All she saw when she uncovered her face was that, somehow, her father was still on his feet, and Royce was attacking MacPherson and two others like a coldly enraged madman, swinging and hacking… and that wherever he struck, men fell like savaged metal sheep.

Jenny bolted from her chair, and almost fell over Brenna, who had clamped her eyes closed. "Jenny!" Aunt Elinor cried, "I don't think you ought-" but Jenny didn't pay attention; bile was rising up in her throat in a bitter stream. Half blinded by tears, she ran to her horse and snatched the mare's reins from the startled serf's hands…

"Look, my lady!" he burst out enthusiastically, helping her into the saddle and pointing at Royce out on the field, "did you ever see aught like him in yer life?" Jenny glanced up once more and saw Royce's broadsword explode against a Scotsman's shoulder. She saw that her father, her brother, Becky's father, and a dozen other Scots were getting up off the ground, which was already running with blood.

She saw impending death.

The vision tormented her as she stood at the open window of her bedchamber, her pale face tipped against the frame, her arms wrapped around her middle, trying somehow to hold all the pain and terror inside of her. An hour had passed since she left the tourney, and the jousting had been under way for at least half that time. Royce had said he accepted eleven matches, and he'd already fought two before the tournament. Based on the herald's announcement that jousts following the tournament would begin with the most skilled jousters first, Jenny had little doubt all of Royce's matches had followed the tournament in succession. How much more impressive, she thought with vague misery, it was for King Henry to demonstrate to one and all that even exhausted, his famous champion could defeat any Scot foolish enough to challenge him.

She had already counted five completed matches-she could tell by the awful jeering roar from the crowd when each loser left the field. After four more matches, Royce would be off the field; by then someone would surely have brought her word of how many of her people he'd maimed or killed. It did not occur to her as she reached up and brushed a tear from her cheek that anything might have happened to Royce; he was invincible. She'd seen that during his jousts at the beginning of the tournament. And… God forgive her… she'd been proud. Even when he was confronting Ian MacPherson, she'd been so proud…

Her heart and mind ravaged by divided loyalty, she stood where she was, unable to see the field but able to hear what was happening. Based on the prolonged, ugly jeering coming from the crowd-a sound that was becoming more pronounced at the end of each match-they weren't getting much of a show from the loser of each match. Evidently her Scots weren't even worth a bit of polite applause…

She jumped as the door to her bedchamber was flung open and crashed into the wall. "Get your cloak," Stefan Westmoreland snapped ominously, "you're coming back to that field with me if I have to drag you there!"

"I'm not going back," Jenny countered, turning to the window again. "I have no stomach for cheering while my husband batters my family to pieces, or-"

Stefan grabbed her shoulders and spun her around, his voice like a savage whiplash: "I'll tell you what's happening! My brother is out there on that field, dying! He swore he'd not raise his hand against your kinsmen and, the moment they realized that during the tournament, your precious kinsmen massacred him!" he said between his teeth, shaking her. "They tore him to pieces in the tournament! And now he's jousting-Do you hear that crowd jeering? They're jeering him. He's so badly injured, I don't think he knows any more when he's been unhorsed. He thought he'd be able to outmaneuver them in the jousts, but he can't, and fourteen more Scots have challenged him."

Jenny stared at him, her pulse beginning to race like a maddened thing, but her body was rooted to the floor, as if she was trying to run in a nightmare.

"Jennifer!" he said hoarsely, "Royce is letting them kill him." His hands bit painfully into her arms, but his voice broke with anguish. "He is out there on that field, dying for you. He killed your brother and he's paying-" He broke off as Jennifer tore free from his grip and started running…

Garrick Carmichael spat on the ground near Royce as he rode off the field, victorious, but Royce was oblivious to such subtle insults. He staggered to his knees, vaguely aware that the roar of the crowd was slowly and unaccountably rising to deafening proportions. Swaying, he reached up and pulled off his helmet; he tried to transfer it to his left arm, but his arm was hanging uselessly by his side, and the helmet fell to the ground. Gawin was running toward him-no not Gawin-someone in a blue cloak, and he squinted, trying to focus, wondering if it was his next opponent.

Through the haze of sweat and blood and pain that blurred his vision and fogged his mind, Royce thought for a moment he saw the figure of a woman running-running toward him, her uncovered hair tossing about her, glinting in the sun with red and gold. Jennifer! In disbelief, he squinted, staring, while the earsplitting thunder of the crowd rose higher and higher.

Royce groaned inwardly, trying to push himself to his feet with his unbroken right arm. Jennifer had come back-now, to witness his defeat. Or his death. Even so, he didn't want her to see him die groveling, and with the last ounce of strength he possessed, he managed to stagger to his feet. Reaching up, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, his vision cleared, and he realized he was not imagining it. Jennifer was moving toward him, and an eerie silence was descending over the crowd.

Jenny stifled a scream when she was close enough to see his arm dangling brokenly at his side. She stopped in front of him, and her father's bellow from the sidelines made her head jerk toward the lance lying at Royce's feet. "Use it!" he thundered. "Use the lance, Jennifer."

Royce understood then why she had come: she had come to finish the task her relatives had begun; to do to him what he had done to her brother. Unmoving, he watched her, noting that tears were pouring down her beautiful face as she slowly bent down. But instead of reaching for his lance or her dagger, she took his hand between both of hers and pressed her lips to it. Through his daze of pain and confusion, Royce finally understood that she was kneeling to him, and a groan tore from his chest: "Darling," he said brokenly, tightening his hand, trying to make her stand, "don't do this…"

But his wife wouldn't listen. In front of seven thousand onlookers, Jennifer Merrick Westmoreland, countess of Rockbourn, knelt before her husband in a public act of humble obeisance, her face pressed to his hand, her shoulders wrenched with violent sobs. By the time she finally arose, there could not have been many among the spectators who had not seen what she had done. Standing up, she stepped back, lifted her tear-streaked face to his, and squared her shoulders.

Pride exploded in Royce's battered being-because, somehow, she was managing to stand as proudly-as defiantly-as if she had just been knighted by a king.

Gawin, who had been immobilized by Stefan's hand clamped on his shoulder, rushed forward as soon as the hand released him. Royce put his arm across his squire's shoulder and limped off the field.

He left to the accompaniment of cheering that was nearly as loud as it had been when he unhorsed DuMont and MacPherson.

In his tent on the jousting field, Royce slowly, reluctantly opened his eyes, bracing himself for the blast of pain he knew would come with consciousness. But there was no pain.