Lust, she thought, sitting up farther. Pure and simple lust was what she was feeling. She’d like for him to touch her, to kiss her, to lie beside her, and she would very much like to touch that skin of his. Remembering how it felt when she’d straddled his back, she began to tingle, her legs seeming more alive, even her feet growing warm.
When he left the water and came toward her, she almost lifted her arms toward him.
“You look lazy,” Raine commented, drying himself off. “Sure you won’t take a bath?”
All Alyx could do was watch the course of the cloth he used for drying as it ran over his body and vaguely shake her head.
“I warn you though, boy, you start smelling so bad you drive me from the tent and I’ll bathe you myself and it won’t be a gentle bath.”
Eyes wide, Alyx looked up at him, her breathing changing just slightly. To be bathed by this great god of a man, she thought.
“Are you all right, boy?” Raine asked, concerned, kneeling beside her as he frowned at her odd expression.
Boy! she grimaced. He thought she was a boy, and what if she were revealed as a girl? He was of the nobility and she was only a poor lawyer’s daughter. “Aren’t you going to get cold?” she asked flatly, rolling away from him to stand apart, not watching as he dressed.
When he was finished, she silently followed him back to camp, where she collapsed on her pallet but did not sleep until Raine had settled himself on his narrow cot. Content at last, she fell asleep.
Chapter Six
LEANING OVER THE edge of the water, Alyx studied her own reflection. She did look like a boy, she thought with disgust. Why couldn’t she have been born beautiful, with lovely features that could never be mistaken for a male’s no matter what she wore? Her hair, all a mass of curls, its color not sure of which way to go, changing with each strand, eyes turned up, lips like a pixie’s, were not what a woman’s should be.
Just as tears were beginning to blur her vision, Jocelin’s voice startled her. “Cleaning more armor?” he asked.
With a sniff, she turned back to her task. “Raine is too hard on it. Today I had to hammer out a dent.”
“You seem to care much for his things. Are you perhaps beginning to believe that a nobleman could be worth something?”
“Raine would be worth much no matter what his birth,” she said much too hastily, then looked away, embarrassed.
She’d been in Raine’s camp for a week now, had spent nearly every second in his company and her opinions of him had completely reversed in that week. Once she’d believed he took over the camp, but now she knew it was that the outcasts forced him to take care of them. They were like children demanding that he provide for them, then acting rebellious when he did. He left his bed before anyone else and saw to the security of the people and always, late at night, he made sure the guard was alert and ready. He forced the people away from idleness and made them work for their own keep or else they’d sit and wait for him to provide for them, as if it were their due.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Raine is worth something, although he gets little reward for what he does. Why doesn’t he leave this scurvy lot and leave England altogether? Surely a man with his wealth could make a decent home for himself.”
“Perhaps you should ask him that. You are closest to him.”
Close to him, she thought. That’s where she wanted to be, even closer to him. Only now was she beginning to be able to function through her blinding fatigue, to live through the strenuous training sessions each morning, but as her muscles hardened and she began to feel better, she became more involved in the camp life.
Blanche occupied an exalted position in the camp, making everyone believe she shared Raine’s bed and had his ear for anything they wanted. Alyx tried not to consider if Blanche ever had spent the night with Raine, but she liked to believe he had more taste than to use a slut like Blanche. And something else Alyx was able to find out about Blanche: she was terrified of Jocelin.
Jocelin, so incredibly handsome, so polite, so considerate, had every woman in camp panting after him. Alyx had seen women use every manner of enticement to lure him to their sides, but as far as she knew, Joss had never accepted an invitation. He preferred his duties and the company of Alyx to anyone else. And although he never mentioned her, he stayed well away from Blanche. When the woman happened to meet him she’d always turn tail and run.
Besides Joss, the only other decent outcast was Rosamund, with her beauty and the devil’s mark on her cheek. Rosamund kept her head down, expecting p
eople’s hatred and fear. Once Raine had found a couple of men wagering on whether or not they’d be selling their souls if they took her by force. Twenty lashes each was his punishment for the men, followed by banishment, and Alyx felt a surge of jealousy that Raine so violently protected the flawed, beautiful healer.
“Alyx!” came a bellow through the trees that could only belong to Raine. At least now he called her by her name.
Using every ounce of power her voice contained, she yelled back at him, “I am working.” The man was obsessed with work.
Coming through the trees, he grinned at her. “That voice of yours gives me hope that you’ll grow, although it looks to me as if you’re getting smaller.” Critically, he eyed her legs stretched before her.
With a little smile, Alyx was glad to see that at least one part of her was unmistakably female. Her long legs and curvy little bottom had only been enhanced by the hard exercise of the last week. Perhaps now, at last, she would be revealed as a girl and then . . . what? She’d be tossed from Raine’s tent and he’d once again only have that whore Blanche to care for him. Reluctantly, she slapped a steel leg sheath over her own legs.
“I’ll grow,” she snapped, “and when I do I’ll pin you to the ground with your own sword.” An upward glance at Raine saw that he seemed to be puzzled by something.
“You wanted Alyx for something?” Joss asked, his voice full of amusement as he interrupted the silence.
“Yes,” Raine said quietly. “I need some letters written and some read to me. A messenger has come from my family. You can read, can’t you?”