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Beatrice kept her mouth shut, not particularly pleased with either of them at the moment.

“I have come to take Lady Beatrice home to Tregellas,” Kiernan announced.

Ranulf raised a brow. “Have you, indeed? Am I to assume you mean to carry her back immediately and in such an interesting manner?”

Kiernan flushed with embarrassment, as well he should. “No.”

“I’m glad to hear it, as she has her own charming little mare to take her back to Tregellas when the time comes.”

Ranulf strolled closer to Kiernan’s horse. “Since it is not yet that time, allow me to help you dismount, my lady.”

Given the smile she saw lurking in his hazel eyes, and especially since he held up his arms to help her, it no longer seemed a totally terrible thing to have been brought home on Kiernan’s horse.

Beatrice duly placed her hands on Ranulf’s broad shoulders as he put his around her waist. Jumping down, she delighted in the feel of her body so close to his, although she had to wince as her palms rubbed against his tunic.

Ranulf immediately took her hands in his and turned them over. “Next time you ought to wear gloves,” he said as he studied them.

“She shouldn’t have been walking about the village without her maid and a guard, either,” Kiernan said as he slipped from his horse to stand beside her.

Still holding Beatrice’s hands in his callused ones, Ranulf turned his cool-eyed gaze onto Kiernan. “My lady’s maidservant was otherwise engaged.

“Maloren’s in the kitchen and likely to be engaged there for some time,” he said to Beatrice. “Tecca will help you dress for the evening meal.”

Although she was glad she wouldn’t have to hear Maloren grumble as she changed, Beatrice couldn’t help feeling that she’d been dismissed, until Ranulf tucked her arm in his.

He ordered the groomsmen who’d come out of the stable to take charge of the mounts and summoned the garrison commander to look after Kiernan’s escort. Then he called for another servant to take care of their guest’s baggage.

“I didn’t bring any,” Kiernan frostily replied, “since I won’t be staying.”

“Oh? What a pity,” Ranulf replied with a complete absence of sincerity. “However, I’m sure you don’t intend to ride back tonight. You would be benighted on the moor. So you’re welcome to my hall and allow me to offer you some wine while I tend to Lady Beatrice’s wounds.”

“ You’ll tend to them?” Kiernan replied with both surprise and obvious disapproval.

Beatrice’s heart, however, began to beat with delighted excitement. She didn’t enjoy being hurt, but if it meant some time alone with Ranulf, she couldn’t be sorry.

“Of course,” Ranulf replied in answer to Kiernan’s query. “In my many years of tourneying and battle, I’ve often had occasion to tend to minor injuries. Shall we, my lady?”

Preventing any further objections from Kiernan, they turned and started toward the hall, leaving the young knight to follow.

Those terrible stories about Ranulf had to be lies, Beatrice told herself as she walked beside him. He couldn’t possibly have callously murdered his brother, or seduced those women.

They entered the hall, to discover Lady Celeste enthroned on the dais, garbed like an empress. She wore a lovely gown of rich scarlet velvet trimmed with golden threads. She rose like an empress, too, when she saw them approach, making Beatrice feel woefully underdressed and muddy and disheveled.

“Lady Celeste,” Ranulf said as they reached her, “may I present Sir Kiernan of Penderston, a noble neighbor of the lord and lady of Tregellas.”

Celeste gracefully bowed her head. “Greetings, Sir Kiernan.”

“I’m delighted to meet you, my lady,” Kiernan replied with an even deeper bow as he stepped forward. Staring up at her face like one in a daze, he took her hand and kissed the back of it.

Perhaps, Beatrice thought, she had no more need to worry about Kiernan making her an unwelcome offer of marriage.

“I believe I can leave you safely in Lady Celeste’s care while I tend to Lady Beatrice’s wounds, Sir Kiernan,” Ranulf said with the merest hint of a smirk. “She fell and cut her hands. I have some ointment that should help their healing and take away the pain. Come along, Lady Beatrice.”

Although she was delighted by the opportunity to be alone with him, Beatrice couldn’t resist teasing him a little. “Come along, indeed!” she whispered as they crossed the hall toward the stairs. “You make me sound like an errant child.”

Ranulf gave her a look that made her heart race. “I assure you, Bea, I’ve never thought of you as a child.”

Her heartbeat quickened and hot desire seemed to bubble in her veins.

“My lord, didn’t you once say to me I should never be alone in a room with a man, and especially with you?

” she asked with merry insolence, the memory of that other time she’d been alone with him as fresh in her mind as if it had happened yesterday.

“I did, and I was quite right to do so,” he replied. “This time, however, I’m acting as your physician. I assure you, I shall conduct myself with proper propriety.”

“How disappointing.”

“Expect nothing else, Bea,” he cautioned.

She blushed with embarrassment, wondering if she’d been too forward. Well, she knew she had, but she’d hoped…wanted…

Once in his chamber, Ranulf went to his wooden chest and drew out a small clay vessel covered with a waxed cloth. “Sit on this stool,” he said as he uncovered the jar.

A light, minty scent filled the air while she obeyed.

“Hold out your hands.”

She did that, too. “Is that sicklewort ointment?”

He nodded. “Yes. Constance gave it to me. It’s what she put on Merrick’s arm when she sewed his wound from the boar spear.”

Beatrice shuddered at that memory as Ranulf began to spread the slick ointment thinly over her open palms. “Does that hurt?” he asked, raising his eyes.

