. “And you do look much more rested this morning, even if you’re grumpy.

Why don’t you go to the kitchen and get something to eat?

Maybe that will improve your mood. There’s porridge that should still be simmering, and some smoked ham and bread and cheese from Tregellas.

” She surveyed him in a matronly sort of way.

“You’ve been working too hard and not getting enough to eat. You look far too thin.”

“My lady—” he began sternly, telling himself it didn’t matter how he looked to her.

“My lord,” she interrupted, her bright blue eyes shining.

She clasped her hands together as if she was about to plead for mercy.

“All I want to do is to act as your chatelaine for as long as it continues to rain, as Constance and Merrick asked me to. When it stops, I’ll meekly and mildly go back to Tregellas just as you command.

” Her expression softened and turned sorrowful.

“I haven’t forgotten what you said to me last night, Ranulf.

I doubt I ever will. But can we not be friends for now? ”

As he hesitated, wanting to agree and yet wondering how he could he possibly be friends with Bea given the feelings she aroused within him, he realized that the hall had become as quiet as a cathedral on a midsummer’s afternoon.

Every single one of the servants—including Maloren—had stopped working, or doing whatever they were doing to watch them.

Bea darted a glance at them, and they immediately went back to work.

“Well, Ranulf?” she asked quietly, her voice so low, only he could hear. “Will you agree to my request, or will you order your servants to stop what they’re doing and go back to doing nothing, even though you feed and shelter them?”

How could he refuse when she put it like that? He gritted his teeth a moment, prayed for strength, then raised his voice so that all in the hall could hear. “While Lady Beatrice graces us with her presence,” he announced, “you will obey her as you would me.”

Her grateful smile seemed to reach right into his chest and grab hold of his heart. “Thank you, Ranulf.”

He didn’t know whether he wanted to shake her or embrace her. He wanted to think of some clever, cutting thing to say to her.

No, what he really wanted to do, he realized as he turned on his heel and strode to the kitchen, was take her in his arms and kiss her until they both were breathless.

“S ACRE BLEU !” the Frenchman muttered as he climbed over the slippery rocks at the entrance to the cave near the village that same morning and despite the pouring rain. “A thousand sea battles I have survived, yet now I may fall to my death on some rocks!”

He glanced up at the young Cornishman holding a smoldering pitch torch on the relatively dry ledge above. “That would be too bad for you, eh?”

Myghal frowned as he watched Pierre climb the last few feet.

The Frenchman had been smuggling tin between Cornwall and France for over twenty years, and he had the look of a man who’d spent his entire life at sea: weathered skin as brown as aged oak, hair liberally sprinkled with gray, and gnarled, callused hands that looked strong enough to bend metal.

He wore a leather tunic and breeches, boots and a shirt of coarse linen.

His sword belt was wide and its buckle silver, like the hilt of his broadsword.

He also had two daggers stuck in his belt and, Myghal didn’t doubt, at least one in his boot.

He’d lost an eye from a loose rope whipped by a fierce wind and the empty socket puckered beneath a thick black eyebrow.

Pierre followed Myghal some twenty feet back into the cave to a dryer grotto.

Another torch, stuck between the rocks, burned there.

A hole leading upward from the grotto drew the smoke, which then dispersed through several small cracks until it appeared as no more than mist outside.

That was why Myghal’s family had used this cave as a secret cache for their goods for generations.

“You have the tin?” Pierre asked.

Myghal nodded and moved back into the dimmer recess of the grotto. He rearranged one of a pile of rocks and brought forth twenty pounds of tin he’d purchased from several tinners who mined the moor around the village.

Pierre examined the metal in the light of the torch. “Although naturally I don’t suspect you of cheating, not after what I’ve done for you, I think there is more you owe me.”

“This is the last,” Myghal protested. “This is what we agreed.”

“For killing Gawan, oui . But things have changed now that Sir Frioc is dead.”

“Was that your doing?” Myghal asked warily, and with sickening trepidation.

“ Mon Dieu , no!” Pierre cried as if appalled at the very idea.

He settled himself on one of the large rocks.

“I would never have killed such a valuable fellow—so content to let smugglers ply their trade, as long as they kept the peace. But this Sir Ranulf… well, if I get the chance, he may go to the devil sooner than he plans. And the devil it will be, if even half the stories I’ve heard of him are true. ”

Myghal slowly sat on another rock. “What sort of stories?”

Pierre grinned. “I fear Sir Ranulf is not so genial a fellow as Sir Frioc. He’s a vicious branch from a vicious tree. They say he drowned his own brother.”

Myghal’s eyes widened with disbelief. “Who told you that?”

