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“I did do it right,” Barrabas retorted before he took another pull at the wineskin.

“He shouldn’t have come up again with all the chains I put around his boots before I threw him over.

” He shook his ugly, shaggy head. “You should have let me use my sword. Instead I had to listen to him crying like a frightened child before I smothered the life out of him.” He imitated Gawan’s frantic pleading.

“My wife! Our baby!” He scowled. “I wish I’d slit his mewling throat. ”

“It’s a good thing you did not,” Pierre said, “or they would have been certain he was murdered when they found his body. Now all they know is that he fell off his boat, although that is more than enough.”

Barrabas scowled. “ You used a blade, on that sheriff and his woman.”

“There was no way to make that look like an accident, not if I was to do it swiftly and get out without anyone hearing.”

He’d nearly been caught as it was. He’d heard the servant stirring and it was only because that woman had been too terrified to scream that he hadn’t been discovered.

He hadn’t expected the woman to be there at all. He had believed the sheriff would be alone, and vulnerable in his bed. It had seemed hours that he’d had to wait beneath it, listening to the sheriff and his lover.

“If you hadn’t decided to linger here, we would have been well away and out of danger.”

Pierre couldn’t refute that, but he wasn’t about to let Barrabas win this argument.

“Without the greatest prize I’ve ever seen?

I tell you, that blond beauty will be worth her weight in gold, so she’s worth the risk.

Hedyn was too clever, and therefore dangerous.

Now Myghal is the sheriff, and he’ll never betray us to his overlord. He has too much to lose.”

The still-scowling Barrabas took another swig of wine. “And I tell you it’s bad luck to bring women on the ship,” he repeated, shaking the wineskin at Pierre for emphasis. “And it’s too damned far to Tangier.”

Watching the man across the fire, his grip tightening on the hilt of his dagger, Pierre slowly got to his feet.

“Are you challenging me, Barrabas?” he asked, not taking his steadfast, cold-blooded gaze from his crewman.

He could hear the rest of men muttering among themselves. They knew what had happened to the last man who’d tried to question Pierre’s authority, as did Barrabas. Guido’s death had been a gruesome lesson in the danger of inciting mutiny.

Barrabas seemed to be recalling that particular incident. He stepped back, his arms dangling at his sides and fear in his black eyes as he stared at Pierre’s hand resting on the hilt of his weapon.

Because Barrabas was worth ten men in a fight, Pierre gave him a second chance—although it would be his last. “Women can bring good luck as well as bad, and I feel in my bones that blond beauty will make us rich. I appreciate we have small comforts here, but what will that matter when we are rich and fat in our old age, eh? We leave tomorrow at the night’s high tide and we will take the woman and be gone, never to return as long as that knight is in command. ”

Barrabas had seen Pierre kill men and laugh while he did it.

He’d seen him rape and heard him brag about it afterward.

He had been there when Guido had met his slow, tormented end.

Even so, he believed he was right, and if they took that woman on their ship, they would die.

“What if Myghal betrays us and doesn’t bring the woman? Will we go and get her?”

Pierre smiled coldly. Cruelly. As he had when he’d tortured Guido. “Myghal will bring her. I will make sure of it. Now, have you anything more to say to me, Barrabas? Or must we draw our knives?”

Barrabas didn’t want the woman on their ship, but he saw death here and now in Pierre’s stance and the murderous gleam in his eye.

“No,” he muttered, picking up the wineskin and heading back to the fire.

While Pierre sat and thought about what he’d do when he had Lady Beatrice on his ship.

It was indeed a long way to Tangier.

A S P IERRE WAS DEALING with the mutinous Barrabas, Bea stroked her beloved’s ruddy hair in the spluttering flicker of the candle they had not even stopped to snuff. “Now I know why Constance smiles all the time.”

Still lying with his head upon her breasts, Ranulf laughed softly. “Bea, you are the most remarkable woman.”

“Am I?”

He raised his head and smiled at her, his eyes shining with love. “You most certainly are.”

“You didn’t seem to think so until I came to Penterwell. You used to ignore me until I wanted to cry.”

