At sundown the men took torches, went into the surrounding forest, and began to look for the child.
And it was in the forest that they found the poacher. At first the terrified man thought that Rogan and his men had come for him. His terror was so great that he could not speak coherently. When at last he realized that for once the Peregrine men were not concerned with who was stealing game from their lands he told them of having seen a large, dark man riding with a red-haired child in the saddle before him.
Rogan and Severn questioned the man for a long while until they were convinced that the child was Rogan's son and that the man who held him was Tearle Howard.
A grim Rogan and Severn went back to the castle and began to plan to go to war.
"Something is wrong," Zared said. "He did not take the child. He would not."
Rogan turned the full force of his fury on her, bellowing at her that all of this had been caused by her lust for a man, that because of her the Peregrine line was going to end. "If you carry his child now, I will kill it when it is born," he said to her.
Zared could not stand up against his rage or, she had to admit, against his logic. They had brought the poacher back to Moray Castle with them, and the man had repeated his story for the women. He had described Tearle to the color of the clothes he was wearing and the Howard emblem on his sword hilt. And he had described Rogan's son with his bright red hair and his father's looks. There was no doubt that it was Tearle who had held the child. And with him rode three Howard men, all wearing the trappings of the Howards.
Zared wanted to believe in her husband, wanted to explain away what the poacher said he had seen, but she could find no explanation. Tearle had been seen with Rogan's son riding in the company of three Howard knights in the direction of the Howard estates.
The morning after his son disappeared Rogan rode out with Severn with nearly three hundred men behind them, all the men they could find. It wasn't enough men to wage a war on the Howards, but it was all the men the Peregrines could afford.
Zared had at one point suggested that she ride with her brothers, but Rogan had merely looked at her, his eyes blazing with rage. She knew that he considered her almost as much of an enemy as he considered her husband.
"Women wait while men go to die," Liana had said when the men rode off.
Zared was not very good at waiting, and she paced the parapets for days, paced until she wore the bottoms of her shoes out. She threw the shoes over the side of the castle into the moat, then walked barefoot, her eyes never leaving the horizon.
For two days she believed in her husband. For two days she told herself that he had not betrayed her and her family. She told herself that he could not have taken the child. She tried to remember all the sweet times they had shared and all the many times he had told her that he wanted to settle the feud between the two families.
In the middle of the third day Rogan sent a messenger back to his family. With the messenger came a man who told them that he had seen four Howard men who carried a red-haired boy with them, and they were heading toward the Howard estates. The man lived near enough to the Howard estates that he knew Tearle by sight.
It was then that Zared stopped believing in her husband. She was quiet, saying nothing after hearing the messenger, but she did not fool Liana.
Liana turned and saw that her sister-in-law had left the room, and she ran to find her. She found Zared putting on the armor that her brothers had had made for her.
"You are not going after him," Liana said.
"I brought him here, and I shall take him away. I shall find him and kill him. He will allow me to get close to him, and when he does I will kill him."
Liana knew better than to try to argue with a Peregrine. When it came to their hatred of the Howards, there was no reasoning with them. Liana left the room, called three men, all of them either crippled or too old to fight so they could not go with Rogan, and had the men hold Zared. She was not going to allow the young woman to leave the castle.
Zared was held under guard for two more days before the Peregrine army returned and Liana went to release her sister-in-law.
Zared's rage had not calmed under confinement, and she was so angry at Liana that she could not bear to look her in the eyes. When Liana started to touch her arm Zared moved away.
"They are returning," Liana said softly.
Zared pushed past Liana and ran up the stairs to the parapets. It was a long distance away, but she could see that her husband was with them. He rode beside Rogan, his head down, and she could tell that his hands were tied behind his back.
She waited and watched as they rode closer, and as they neared she could see that Tearle had been beaten. For a moment, for just a tiny moment, she felt his pain, remembered his hands on her body, remembered his smile. But then she made herself remember his treachery and the way he had betrayed her family.
She went down the stairs and was waiting in the courtyard when they arrived. Liana stood behind her, and she gasped when she saw Tearle's face, his handsome face that was now black and blue and swollen.
Zared felt tears forming at the back of her eyes, but she would not shed them. She wondered why Rogan had not killed the man on sight, but then she knew that he had brought Tearle back for a public execution, an execution that Zared would have to watch.
She watched as they half pushed him from his horse and he fell, but he caught himself, having difficulty righting himself with his tied hands. When a man reached out a hand to help him up Tearle moved his shoulder away, accepting no help from the man.
Zared stood not three feet away and watched as her husband painfully struggled to stand up, and when he did, he saw her. His face was almost unrecognizable, and Zared winced, but she stood firm as she looked at him. She was not going to let her woman's softness betray her again. She straightened her shoulders and gave him a look that told him that he could expect nothing from her, that once she might have loved him but that she did not do so any longer.
He looked at her a long while, then he turned away and started up the stairs into the castle. Zared had almost gone after him then, for never had anyone looked at her as he did. Since she had met him he had looked at her in amusement, in exasperation and, lately, with love in his eyes. But never had he looked at her with hatred. She had not thought him capable of hatred. Perhaps she had thought that hatred was a prerogative of the Peregrines, an emotion that they had perfected and were especially good at.
But the look she had seen in Tearle's eyes put Rogan's hatred to shame. His hatred of her was not the impersonal hatred of one unknown family member for another, but of one person