He let her go easily, though his smile was still broad. "Unlike Rhuddlan, I trade in all manner of things."

he assured her, reaching for another leaf to lay across the salve. "What do you want, and what do you have to offer?"

"What I have is a promise," she began, and was surprised to see him wince and shake his head.

"A not so auspicious start,cherie." He slipped the small clay pot into a pouch hanging from his belt.

" 'Tis a good promise," she exclaimed, put off by his quickness to doubt.

"Oh, aye," he said, but his smile was calling her a liar before he'd even heard her out.

"Could make you rich."

"Rich?" His interest changed, becoming less skeptical. "How rich?"

"How much ransom did you ask of Caradoc for my return?"

He hesitated a moment before answering. " 'Tis not exactly a ransom, Ceri. Caradoc knows I won't hurt you. I think of it more as recompense for care."

"How much?" she repeated.

His reply was not so quick this time, as if he debated whether to tell her the truth.

"Two hundred marks," he finally said, much to her astonishment. She didn't believe him, not for an instant. 'Twas an outrageous sum, absurd. He'd proven so clever thus far, she would have expected better of him.

"Caradoc is no fool," she told him, though it would take less than a fool to pay that dearly for a bride, even one of her supposed uniqueness.

"Neither am I." His answer was accompanied by an arrogant rise in his right eyebrow.

"If you are no fool, then what will you do with me when he doesn't pay? For he won't, you know."

His smile came back. "Why, keep you for myself,cherie. What else?"

"Now there's a fool's bargain," she said with a small snort, piqued that he found humor in her situation, and that he was so sure of himself. "Unlike Caradoc, you could have no possible use for me."

Dain had to keep himself from laughing out loud. Ah, sweet innocence. Sweet sweet innocence. 'Twas only great effort that kept the satyr's expression from his face, for he had use of her, a carnal, needy use.

Riding with her through the forest had been both heaven and hell, the gentle back-and-forth rocking of her firm buttocks against his groin. He wouldn't have missed a one of the Cypriot's delicate steps, and if Llynya had not fallen from the sky, they would have gotten little farther than the glade where the sprite had found them.

He knew of a place in Wroneu where the grass was softer than goosedown, where water bubbled warm from the ground, and the trees made a bower dappled by sunlight during the day and graced by slivers of the moon at night. He had reached the point of deciding to take her there, and to take her there, easing himself upon her. A challenge to be sure, one requiring any innocence he had left, artlessness working so much better with virgins than any amount of cunning.

Seduction would have taken time. Surrender would have needed kisses, slow, sucking kisses on her mouth, the kind that made breathing labored and blood rush. He wondered if she had any idea how sensitive her lips were, how much of a touch they could feel, so much more than fingertips. He wanted to teach her about kissing and her mouth, if she didn't already know.

Some nun or novice may have kissed her. Such things were wont to happen within cloistered environs, and even without. But he doubted if the unavoidable furtive-ness, not to mention the guilt inevitably associated with such unions, could have allowed for the kind of kissing he had in mind.

Sweet thing, he had use of her, all right, to a pleasurable end and beyond and back again.

"And if I did have a use for you?" he asked, utterly guileless, his eyes clear and his smile straight on his face. "What would your bargain be then?"

"Not to escape you in return for your teachings of magic."

"Magic?" As he recalled, he had disclaimed any knowledge of magic. But if the maid wanted to learn how to make water burn, he was willing enough.

"Aye. One trick in particular has come to my attention."

A trick, good, he thought. He had a hundred tricks and could conjure a hundred more, whereas magic-what he knew of true magic, anyway-took more patience and skill than he could have conjuredin a lifetime. And therein lay the key, according to Jalal. Immortality. True magicians didn't merely control objects or natural acts. They controlled time. Otherwise, like him, they ended up dead long before they'd figured out the secrets of true magic.

Nemeton must have had the knowledge, but Caradoc was unlikely to have mastered time in the four years since they'd last met-a brief reunion in Cardiff organized by Morgan-which accounted for much of Dain's discounting of the maid's fear. She might have to struggle with superstition, and Caradoc might turn out to be cruel, but 'twas unlikely she was in danger from the dragons and magic written in her red book-the one being nonexistent and the other being rarer than snow in Egypt.

"What trick would that be?" he asked.

"To dance with lightning."

"Ah," he murmured for lack of anything more pertinent coming to mind.

"Well? What say you?"

He waited a moment, as if there were really some conditions to be weighed, some restrictions mulled over, some cautions revealed, when in actuality there were none. He didn't have a clue as to what she was talking about.

"Well?"

