Tightly bound in her dark woolen prison, her head pounding and her stomach slamming against the horse's back with each lift of the beast's hooves, the name "Royce" made Jenny's blood freeze. Royce Westmoreland, the earl of Claymore. The Wolf. The horrifying stories she'd heard of him no longer seemed nearly so farfetched. Brenna and she had been seized by men who showed no reverence whatsoever for the habits of the order of St. Albans which the girls wore, habits that indicated their status of novice-aspiring nuns who had not yet taken their vows. What manner of men, Jenny wondered frantically, would lay their hands on nuns, or almost-nuns, without conscience or fear of retribution, human or divine. No man would. Only a devil and his disciples would dare!

"This one's fainted dead away," Thomas said with a lewd laugh. "A pity we haven't more time to sample our loot, although, were it left to me, I'd prefer that tasty morsel ye've wrapped in yer blanket, Stefan."

"Yours is the beauty of the two," Stefan replied coldly, "and you're not sampling anything until Royce decides what he wants to do with these two."

Nearly suffocating with fear inside her blanket, Jenny made a tiny cry of mindless, panicked protest in her throat, but no one heard her. She prayed to God to strike her captors dead on their horses, but God didn't seem to hear her, and the horses trotted endlessly, painfully onward. She prayed to be shown some sort of plan to escape, but her mind was too busy, frantically tormenting her with all the gruesome tales of the deadly Black Wolf: He keeps no prisoners unless he means to torture them. He laughs when his victims scream with pain. He drinks their blood…"