He levered himself up upon his elbow and regarded her gravely. “I was afraid of what I might do if I let myself be near you.”

“Like that time at Christmas when you almost kissed me?”

“Like that,” he agreed. He lifted a strand of her hair and brought it to his lips. “I love your hair.”

She mussed his with her fingers. “And I love yours.” She frowned and rubbed his beard. “But I really don’t like this.”

He laughed again as he moved away to lie beside her, where he could see her whole luscious body. “I don’t particularly like it myself. I only grew it to look older, to make you see that I was too ancient for a merry lass like you.”

“Ancient?” she said skeptically, running her hand down his chest in a way that started to reawaken his desire. “With this body?”

He took hold of her hand and pressed a kiss upon her palm. “In some ways, much too old for you. I haven’t lived an exemplary life, Bea.”

“I know.” She caressed his cheek. “I love you, anyway. I love you just as you are. I may even come to love your beard.”

“I’ll shave it off.”

“When?”

“Would now suit you, my lady?”

She smiled. “What will you tell people in the morning?”

“That my betrothed doesn’t like it and told me so after making love with me most passionately.”

“You wouldn’t!”

He sighed with melancholy melodrama. “Alas, you’re right. I can’t. I can’t say we’re betrothed until we have Merrick’s permission to wed.”

“I’m sure he won’t withhold it.”

Ranulf grinned. “Fortunately, I don’t think he will, either, although he’s liable to make me sweat before he agrees.

” His brows lowered and he spoke in gruff imitation of the lord of Tregellas’s deep voice.

“Well, Ranulf, what makes you think you deserve her?” He frowned more deeply still and some of the merriment left his eyes.

“And what can I say to that, except that I don’t? ”

She answered him with unexpected solemnity. “All you have to say is that I love you and I won’t marry anybody else, so he might as well give his consent because if he doesn’t, I’ll just run away and live with you anyway.”

“Bea!” he cried, astonished. “You wouldn’t.”

“I most certainly would. I love you and I meant what I said—I’ll never leave you.” Her smile seemed to light the room. “So he will have no choice but to consent.”

“I fear I have seriously underestimated you, my little Lady Bea.”

“Lots of people have,” she replied frankly. “But when I want a thing, sir knight,” she murmured, lying back down and pulling him with her, “I don’t give up until I get it.”

“There is one thing I want,” he said as he bent his head to kiss her. “To see your hair spread about you on the bear pelt.”

“Is that all?” she said, shifting until she was lying atop the thick fur, her hair loose about her just as he had dreamed.

His lips curved up in a devastating, devilish smile. “Come to think of it, no.”

L ATER, R ANULF OPENED his eyes and slowly became aware that the candle must have gone out. They had been in bed together quite a while. For too long, perhaps, he suddenly thought, waking more completely.

“Bea? Beloved, I fear it’s time for you to go back to your chamber,” he said, giving her bare, beautiful shoulder a little shake.

She sighed and opened her eyes. “What?” she asked drowsily.

“You should go back to your chamber,” he said as he got out of bed. “I don’t want anyone to accuse me of seducing you.”

She grinned, a hint of mischief in her beautiful blue eyes.

“You could simply admit I seduced you . I came to your bedchamber, after all.” She twisted a strand of her hair around her finger as she watched him dress.

“ I fear I’m a total wanton where you are concerned.

And I thought we were going to denude your chin of that beard. ”

“I regret that there’s no time, at least for you to help me, and as much as I might enjoy that—” he hopped on one foot and tugged on a boot “—perhaps I should leave it until we’re married, and we can do that on our wedding night.”

She shook her head. “I’m going to want to do other things that night, my lord.”

His brow furrowed and he frowned with mock disapproval as he straightened. “You are indeed a very wanton wench.” His eyes shone with a smile. “Much to my delight.”

He glanced at the window and sobered. “But you really must go, Bea. Maloren will have a fit if she discovers you’re not in your bed.”

Bea grimaced. “You’re right,” she agreed as she, too, got out of the bed and smoothed down her disheveled shift.

