Velvet Song (Montgomery/Taggert 4)

What followed for Alyx were three days of relative peace. Raine seemed to grow an attachment for the crippled Brian and was impressed by Brian’s eagerness to learn.

“The hate is eating him,” Raine said as he and Alyx lay in bed. “He thinks that if he trains hard enough he’ll be able to fight his brother, but Roger is formidable. He would slay Brian in one thrust.”

“Brother against brother,” Alyx whispered and shuddered.

Alyx felt sorry for Brian, who slept apart from the people of the camp.

“I don’t trust him,” Joan said. “He says too little and he has nothing to do with anyone.”

“He’s been hurt. He’ll get over it,” Alyx defended the boy.

“He’s planning something. He’s been gathering the down from thistles and yesterday he paid a man to send a message to someone.”

“To whom?” Alyx demanded, immediately concerned. Perhaps Brian was actually loyal to his brother and was planning to lead Roger Chatworth to Raine, or worse, to send the King’s men in.

“I don’t know who it went to.”

“We must tell Raine,” Alyx said, grabbing her maid’s wrist and dragging her toward the training area.

“I know of the message,” Raine said when Alyx told him. “Brian wishes to find out the condition of his sister.”

“Have you had a reply?”

Raine jabbed a sword at a quintain. “My little brother’s seed has taken and Lady Elizabeth carries his child.”

Alyx thought of the lovely Elizabeth—and her sharp tongue. “She’ll not like that. She’ll not like any man taking her to bed, then discarding her.”

Raine gave her a hard look. “You seem to give my brother all the credit. Perhaps this Elizabeth is a wayward wench and seduced my brother. Then, when he loved her, she left him. If Chatworth struck Miles, it would seem that Miles fought to keep the woman.”

“Perhaps, but Miles—” She broke off at the sound of trumpets in the distance. “What is it?”

Raine turned to some ex-soldiers near him. “Find out what that is.”

Within seconds, the men were on their horses and away into the forest. Long minutes later, they returned. “Roger Chatworth is accepting your challenge, my lord.”

“Raine!” Alyx bellowed at him.

After one quelling look, he ignored her. “I have issued no challenge. Perhaps Chatworth means to make the first move.”

“No, my lord. He—”

“I sent the challenge,” Brian Chatworth said from behind them and they all turned. “I knew my brother would not respond to a challenge from me, so I sent it in the name of Raine Montgomery.”

“You can just go and tell him what you’ve done,” Alyx said, as if talking to a child.

In the distance, the trumpets sounded again.

“Go now,” Alyx said, “and explain.”

“Alyx,” Raine said in a low voice. “Go to the tent. This is not business for women.”

She looked up at him, still bruised from Stephen’s beating, and what she saw there frightened her. “Raine, you can’t be thinking of accepting the challenge? You didn’t issue it. You surely have more sense than to—”

“Jocelin,” Raine ordered. “Take Alyx away.”

Alyx waited for her husband inside the tent, pacing back and forth, snapping at Joan until the maid left her.

When Raine finally appeared and their eyes met, Alyx gasped. “No, Raine,” she said, wrapping her arms around his middle. “It wasn’t you who made the challenge.”