“It’s common knowledge among the brothels of London.

That is why his father cast him out with nothing.

Somehow he convinced Sir Leonard de Brissy to train him, and thus he came to be friends with the mighty lord of Tregellas.

They tell other stories about him in the brothels, too. He is quite the lover, Sir Ranulf.”

Myghal frowned, finding it difficult to reconcile this notion of his overlord with the man he knew.

“You don’t believe me, mon ami? You should. I make it my business to learn about the men who oversee this coast. And now Sir Ranulf wants to find out who killed Gawan. That must be very uncomfortable for you.”

“I didn’t do it,” Myghal retorted. “You did. The night Gawan died, I spent the entire evening in the tavern and plenty of people saw me there.”

“That is true, but if I am caught by the vicious Sir Ranulf, I may be forced to confess that you paid me to do it, so I should think you would want to make sure that I am never captured.”

Myghal’s stomach turned and he felt as if a trap were closing around him, a feeling that had been growing ever since the terrible day he’d made his devil’s bargain with Pierre.

“Then you shouldn’t come back to Penterwell for a long time, and not just because of Sir Ranulf.

The villagers have their suspicions, too, and some of them are planning to take you prisoner if you set foot ashore.

They think you killed Rob and Sam, too.”

Pierre’s face was the epitome of innocence. “Who, I?”

“Yes, you, or your men.”

“Well, well, I say we did not, but it seems your friends in the village have other ideas. Perhaps it would be wise to stay away.” He grinned at the young man. “You see? You did have something with which to pay me.”

And, Myghal realized with a horrible foreboding, he would likely continue to pay for Pierre’s silence, either with tin or information, for the rest of his life.

“But let us speak no more of murder,” Pierre said amicably as he pulled a small wineskin from beneath his tunic. “Let us talk of more pleasant subjects. How goes your wooing of the widow?”

He offered the wineskin to Myghal, who swiftly shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

The Frenchman chuckled. “Not well, I take it. You should ask this Sir Ranulf you seem to admire for assistance. He once made a wager he could seduce fourteen virgins in a fortnight—one for every night—and he won.”

Pierre smirked. “You look shocked, my young friend. But he is a comely fellow, or so I’ve been told, and skilled in battle as well as the bedchamber.

Such a combination is hard for women to resist. No doubt that explains the young beauty living with him now.

” Pierre kissed his fingertips to the air.

“ Magnifique! I could get a fortune for her at the slave market in Tangier.”

Ignoring what Pierre said about that mind-boggling wager, Myghal stiffly said, “Lady Beatrice is a noblewoman and the cousin of the lady of Tregellas.”

“Sir Ranulf aims high, but clearly, he succeeds.”

“She’s not his leman,” Myghal said, disgusted by the man’s carnal assumptions. “I told you, she’s the cousin of his overlord.”

Pierre laughed as he tucked the wineskin back into his tunic.

“Such a romantic innocent you are! Just because you have not the courage to seduce the woman you want, you think all men have such delicate scruples, or that noblewomen have? Sir Ranulf, at least, does not. Those women who succumbed to his efforts were all nobly born women of the king’s court. ”

“I’m certain Lady Beatrice isn’t his leman,” Myghal insisted.

“He doesn’t even seem to like her very much—but you still shouldn’t get any ideas about trying to steal her away.

If anything were to happen to her, Sir Ranulf and the lord of Tregellas would never rest until they found the men responsible, and it’d surely mean a slow and painful death when they did. ”

Pierre put his hand to his breast as if offended. “Have I said anything about abducting her? Although now that you speak of it, a woman like that might be worth the risk.” His lips curved up into a sinister smile. “Especially if she was properly trained.”

Myghal felt sick to think of any woman in Pierre’s clutches, raped and beaten and bound for slavery.

“I would be willing to offer a portion of the profit if you would help me catch her,” Pierre proposed. “I might even share the training with you.”

Thoroughly revolted, Myghal shook his head.

Pierre sighed and shrugged. “Very well, but now I have a desire to do a little slaving, for there is great profit in that trade.” His eyes gleamed in the torchlight. “Your Wenna is a pretty woman. Big with child now, of course, but in another month or two, she might fetch a fair price.”

“Wenna?” Myghal gasped, staring at him with horror.

Pierre grinned, and there was scorn in his beady brown eyes.

“Yes, your pretty little Wenna. So let us make another bargain, mon ami . Help me get the noble beauty, and your Wenna will be safe. More, you will never see me again. But if you do not help me, I will take the woman whose husband you paid me to kill, and the villagers will find out what happened to your rival.”