“God’s wounds, you can’t go back looking like that!” he exclaimed as he tucked his shirt into his breeches.

“Like what?” she asked, starting to run her fingers through her tangled hair. “Has my nose grown hooked? My face haggard?”

He pointed at her shift, and in the first dim light of dawn, she saw what he was looking at—the small streaks of blood that proved she’d been a virgin.

She quickly stripped off her garment and hurried to the basin. There was cold water in the ewer beside it and she poured some into the basin and proceeded to wash out the stains as best she could.

Ranulf came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her naked body, warming her in more ways than one. “I’m sorry.”

“It was to be expected. I think I’ve got most of the blood out.”

“Are you going to wear it wet to your chamber?”

“I’ll carry it and put it in the laundry later, before Maloren sees it.” She slid him a questioning glance. “Should we go to Tregellas with Kiernan? Maloren expects us to, after what happened with Celeste. You could come with us and ask Merrick for permission to marry me.”

“You should go back to Tregellas,” he agreed, “where you’ll be safe, but although I want to marry you with all my heart, I can’t go with you.

The people here still don’t trust me, and it might seem to them that I’m putting my own happiness above my duty and the safety of the people of Penterwell if I go to Tregellas before I’ve caught the men responsible for the murders. ”

He finished with such a sorrowful sigh, Bea readily, if reluctantly, accepted his decision to remain here until justice was done. “Very well,” she said, turning in his arms to face him.

Then she smiled brightly, and with determination, too.

“But in that case, I’m staying, as well.

Your larder needs more food. You need some new clothes or—oh!

” she cried, her eyes widening. “I promised all your maidservants a new gown for doing a good job. I simply can’t leave here until I’ve kept my promise to them, can I?

Even Maloren won’t argue with me about that, as she’s to get a new gown, too. ”

He laughed softly. “Bea, Bea, you continually amaze me. Is there nothing you can’t manage with that clever imagination of yours? But you would be safer in Tregellas.”

She wrapped her arms about him and looked up longingly into his hazel eyes. “I don’t think so. I think I’m perfectly safe right here.”

“Bea,” he warned, trying to resist her persuasive efforts and ignore the fact that she was naked. “You’re distracting, too.”

“Am I?”

“Very.”

“But I can help you if I stay. Don’t the women trust me? Didn’t I already provide good information?”

“That’s true,” he conceded. And there was a full garrison here, and those who had been killed had been in more vulnerable places—at sea or in a secluded house, not a well-manned castle.

“You don’t really want me to go, do you, Ranulf?” she wheedled, pressing her shapely body against him. “Please let me stay and help you, Ranulf. Please?”

He tried to look as if he was giving in under duress.

“Oh, very well, my lady. I yield. I do require your able assistance in my investigation, and you absolutely cannot leave Penterwell until you’ve provided all my maidservants with a new gown as you promised—although I’ll pay for them, of course,” he added.

“You will?”

“It seems only right.” He cocked his head and regarded her quizzically. “How did you intend to pay for them?”

She blushed and slid him a coy, incredibly alluring smile. “I hoped I could convince you of the wisdom of rewarding your servants for doing a good job.”

He laughed and held her close. “God preserve you, Bea, you are too clever for me!”

“Since I’m staying, may I come to you tonight?” she asked, her voice low and seductive.

“I probably shouldn’t let you, but I fear I, too, have grown wanton after such a night of bliss with my Lady Beatrice. I want more. If you think you can come here undetected, you’ll find me waiting.”

“I’ll do my best,” she promised. “Now I’d better go before Maloren wakes.”

She left Ranulf’s warm embrace and picked up her discarded bed robe. She drew it on, and then bundled up her damp shift while he went to the door and cautiously opened it. After checking the corridor, he moved out of the way for her to pass.

“Until tonight, I hope, beloved Bea,” he said, giving her a kiss and caress.

“Until tonight, my love,” she whispered before she hurried down the corridor and slipped inside her chamber.

Where Maloren waited, wide-awake, with her arms akimbo and murder in her eye.