“Well, will I be able to keep in training?” She waited for him to answer, and didn’t much care for his long silence. “All right, what will I be able to do?”

“Ride some, and hunt—genteel hunting, with hawk and a light bow,” he said, obviously without thinking. “Nothing like the kind of hunting we have been doing here. No boar, no deer, good gods, that would send half the Court into apoplexy! You can’t offend them.”

“In other words, I wouldn’t be able to do a single damned thing that I’ve been trained and working at for the past three years,” she pointed out bitterly. “I can’t offend them—by ‘them’ I assume you mean the men—by competing with them. You want me to give up everything I’ve worked for all this time, and even my recreations.”

“You could advise me in private,” he said hastily. “I need that, Kero, just like I need you! And we could practice together.”

“In private, so no one would know your lady wife can beat the breeches off you two times out of three,” she said acidly, deliberately telling the truth in the most hurtful way possible.“

“Of course, in private!” he replied angrily. “You can’t do things like that where people can find out about them! After all, you won’t be a common mercenary! Do you think I want anyone to know—”

“That I’m your equal, and their superior. How good I am.” She stood up. “In short, you want a combination of toy soldier and expensive whore; your delicate lady in public and whatever else you want out of me in private, with no opinions or thoughts of my own—except in private. Thank you, no. I told you that night we first talked that I wasn’t prepared to sell anything other than my sword. That hasn’t changed, Daren. And it isn’t likely to.”

She rose to her feet and stalked toward the door, so angry that she no longer trusted her temper with him and only wanted to be away from him so she wouldn’t say or do anything worse than she already had. She grabbed her cloak as she passed the door, and he made no move to stop her.

She was walking so fast, and was so blind with suppressed fury, that she didn’t realize until she was down in the dimly lit stables and on her way out the tunnel to the rear entrance that she had also snatched up Need on her way out.