“You will follow me to the river, and if you do not I will take a whip to your back now,” Raine growled in her ear, his voice barely concealing his rage.
Her guilt over what she’d done to Joss was replaced by sheer terror. A whip to her back? Swallowing, she followed Raine into the dark forest. She deserved punishment, for she had no right whatever to hurt her friend.
Chapter Nine
AT THE RIVER, Raine turned to her, his fine lips curled into a snarl. “I should beat you,” he said fiercely as he pushed her once, lightly, sending her sprawling onto the cold earth.
“And what slight did you imagine Jocelin had done you?” he asked, teeth clenched. “Were you jealous of the cut of his doublet? Had he said something you disliked? Perhaps he played a better song than you.”
That got her attention. “No one is better than I,” she said firmly, her jaw jutted forward as she stared up at him.
“Damn you!” he said, grabbing the front of her shirt and pulling her upward. “I trusted you. I thought you were one of the few of your class who had a sense of honor. But you’re like all the others—allowing your petty differences to override your honor.”
The two of them were an odd couple, Raine twice Alyx’s size, towering, looming over her, but Alyx’s voice was second to no one’s. “Honor,” she yelled back at him. “You don’t know the meaning of the word. And Jocelin is my friend. He and I have no differences.” She made it clear who she had the differences with.
“So! Your low little mind poured boiling cider on him for the fun of it. You are like Alice Chatworth. That woman loves to give and receive pain. Had I known you were like her—”
With that Alyx doubled her fist and hit Raine in the stomach. While he was blinking at her, she grabbed his knife from the sheath at his side. “Spare me the history of your stupid family,” she shouted, pressing the point to his stomach. “I will explain to Jocelin what I did and why I did it, but for you, you vain, arrogant braggart, you deserve nothing. You judge and condemn without one word of facts.”
Impatiently, Raine brushed at her arm to knock the knife away, but Alyx’s reflexes had quickened in the last weeks and Raine’s were dulled from his fever. The blade cut the back and side of his hand and caused both of them to halt as they watched the blood well from the cut.
“You thirst for blood, do you?” Raine said. “Either mine or my friend’s. I will show you how to receive pain.” He reached for her, but she sidestepped him.
It took two tries to catch her, and when he did his hands clamped down on her shoulders as he shook her very hard. “How could you do that?” he demanded. “I trusted you. How could you betray me?”
It was difficult for the words to register when her head was about to fly off, but she finally b
egan to understand what he was saying. Jocelin was Raine’s responsibility, and he took his duties seriously. “Rosamund, Rosamund, Rosamund,” she began to chant.
When at last he heard her, he stopped shaking her. “Tell me,” he yelled in her face.
Her body was weak from the force of his shaking of her. “Rosamund is in love with Jocelin, and I thought she could replace Constance, but not if they were apart.”
This made no sense to Raine. His fingers tightened on her shoulders, and she wondered if soon they’d come through. Quickly, she explained Joss’s story about Constance, omitting the name of Chatworth.
Stunned silence from Raine filled the air. “You are matchmaking?” he croaked. “You wounded Jocelin because of some idiotic ideas of love?”
“What would you know of love?” she tossed at him. “You know so little of women that you don’t know one when you see one.”
“True,” he countered quickly. “I am an innocent when it comes to the lying, deceiving ways of women.”
“Not all women are liars.”
“Name one who is not.”
She was dying to mention herself but could not. “Rosamund,” she blurted. “She is a good, kind person.”
“Not when she uses such methods to snare a man.”
“Snare! Who would want to catch such a loathsome specimen as a man?” She stopped her tirade when she saw Raine’s eyes sparkling. “You know,” she gasped. “You know.”
She did not waste much time in speculating on the truth of her assumptions but lifted herself from the ground and flew at him, her fists clenched. “You—!” she began in anger, but Raine stopped her. He caught her, clasping the slight body against him and drawing her mouth to his. Hungrily, he kissed her, his hand on the back of her head, his other hand about her waist, holding her off the ground.
“Remember that I am a weak man,” he whispered. “And a long day on the training field has—”
Alyx bit him on the shoulder. “How long have you known?”
“Not as long as I would have liked. Why didn’t you tell me from the start? I understand why you had to dress as a boy, but I would have kept the secret.”