“No. I was just remembering Merrick’s wound. I was supposed to help Constance then, but Merrick was so angry, I ran away.”

Ranulf laughed softly. “When Merrick’s angry, everybody runs away, except Constance. She’s a very brave woman, and so are you,” he said, smiling in a way that made Beatrice want to kiss him even more. “I doubt I could keep my head during a birthing.”

He finished and wiped his hands on a square of linen. “There now. Better?”

She felt much better, and not just because of the ointment. “Yes.”

“Then I suppose we should go below and join our guests.”

Beatrice knew he was right, and yet she wasn’t willing to let this opportunity to speak with him alone go by. “Not just yet, Ranulf, please,” she said, rising.

Despite her outward bravado, she was suddenly afraid. What if those things she’d heard about him were true and he was not the man she thought he was?

She had to find out, one way or another. “Ranulf, did you kill your brother?”

As his face reddened, she rushed on before he could answer, driven by her dread.

“That’s what Celeste told me, and apparently other people here have heard it, too.

Of course I don’t believe it. Well, or if I do, it’s only because you told me your brothers were cruel.

I can believe that one of them attacked you and you had to defend yourself.

Drown or be drowned, and so you did. That’s why you’re afraid to be too near the water.

And oh, how terrible it must have been!”

He didn’t speak.

“I’m sorry, but I had to ask, although I should have been more diplomatic. But I don’t suppose there’s a tactful way to ask such a thing, is there?”

His eyes were as cold as marble in winter, his expression hard as iron. “I did kill my brother, and I meant to do it.”

She sat heavily on the stool and stared at him with horrified dismay.

Ranulf looked down at her lovely, trusting face. The time had come to tell her everything. These were not the circumstances he would have chosen to make his confession, but he had lost the chance to choose.

“I killed Edmond, my brother, the eldest son and favorite of my father, heir to his estate. We were fighting and fell into the ocean, and I held him under the water until he drowned.”

“But…but surely he attacked you first,” she protested. “You were protecting yourself.”

He shook his head. “I wanted to kill him. I wanted him dead.”

“Because he’d hurt you?”

“He hadn’t laid a hand on me that day. It was because he’d drowned my dog.”

“Oh, Ranulf,” she murmured, sorrow and pity in her beautiful blue eyes.

“I found Felix lying on the shore, whimpering, with a rock tied around his neck. Edmond was furious. ‘Your mangy cur mated with my best bitch,’ he said, and before I could stop him, he picked up Felix and the rock and threw them as far out into the water as he could. Edmond was very strong.”

Ranulf closed his eyes and grimaced. “I can still hear poor Felix yelping. And then the splash.”

He opened his eyes again and regarded her steadily, although his whole body began to shake. “I tried to go into the water to save him, but Edmond held me back. I struggled and kicked and hit him.”

That same terrible feeling of helplessness washed over Ranulf.

He was twelve years old again and unable to save the one creature he loved.

“Edmond let go and told me it was too late. Felix must be dead. That’s when I completely lost my head.

I didn’t think, didn’t care about anything except that Edmond had killed Felix.

I threw myself at him and we both went into the water.

Later I realized I must have caught him off guard.

That’s the only way I could have managed to hold him down the way I did, although I nearly drowned, too.

Our father came and hauled me out. By then, it was too late for Edmond. He was dead.”

Ranulf ran his hands through his hair and drew in a ragged breath. “I didn’t care. I didn’t care about what I’d done. Nor did I care that my father cast me out. I was glad that day, Bea.

“Glad,” he finished, the word almost a croak in his tight, dry throat.

Bea rose and went to him. Without saying a word, she put her arms around him and gently pulled him close.

In her warm embrace, in the softness of her encircling arms, he felt her forgiveness and understanding. Silently she gave him the comfort he hadn’t known since his mother’s death.

Sorrow for his lost dog, for the mother whose life had ended when he was so young, as well as for the boy he had been, welled up within him.

He closed his eyes, trying to hold back the tears, because they were a weakness. “What kind of man kills his own brother and doesn’t care?” he asked hoarsely, his throat constricted with the effort to be strong.

“A man who’s never had a reason to care. Who’s never had the love he deserved. Except that you weren’t a man then. You were just a boy.”

He drew in another halting breath and, as a tear slid unheeded down his cheek, he said, “I didn’t feel guilt or remorse.

I felt free , free to do what I wanted, and I wanted to learn how to fight, so that nobody could ever hurt me again.

My mother had talked of Sir Leonard de Brissy, and I knew where his castle was, so I made my way there.

Praise God, he took me in. The rest you know. ”

“Did you tell Sir Leonard what had happened?”

“Yes. That’s why he didn’t make me learn to swim like the others.”

“Merrick and Henry don’t know, do they? About your brother, or your fear of the water?”

“No, I’ve been too ashamed to tell them. And my family didn’t seek me out to charge me with the crime. My father didn’t want the family name besmirched, you see. Better my brother’s death be deemed an unfortunate accident and I a useless, unmanageable runaway than have the truth revealed.”

“If Merrick and Henry knew, they wouldn’t condemn you, and they never would have dumped you from that boat.”

Determined to confess all now that he had started on this path, he said, “Celeste told you something else. About a wager.”

Bea nodded. “She told me you wagered you could seduce fourteen virgins in a fortnight. She said you won, and you brought their shifts as proof.”

Her eyes pleaded with him to tell her that was a lie.

He could not. He would not. If she was ever to really love him, she had to know everything. “I did make such a wager, Bea, and I won.”