The Shattered Rose Page 0,79

chip of Raoul's shield spinning into the air.

Aline silently echoed Jehanne's comment. Men! She included Lord William in that, for under her father's rule such dangerous play had never occurred at Burstock. On the other hand, none of her brothers had ever been in imminent danger of a court battle. With a shiver she remembered a case not long ago when accusations of treason had been settled with the sword. The loser had not died in the battle, but since the battle had proved his guilt, he'd lost his eyes and his balls afterward.

The watchers were silent now, all surely holding their breath as she was, praying that there be no disaster.

Then Donata cried.

Galeran's attention slipped sideways for a second. Raoul's sword took him on the helmet.

"God take your soul to hell!" Raoul bellowed, sliding in the mud as he twisted to weaken his own stroke.

Galeran was knocked sideways to the ground. Raoul slid to his knees screaming at his fallen friend. "How could you do that? Christ's crown . . .

!"

But Galeran was already struggling up, feeling his head and wincing. "How could I not? Thank you for not beheading me."

"I was as close as ..."

Both men turned to stare at Jehanne, and it was then that Aline realized she'd gone. She turned to see her cousin running toward the manor house, a screaming baby in her arms. She picked up her skirts and chased after.

She caught up in the hall just as Jehanne thrust the screaming child into Winifred's arms and the wide-eyed woman hurried away with her.

"I almost killed him!" Jehanne cried. "Is there no end to the damage I can do?"

Chapter 13

Aline gripped her cousin's arms. "Raoul wouldn't have killed him. And it wasn't you. The child cried."

"I squeezed her. I was so terrified, I was squeezing her. She probably could sense my fear. . . ."

Aline moved away to splash wine into a goblet and press it into Jehanne's shaking hands. "Drink! You're taking this too seriously. If men play at war games, it isn't our fault if they get hurt."

"Is it not? All this is my fault, Aline. All of it. I realized, standing there, that one day it will be a real fight, and I will be the cause of someone's death!"

"It doesn't have to be that way. . . ."

"Doesn't it?"

In the distance, Donata was still shrieking, in the piercing manner of a frantic baby. "Oh, God," Jehanne said. "I'd better feed her."

She thrust the wine goblet back into Aline's hands and hurried away.

Aline drained the wine herself, then went out again, thinking that it was remarkable that the human race survived. No sensible woman would get involved with men and marriage when the orderly, rational world of the convent was available. There a woman had time to study, to create beauty, to think without distraction. . . .

The muddy area in front of the manor house was once more the domain of chickens, pigs, and peasants, though in the distance, beyond the palisade, she could hear the men. Had they taken their silly battles to the fields?

She climbed a ladder to the walk along the top of the wooden palisade and saw them.

They were washing off sweat and mud in the river.

Naked.

Naked men were not a mystery to Aline, but since becoming a woman she had regarded the interest they sparked in her as a weakness to be suppressed Raoul de Jouray was successfully teaching her that weakness could be ruinous, so perhaps she should study these naked men as repre- sentative of the enemy she must learn to defeat.

To her relief, she found that the assortment of bodies stirred no feelings in her at all. Thin to fat, bowlegged and knock-kneed, barrel- or sunken- chested, furred or nearly hairless, they were just bodies and no threat.

Most splashed at the water's edge, getting rid of the mud. A few, however, were swimming.

With alarm, she realized she couldn't see Raoul or Galeran. Had the injury been serious after all?

Then she saw two heads in the water, racing down the river.

Competing again, and this time Raoul was clearly winning.

Men! Raoul reached a spot where a fallen tree hung out over the river and reached up to catch the stub of a branch to stop himself. Then he hauled himself out one-handed.

"Showoff," Aline - sister of five brothers - muttered, but she was impressed in spite of that. Raw muscle power seemed to make her heart beat faster, and when Raoul pushed to