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to protect herself from this menacing outlaw, this murderous villain. But her life might very well hang in the balance. Despite her every instinct to flee, she faced his icy rage.
    When his agreement came, it was not in words. Indeed, it was hard for her to say just how she knew he had agreed at all. His posture was no less tense. His expression didnot soften. But there was something in his eyes. A flicker, perhaps. A new light.
    All Rosalynde knew was that she felt a sure and swift relief, as if he had somehow saved her life in that fraction of a moment. She released his shirt then and let loose the breath she had unconsciously been holding.
    The mayor approached them and the crowd began to hoot and stomp with anticipation, but she didn’t notice. Her gaze held with that of the man before her. It was then that she realized that his eyes, which she had thought only hard and colorless, were in truth a rare, clear shade of gray.

4
    “They shall seek wedded bliss!” the mayor shouted to the mass of people crowded about the gallows. “Wedded bliss!”
    With that announcement every throat seemed to raise a shout until Rosalynde clapped her hands over her ears at the din. It might have been the bloodthirsty howl of wolves, so unfeeling and pagan did it echo across the square. She floundered between renewed panic and enormous relief, between terror and hope as she stood trembling before the maddened crowd.
    “Handfast! Handfast!” The chant reverberated around and around her. But the cry melded also with another call to “Hang them! Hang them!” until the two seemed one and she felt as if she were as much the subject of the one sentiment as the other.
    “Handfast!”
    “Hang them!”
    In desperation she looked back up at the man she had just chosen to be handfasted to, but his grim expression provided her no solace. He only gave her a cold stare and then turned his eyes toward the horizon.
    For a terror-filled moment she feared that instead of saving herself, she had indeed flung herself into a far worse snare. The riot of drunken villagers seemed as readyto cast her fate with this Blacksword and hang her as it was ready to see her wed to the menacing wretch. She turned to the mayor for help, but he was swilling back more ale and rousing the crowd to ever greater bedlam. She whirled to face the screaming horde, then stumbled back in fear as one leering fellow lunged partially onto the platform and tried to grab her ankle. He came up only with the tattered edge of her gown, but that was enough to unbalance her. Had she not been stopped by the solid bulk of the huge man behind her, she would have fallen hard on the wooden platform. As it was, she was barely able to right herself. But it was only when Blacksword took a threatening step toward the man still clinging to her hem that the drunken fool released his hold and fell back in very real fear.
    Without thinking she ducked behind Blacksword, keeping his sturdy bulk between her and the crowd. Even though he was still bound, he seemed able to intimidate everyone near him. But his menacing posture toward the man who had grabbed at her had a surprising effect on the restless mob.
    “Jealous, ain’t ’e?”
    “ ’E courts her a’ready!”
    And slowly the cry turned to “Handfast.” From somewhere a chair was produced, and the mayor directed it be placed at the front of the gallows platform. Then he signaled Rosalynde to approach him.
    “Wot’s yer name, girl?” he demanded, fixing his hand on her shoulder again.
    She glanced from him to the hulking Blacksword then at the crowd, which had subsided somewhat and strained now to hear what was being said. Then her eyes flitted back to Blacksword.
    “Rosaly—” She halted, then swallowed hard. She had asudden and unaccountable fear of revealing too much about herself. “Rose. I—I am called Rose.”
    “A Rose!” the mayor jeered even as a loathsome belch escaped his lips. “We have here a thorny Rose to be wed to