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Brodie Maxwell grabbed her by the arm and drew his hand back. Alistair was across the floor before the motion was complete.

Brodie rounded on him, scowling, and tried to shake Alistair's hand from his wrist. "She's my wife, Kirallen, and I'll thank ye to stay out of it."

Wife? Oh, no, she couldn't be his wife! Not Brodie Maxwell! The eldest of the brood was a blunt and surly man, with a slow wit and fearsome temper. Oh, Brodie could not be wed to this faerie woman. The very thought was sickening! Alistair looked at her and she bowed her head, a muscle twitching at the corner of her mouth.

"Well, wife or no, she's but a wee bit of a thing," Alistair said, keeping his tone light and friendly. "Hitting her won't mend matters. Instead why don't ye come and tell me what you're paying."

Brodie' hand fell from his wife's arm and he gave a short bark of laughter. "Dinna tell me you've come to fight for us! It must be true then, all I've heard. Banished, were ye? Banished wi' a price upon your head?"

"That is my own affair," Alistair said, resisting the temptation to smash his fist squarely into Brodie's face.

"Not if ye fight for me, it's not."

"'Tis my sword for hire, not my past. Are ye interested or no'?"

Lady Maxwell slipped away back toward the kitchen. She stopped at the doorway and looked over her shoulder with a fleeting smile that stopped Alistair's breath.

"God's blood, ye always were a touchy bastard, Kirallen," Brodie said. "Too proud by half—at least while Ian was alive. Come down a bit, haven't ye, now that he's gone?"

Alistair would have given anything to spin on his heel and walk away. Or almost anything. What he would not give was his hope of seeing the woman once again. He would suffer even Brodie for that chance.

"I've sunk low, indeed, to be seeking work from the likes of you," he answered, but he forced himself to smile as he said it. "Now get your long nose out of my business and give me a drink while we settle things between us."

He waited, every muscle tensed. Brodie could go either way. But Maxwell's heir was in a good humor tonight. He roared with laughter and slung an arm across Alistair's shoulder.

"All right, all right! Kirallen's loss will be my gain and we'll say no more about it! Come and get yourself a mug."

Alistair allowed himself to be led off to a corner. There they bickered back and forth, but he was careful to let Brodie get the better of the bargain. God forbid he'd be the one to put the man into one of his tempers. Not now that he knew who would suffer for it.

Once the singing began Deirdre crept into the hallway leading to the kitchens, keeping close against the wall. She spied Brodie seated at the corner of the long table, deep in conversation with the golden-haired stranger.

Back in the kitchens Jennie and the other women were all in a flutter, chattering like magpies about the man. Deirdre had felt a cold shock run through her when they named him. She had heard of him, of course. No one could live on this particular stretch of border and not know of Sir Alistair Kirallen, a name shrouded in treachery and scandal.

While no one was quite sure what had happened at Ravenspur Manor last year, on one point the rumors all agreed. Alistair Kirallen had turned traitor to his clan. His own foster father, who it was said had loved him well, had been driven to cast him out.

He was a banished man. An outlaw. A man with no home, no kin, no claim to honor. A bitter smile twisted Deirdre's lips. Well, at least she was consistent. When it came to men, she had no judgment, as she had proven yet again.

He looked different than he had seemed to her on Beltane Eve; older, harder, with an almost tangible aura of command shimmering about him. Even his plain leather jerkin and old cloak could not disguise the fact that this was a man accustomed to be giving orders, not taking them.

As Brodie talked on, Sir Alistair's eyes moved over the hall, taking the measure of the men he was to fight with. Deirdre noted the keen intelligence in his glance and imagined he had already summed up their strengths and weaknesses, labeled and divided them into fighting units.

They said that when he was just twenty, Sir Alistair had been chief among Kirallen's legendary band of knights. His extraordinary rise to power had made his sudden disgrace all the more fascinating to his neighbors.

Even sitting still, he was filled with a restless energy that showed in the drumming of his fingers on the trestle, the tapping of one booted foot on the rush-strewn floor. His fine light hair had come loose from its braid and caught the torchlight, making a halo around his face. Yet there was little of the angel about this man, unless it was a fallen one.

His eyes were just as Deirdre remembered, large and brilliant, set wide above broad flat cheekbones. For the first time she noticed that his high-bridged nose was slightly crooked, as though it had been broken.

It was a strong face, undeniably attractive. Certain it was that every other man vanished once he walked into the hall. And from the talk she'd heard in the kitchens, she wasn't the only woman he affected in that way.

Whatever had he been doing last Beltane Eve? Deirdre could not begin to imagine what strange ritual had set his soul to wandering through the night. But it had been him. Of that she had no doubt. And he had recognized her as well, though God be thanked he'd held his tongue about it. At least so far.

She remembered now the things they'd said and done that night and felt the blood drain from her face. What had she been thinking? Who would have thought the man was real—and known to her husband! But how well known? What was he saying to Brodie now? One careless word, one chance remark, and Brodie would fly into a killing rage.

Brodie held out his hand and Alistair took it. From the smile on her husband's face, Deirdre could tell he'd made a bargain to his liking. She breathed again, her knees shaking with relief. It was all right, at least for now. But whatever must Alistair Kirallen think of her? How deep did his friendship for Brodie run?

As Brodie strode off Alistair frowned and wiped his palm on his jerkin, then turned and looked straight into Deirdre's eyes, as though he understood her fears and was trying without words to reassure her.

Before she could decide whether to acknowledge his gesture, his head whipped around toward the bard seated in the center of the hall. Puzzled, Deirdre followed his gaze, then the words of the bard's song reached her.