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Her eyes softened. Her shoulders relaxed.

“There is a traitor among us. Within our order. I’ve become aware of it earlier this eve, and none but your instructors and the lords Ashford and Bennington, along with Master Pembroke, who discovered a discrepancy in the weapons inventory, know of this. And now you.”

Everything he’d been feeling since Alden sat, his earlier trepidation at her questions, fled in a moment of extreme shock. A traitor? Among their order?

“Each recruit has been hand-picked for their known loyalty to the cause.”

“Indeed,” she replied.

“Could any outside Blackwood have learned of our mission? Perhaps it is an outsider and not one who has sworn an oath to the Guardians of the Sacred Oak?”

“From the information we’ve gathered thus far, it seems as if the traitor is closer to Blackwood, likely within its walls.”

Nay. Impossible.

“Gareth,” he said without thinking. “He knows.” It was the reason for his secret smile below. He realized the purpose of this meeting. Which begged the question . . . “Why are you telling me?”

“I have been tasked with rooting out the traitor and need someone inside the circle of recruits to help me.”

“Why me?”

She was less quick to answer this time, though the purpose for the questions Lady Elara had asked him earlier became clear. She assessed him, and from her own instruction, Alden knew it was less the answers he gave than his eyes and his body’s movements, that told the truth of his words. If he’d had any hint he was being assessed in such a way, Alden could have more easily deceived her, if he had something to hide. Which he did not.

His admiration for her grew, if such a thing were possible.

“Gareth is no longer a recruit,” she began.

“He knows,” Alden stated the obvious. “Which is why he did not seem surprised you asked to speak with me this eve.”

“Precisely. Although,” she said with the faintest of smiles. “The same cannot be said of your other friends.”

Though he’d not consumed as much ale as the others, Alden’s tongue might be looser than perhaps it should be.

“Surprised,” he said, “would be a mild description for their reactions. And my own.”

Lady Elara’s expression was inscrutable. “As to your question,” she said, pressing on. “I chose you for a variety of reasons, not least because of my own instinct that you were not, indeed, our traitor.”

A well-honed instinct, as she was correct. “The other reasons?” he asked, knowing well she would not answer.

“Are irrelevant.”

Alden would have smiled, but since it could be interpreted as him flirting with her, an interpretation that would be accurate, he did not. He might be alone in her private chambers with the esteemed Strategies instructor, but she was still very much his instructor.

“Why,” he wondered aloud, “is there a guard at the top of the stairwell not on guard? And why did we not enter through that door?” He nodded toward the one behind her.

Lady Elara smiled. “I am pleased you observed both,” she said in the same tone she used during instruction. “He has been dismissed. Beginning tomorrow, the guard’s chambers will also be moved. I do not wish for him to hear you within my chambers. You will report here, at the end of each day, after taking your evening meal.”

God was testing him. That could be the only reason for this current predicament. Meet the one woman whose presence unbalanced him more than any other in recent memory, one he could never have, each day in her private chambers?

His temptation to discover if Lady Elara was as cool and reserved in bed as her demeanor would suggest would not disappear as readily under these circumstances. Perhaps it was wishful thinking on his part, but Alden did not believe she would be and wondered about it often. Unfortunately, he’d never find out.

“And the door,” he said, attempting not to react to her decree.

“Too close to my guard’s to open without alerting him to our presence.”

Alden had another question. “If you’ve had a private guard stationed outside your chambers but have dismissed him, how can you be certain to remain safe in your chambers?”

The thought did not seem to concern her. “’Twas Eamon’s doing, an unnecessary precaution, to my thinking, as I keep my chambers locked when inside them. Naught is more important now than uncovering the traitor, and discreetness will be necessary.” She stood. “I am trusting you with much more than your silence on the matter at hand. Come with me.”