"What plagues you?" he asked softly.
She turned toward him, her eyes sparkling. "You!" she snapped. "Why do you know I am female if no one else does?"
"I do not know. If you refer to Colbrand, he does not know because he is stupid. He's like an animal, clever enough to fight but not clever enough to think."
"Why do you hate him so? Because he can do manly things that you cannot? Are you jealous of all men who are men?"
She started to rise, but he caught her arm and made her sit back down.
"What defines a man to you? Fighting skill? You fainted for Colbrand before you ever saw him fight; you have not yet seen him fight. How do you know him to be a man? You step into the water with him, run your hands over his nude body, and he is not smart enough to know that a woman touches him—a woman who lusts for him. Is stupidity what makes a man to you?"
"You are jealous," she said in wonder. "You are jealous of Colbrand. Why? Because he can have all the women, and you can have none?"
"None?" He looked at her, then stood, looming over her. "Can you not see me? Can you not forget that I am a Howard long enough to look at me?"
She looked up at him, but he was right. The fact that he was a Howard blinded her to all else.
He turned away, his hands in fists, for he saw that his words made no difference to her. What did he care? he asked himself for the thousandth time. What did it matter what this one young woman thought of him? Why wasn't he enjoying himself? He could be laughing and drinking, with a buxom wench on his lap and another beside him, but instead he was standing in the dark trying to make one hardheaded imp of a girl see that he was as handsome as an idiot like Colbrand. He, Tearle, was handsome, rich, strong, educated, yet this girl treated him like a farrier's son.
He turned back to her. "Come, we will return to your brother's tent. He will worry if you are not there."
"Severn will not spend the night alone. He will spend it with a woman."
She said this with such heaviness in her voice that he smiled, realizing that she had been sitting there feeling sorry for herself, no doubt because Colbrand hadn't known she was a female.
He could not bear to see her feeling sorry for herself, and he knew enough about her to know that her pride was stronger than her self-pity.
"Peregrine," he said with mock severity, "were you to don the most beautiful gown on earth, Colbrand would not notice you. You could not be a woman no matter what you wore. You could not entice any man."
She reacted as he'd hoped. She shot up to stand in front of him. "I could have any man I wanted. Liana says I'm pretty."
"A woman has told you that, but not a man?" He was chuckling at her.
But Zared didn't realize he was teasing her, and she felt herself close to tears. He was saying all the things she'd felt. "A man would tell me that if he knew I were a woman. Lots of men would like me if—"
Abruptly Tearle's teasing spirit left him. She could entice any man she wanted, but whom would she want to entice? "Such as Colbrand?" he said with some anger. "He doesn't even notice you when you run your hands over him. Why do you think he would notice you if you wore different clothes?"
"I hate you," she whispered. "Hate you." She turned away from him and started up the bank.
He stopped in front of her. He had not meant to make her cry, but her lust for Colbrand was more than he could bear. "Would it mean anything to you if I said you were pretty and as feminine as any woman I have met?" he asked softly.
She looked away from him. She would not let him see her cry. "Your words mean less than nothing to me." She stepped around him and walked away, trying to keep her shoulders back.
Tearle watched her go and felt rotten as he followed her back to the tent. In his teasing of her he had only hurt himself.
Chapter Six
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There were three cots in the main Peregrine tent, with Severn's men sleeping in the secondary tent. Zared was already on one cot, the light blanket pulled up to her chin, when Tearle returned. He didn't say anything, just undressed down to his loincloth and got into bed.
He didn't go to sleep right away but lay awake and looked at the tent ceiling. The girl was doing something to him that he didn't like; she was making him into someone he didn't know. Where was the man who could kiss and caress a woman, the man who teased and laughed with women? The girl, somehow, made him feel little except anger.
He went to sleep vowing that he would not get angry again, that no matter what she did, he would not become angry. He woke only slightly when Severn came in and fell facedown on his cot.
Just before dawn Tearle awoke, his eyes wide, his senses alert, and he knew that something was wrong. He lay there quietly, listening to the silence outside the tent, trying to sense if there was some danger. His first thought was that his brother was outside, and his hand slipped down to the sword he kept by the cot.