"It cannot happen," she said with as much sincerity as she could muster, but even to her the words sounded false.
He laughed, then picked her up in his arms and whirled her about until she was dizzy. She clung to him, and before long she, too, was laughing.
He stopped twirling her and held her close to him. "Come, my little enemy, and let's get dry. There's a crofter's cottage nearby. Let's see if they can feed us."
She stood by while he dressed, and she allowed him to help her on her horse when they left the lake.
After that things between them began to change. Zared wasn't sure what it was that changed, but she knew that something had. It was as though her attempt to rescue the man had answered a question for him and had freed him from whatever had been holding him back.
She didn't know what he was really like, for she had known him only under the most unusual circumstances, but after that afternoon at the lake she sensed that he began to relax around her. No longer was he afraid of whatever he had been afraid of before, and she began to see the man he really was.
He was as unlike her brothers as night and day. Whereas her brothers tried to get as much work out of each day as they could, Tearle seemed to want to get as much pleasure out of each day as was possible. He trained, just as her brothers did, but he didn't train for many hours at a time, and he had a lighthearted spirit about his training. He laughed when he could. He wagered with his men and paid them when he lost. There was no life-or-death feeling to his training.
At first Zared was annoyed at that attitude of his. She said that he did not understand that training was very important, that men needed to be trained for war. She said that he was so frivolous that even she could beat him with a knife. She knew that she had no chance of winning against him with a heavy sword, but she figured she was faster than he was and more agile.
It didn't take her but minutes to realize that she was wrong on both counts. For all his playfulness he was a very good opponent. He toyed with her, teasing her, making her think that she was winning, then he'd sidestep and take her off balance. As with all the Peregrines her anger rose to blazing in just moments. And when her anger came to the surface Tearle easily took her knife away from her.
"I hope you have learned that a cool head can think faster than a hot one," he said, then, when she meant to try to strike him, he caught her in his arms and kissed her soundly. Zared was embarrassed because of the laughter of the men around them.
Later he came to her and tried to make up. He teased her and handed her a bouquet of flowers and told her she was pretty and that her eyes sparkled more than any jewel. She told him that he was absurd, but she couldn't help smiling. He was an easy man to be near.
The next day he took her to a fair in a town ten miles away. Zared had never been to a fair, for at home she had never been allowed out of her castle, and besides, her brothers did not believe in such frivolity.
The fair was a wonder to her. At the tournament she had not been able to enjoy herself, for she had been under such strain with her brother and her enemy being in the same camp, but at the fair things seemed to be different. Nothing had actually changed, but it seemed that it had. She was still with her family's enemy, but as she glanced at him on his big horse he didn't seem like much of an enemy. In fact, she was beginning to think that he was as big and strong and handsome as her brothers.
The day at the fair was wonderful. All the merchants were glad to see the lord and his pretty lady. It was so different from the tournament, when she had been sniggered at for being one of those dirty Peregrines.
Tearle bought her everything. After having grown up in a household where every penny was treated as though it were gold, it was heavenly to be able to buy pretty things. She ate some of everything that was for sale until Tearle warned her about having a stomachache. When the juice from half a dozen cherries ran down her chin he leaned over and licked the sweet liquid off. She turned red to her toes, but he just laughed at her.
When he saw her watching a beautifully made wrestler bragging that he could beat all comers, Tearle stripped and wrestled the man. When her husband won Zared was bursting with pride, and she held the prize, an ugly knot made of cheap ribbons, as though it were a jeweled ornament won in a tournament.
Tearle stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders as she laughed at a puppet show. When a fight broke out between half a dozen men who'd had too much wine he swept her into his arms and carried her to safety.
There was a booth where a man was selling fabrics from Italy, and Zared paused to look longingly at a bolt of dark green brocade. Tearle ordered the man to show it to them. It was expensive beyond belief,
and Zared told the man to put it away. Tearle bought the entire bolt for her. "You can make bed hangings from it," he said.
Some part of her said that she should remember that the money he was spending so freely actually belonged to her family and not his, but all that seemed far away.
He stood with her and watched as she hid her eyes while a man walked across a rope stretched tight between two poles. "That is not so hard. I could do that," Tearle bragged.
"You could not," she answered, and when she saw him moving toward the man she caught his hand and begged him not to do it. It was one thing to wrestle a man, but quite another to walk a narrow rope ten feet above the ground. He could be killed doing that.
She had to beg and beg and beg him to keep him from getting on the rope. In order to stop him she had to tell him that she believed that he could walk the rope and therefore did not have to prove it to her. She had to tell him that he was the best and the bravest knight in all the kingdom. He wanted to know if she thought he was better than Severn, and she said she was certain that he was. He asked if she thought he could beat Rogan, and she assured him that he could. Then he asked if she thought he could beat Colbrand.
"Not in a pig's eye," she said, and then she had the wisdom to start running.
He caught her and tickled her until she admitted that maybe, perhaps, possibly he was better than Colbrand.
When night fell he told her that they had to return to his house, for he was sure that unsavory types came out at night, and he didn't want to risk injury to her. She protested, but she was indeed tired. He mounted his horse, and then one of the five Howard men who had been with them all day handed her up to him, and she rode the ten miles home held in Tearle's arms.
Once they were at home she undressed and waited for him. She was sure that he would come to her bed, but he didn't. As he always did, he kissed her goodnight and left her. As tired as she was, she couldn't sleep, and so she got out of bed and sat before the fire.
She leaned back against the chair and felt the warmth of the fire on her face. Sometimes she wished she could go home, for there everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. She knew who were her friends and who were her enemies. She had grown up knowing that she was to hate the Howards, yet her mind was cluttered with a thousand images. She remembered Tearle in black armor knocking all challengers from their horses. She remembered his laughing and teasing her. She thought of his reading to her and smiling at her across the light of a single candle.
She put her hand to her head. Was he the enemy or her friend? He was a Howard, so he could not be her friend, and yet…
In the last two weeks they had been together almost constantly, and she had talked to him as she'd never talked to anyone before. In her family, all talk that did not concern war with the Howards was considered a waste of time, but Tearle did not seem to think that any talk was a waste of time.