He looked her over carefully, very carefully, letting his gaze wander and linger at his leisure, especially noting the curve of her breasts and how the folds of her gown creased at the juncture of her thighs. Those were magical places, and if Caradoc had turned cruel, Dain would think more than twice about granting him access there. Tender maids needed tender care.

"Aye," he said, dragging his gaze up to meet hers. "After you've regained your strength, and your ankle is healed, I think you could do it without frying yourself to a crisp. 'Tis not an easy thing, you know."

"I didn't expect it would be," she said in ah affronted tone.

"So you understand the risks?"

"The risks matter not. My life is forfeit if I cannot protect myself." Her voice was calm, her gaze steady.

She was so utterly sure of herself and her fate.

God, but he was a black heart to be thinking of seduction while she dealt with death, whether her fears were imagined or not.

There was only one way to know for sure.

"Come," he said, rising to his feet and reaching down a hand to help her. "Let us go to Madron."

Unbidden by intent, he looked toward Rhuddlan as she took his hand. The Quicken-tree leader slowly nodded, giving permission when Dain had not realized it was needed. He had always come and gone in Deri depending on his own wishes. Then the truth struck him, sending an odd unease down his spine: Rhuddlan didn't care whether he left or not, the permission was for taking Ceridwen back out with him. A softly voiced command brought the Cypriot to his side. He lifted Ceridwen onto the mare and took the reins to lead them through the water track. At the edge of the falls, he glanced over his shoulder to where Rhuddlan sat by the giant oak. The Quicken-tree leader was still watching them, his eyes gleaming brightly within the broad stripe of paint.

Another nod was not forthcoming, and Dain felt the lack was more of a warning than an oversight, a strange caution from a friend. The Cypriot nudged him, and he stepped into the mist, letting the silver-sheened cascade arc over their heads before Rhuddlan could change his mind and decide to keep the maid despite her shortcomings. By all accounts, the Quicken-tree had more claim to her than Dain did, to take her north or to wherever it was they kept their winter camp. But claim or no claim, he would not have left her.

Chapter 11.

As soon as they were free of the river, Dain swung up on the Cypriot and kicked her into a canter, heading them across a grassy stretch of meadow to the safety of the trees. He needed permission from no man to do what he wished-except, it seemed, when it came to the maid.

Look at him now, taking her to Madron, after being waylaid by Rhuddlan, while he was holding her for Caradoc. No wonder she thought of nothing beyond escape. Every move she made was met with checkmate and capture. She was as well trapped as he had been in the desert.

A quick jerk of the reins stopped the mare dead in her tracks.

"Sweet Jesus," he swore, his arm tightening around the maid like a vise, his anger at Rhuddlan flowing over into anger at her.

She squirmed within his grasp, but he would have none of it and pulled her even tighter.

"Who are you?" he growled in her ear.

Her answer was a jab of her elbow to his ribs.

"Tell me," he demanded.

"Loose me, you fool!" She tried to jab him again, but he'd lifted her off the horse and into his arms before she could connect, his feet hitting the ground as her elbow skimmed his shoulder.

He swung her around to face him, keeping her arms pinned behind her back, the reins still gripped in his fist. "There will be no more talk of fools, Ceri," he said through gritted teeth. "Now tell me who you are."

She seethed in his embrace, knee-deep in sweet woodruff with her face tilted into the moonlight. "You know who I am. Ceridwen ab Arawn, cousin to Morgan, sister to Mychael, daughter of Rhiannon, betrothed of Caradoc, and a damned prisoner to you! And each time I try to be more, someone is there to stop me!" She tried to kick him in the shins, but he hooked her ankle with his foot, his instincts faster than his common sense.

All would still have been aright, if the Cypriot hadn't chosen that moment to shy away. The struggling woman and the lunging horse proved too much for him, sending him tumbling with the maid in his arms.

They fell together, with him twisting his body to take the brunt of it, another brilliant flash of instinct he couldn't have controlled for naught. He lay on the ground, the breath knocked out of him, hardly believing what he'd done.

"Are you hurt?" he asked when he could. Stupid bugger, he called himself, a thousand times worse than any fool if he'd caused her harm. He lightened his grip only a bare fraction, so if he had hurt her she wouldn't lose his support all at once.

"Are you hurt?" he asked again when she failed to respond. On the ground, in the dark, with the mare prancing around them, 'twas impossible to see her face, though it was mere inches from his. Her braids lay across his gambeson like faerie ropes, each bound end glinting with its strip of Quicken-tree cloth.

"Ceri?" he said more softly, listening beyond his own rough breath for the sound of hers. "I live." The words were mumbled against his chest.

She lives. Damn the chit for making him smile when he should be drawn and quartered.

"Are you hurt?"

