“The woman was not dead and Joss hid her, nursed her back to health and he fell in love with her.”
“Was this unusual for a man of Joss’s . . . talents?”
Blanche suddenly began to look very nervous, her hands pulling on each other, standing on first one foot, then the other. “I don’t believe he’d ever loved anyone before. When Lord Edmund found out the girl was still alive, he took her for his own again and threw Jocelin in an oubliette. And the girl . . . this Constance . . .”
“Yes?” Alyx said impatiently.
“She thought Joss was as good as dead and so she killed herself.”
At that, Alyx crossed herself at such a sin. “But Joss did get out, and he came here,” she finished.
“But first he killed Lord Edmund,” Blanche said quietly, and with that she pushed past Alyx and ran from the tent.
“Killed a lord,” Alyx whispered to no one. No doubt there was a huge reward for his head, and no wonder he wanted nothing to do with the women of the camp. Alyx knew very well what it was to love a man and to lose him.
“What are you doing in here?” Raine asked angrily from behind her. “You have been gone for at least an hour, and here I find you standing alone doing nothing.”
“I’ll work,” she muttered, turning away.
He caught her arm but released her as quickly as he touched her. “Have you had some bad news?”
“None that would interest you,” she snapped before leaving the tent.
Alyx’s thoughts for the rest of the day were taken up with Jocelin. Joss was a sweet, kind, sensitive man, and he deserved someone to love him. She wished she could have fallen in love with Joss; how much easier everything would be. Someday, probably soon, Raine would leave the forest and go back to his rich family and she would be alone.
As she absently lifted a sword, trying to bring it straight down over her head, her eye caught a movement at the corner of the field. In the shadows, standing still, watching, was Rosamund. Following her glance, Alyx saw that the woman looked only at Jocelin, that in her eyes blazed passion and fire and, as Alyx recognized it, lust. Her head wasn’t bowed, and for the first time there was no subservience about her, no apology for having been born.
“Alyx! You slacken!” Raine yelled at her, and with a grimace she put her mind back on her training.
That night, Raine, exhausted, still very weak, went to his cot to rest, while Alyx sat outside in the cold night air and ate a bowl of beans. Beside her sat Jocelin.
“You tore your shirt,” she commented. “Someone should sew it for you.”
Before Alyx could breathe, three women cheerfully said they’d sew it.
“No,” Joss muttered, looking at his bowl. “It does well enough as it is.”
“Give one of them your shirt,” Alyx said impatiently. “I will fetch one of Raine’s to warm you. He has more than enough of them.”
Reluctantly, Joss took off his shirt as Alyx hurried to the tent, cast one look at Raine’s sleeping form and hurried out again, a shirt over her arm. Outside, she paused. Jocelin sat before the fire, his body bare from the waist up, women all around him, their eyes greedy as they looked at Joss, at his handsomeness, his obvious melancholy, and far to one side stood Rosamund. But Jocelin never looked at any of the women.
At the fire, Alyx handed Joss the shirt and dipped herself a mug of boiling cider, blowing on the liquid to cool it.
Suddenly, a noise just outside the circle of light made everyone’s head turn in that direction.
Later, Alyx didn’t really remember consciously planning what she did. No one was looking, she was standing next to Jocelin’s bare body and holding the hot cider. All she thought of was that if Joss were hurt, he’d have to go to Rosamund, and the next moment she poured half the cider on Joss’s arm.
Instantly, she was sorry. Jocelin jumped away from her, the shirt falling from his lap.
“Joss, I . . .” she began, looking in horror at the skin on his arm turning red.
“Rosamund,” someone whispered. “Get Rosamund.”
Within seconds Rosamund was there, her cool fingers on Joss’s arm, and she was leading him away into the shadows.
Alyx wasn’t aware of it, but there were tears in her eyes and her body was trembling from what she’d just done. It had all happened so fast and she’d had no time to think.
A great hand clamped on the back of her neck, paralyzing her.