He saw the flare of anger his words brought to her face as she jerked it out of his grasp, but instead of being touched by her courage, he was angered by it. Everything about the name Merrick infuriated him, making vengeance boil up inside him, and he grasped her pale, smudged face and jerked it back to his. "Answer me!" he demanded in an awful voice.

In her state of near hysteria, it seemed to Brenna that Jenny was somehow accepting blame that was rightfully Brenna's" and, groping at Jenny's gown, using it for leverage, she hauled herself to an unsteady, standing position, then she molded her body to Jenny's entire right side, like twins fused together at birth.

"They don't call Jenny that!" she croaked when it seemed as if Jenny's continued silence would surely bring terrible retribution from the terrifying giant before them. "They-they call me that."

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded furiously.

"She is no one!" Jenny burst out, discarding the eighth commandment in hopes that Brenna might be freed if she were believed to be a nun, rather than a Merrick. "She is merely Sister Brenna of Belkirk Abbey!"

"Is that true?" Royce demanded of Brenna.

"Yes!" Jenny cried.

"No," Brenna whispered meekly.

Clenching his hands into fists at his sides, Royce Westmoreland briefly closed his eyes. It was like a nightmare, he thought. An incredible nightmare. After a forced march, he was out of food, out of shelter, and out of patience. And now this. Now, he couldn't even manage to get a sensible, honest answer out of two terrified women. He was tired, he realized, exhausted from three days and nights without sleep. He turned his haggard face and blazing eyes on Brenna. "If you have any hope of surviving another hour," he informed her, correctly recognizing her as the most easily intimidated of the pair and, therefore, the least likely one to invent a lie, "you'll answer me now and with the truth." His rapier gaze stabbed into Brenna's fear-widened hazel eyes, imprisoning them. "Are you, or are you not, the daughter of Lord Merrick?"