"My shoulder. Where Ragnor bit me."

He swore silently and prayed Caradoc had not forgotten all they'd seen and endured in Saladin's dungeons. The red beast deserved no better.

He deserved little better himself. He'd despaired of her tears ever stopping the first sennight he'd had her. She'd wakened him before dawn at least once each morn with her crying. Her bruises had spread and grown more colorful, her eyes had been continually puffy, her nose runny. It had been only the last few days that he'd thought she would come around at all. Last night he'd been sure of it, with her show of fight over the book. True, he'd completely subjugated her again with his brief foray across her mouth, but the relapse had been minor and short-lived.

Moira had been the miracle worker, though. Her touch had healed the maid in ways far beyond his skills, bringing strength and wholeness into a broken bone, paleness into an angry red scar, and spirit back into a sorely set-upon heart. The woman he'd spoken with in Deri would have indeed been a handful for Morgan, or any man, to control; the way she'd sat there, holding court under woven .willow wands, bargaining with nothing as if she held the world in her hands.

He hoped he hadn't undone Moira's work, for he couldn't re-create what the Quicken-tree woman had done, not even with the salve she'd given him, and he wasn't about to take Ceridwen back to the camp, not when Rhuddlan watched her like a hungry hawk circling prey.

Gently, so as not to disturb her more, he unwound the reins from his fist, releasing the Cypriot with a command to stay. More carefully still, he rolled Ceridwen off him and onto her side.

"Ahhh."

Her small gasp sent a wave of self-recrimination washing through him. How could he have been so careless, or so clumsy as to fall, for that matter, and how in the hell had he gotten so angry so quickly?

He'd learned to curb his temper years ago-the night Jalal had so kindly offered to slit his other wrist for him with a newly tempered Damascene blade, the very one he'd taken from her earlier-and naught had made him lose his temper since, except the maid.

He looked down at her and found her looking up at him, her eyes narrowed in wariness, her face drawn against the pain he'd caused.

"I'm sorry,cariad." He brushed the hair back from her brow. "I did not mean for you to fall." He never stumbled. He never got mad. Disgust had been the limit of his emotional tether for years.

"Then you should not have dragged me from the mare," she said, her tone no less cautious for the sarcasm she put into her admonition.

"Aye. I should not have." He fought another smile.

"The next time you decide to lose your wits, leave me well enough out of it." " 'Twas not witlessness, but anger."

"At me?" Her sarcasm gave way to astonishment.

"Aye," he admitted sheepishly. Another dusty emotion dragged out of his youth, he thought with appropriate pessimism.

"And what could be more witless than that?" she demanded. "I have spoken not one word since leaving your friend's camp."

"Wasn't you, but what I was thinking."

"Then you think too much."

"So it's been said." He let out a heavy sigh and levered himself up. When she would have followed suit, he restrained her with a light touch. "Let me see what damage I have done first, and fix it as best I may."

A short time later he wondered exactly how much control over himself he'd lost. More than he'd thought, for he would swear on anything sacred that he had not meant to arrange things so according to his wishes.

Yet there she was, sitting amidst the greenery of gentian, woodruff, and celandine in the unbloomed meadow, her gown and chemise loosened and slipped from her shoulders.

Folds of the poor gray cloth and fine linen were gathered in her hands at the middle of her chest, revealing the soft upper curves of her breasts. He was on his knees, facing her, sitting back on his heels with his thighs on either side of her legs. A thousand more sins upon his head for the natural contrivance of such a provocative position.

He smoothed therascasalve over the ruddy wounds, probing the muscles underneath, grateful nothing had broken open. She flinched, but he continued.

"Try to relax your shoulder, Ceri." He pressed a little harder, helping her rotate the joint in the direction he asked. The scar tissue went deeper than he would have imagined.

"You're hurting me," she groused.

"Not too much, and in the end it will do you good." He released his hold, sliding his hand down to her wrist and lifting her arm. Delightful.

"Your touch is not as warm as Moira's."

"My pardon." He released her arm and took another dab of salve. Her skin was cool where he worked therascain with his thumb and fingers, but soft, so soft. He widened the area of his massage, sliding his palm across her collarbone and up and around her throat and neck, then coming back down to her shoulder and upper arm. His gaze followed the course of his hand with a look more hungry than any Rhuddlan had cast in her direction.

'Twas the softness, he was sure, that made his mouth long to press itself against her skin. 'Twas pure desire for the erotic that made his tongue want to do the same, to taste and feel her, to trace a path to herbreast.

"Does feel better when you do that," she said with a sigh, tilting her head farther to one side to give him greater access. A great fall of braids slipped over her opposite shoulder and cascaded into her lap.