For two days Rosalind slept on the cold, hard ground. Even the sacks of grain had been better than this. Shivers racked her body beneath the thin blankets her brothers had packed. Mostly she just lay there, aching for someone she no longer had. Or, if she was brutally honest with herself, had never had. And every moment she despised herself for that weakness.

I shouldn't long for a man who viewed me as nothing more than a pawn.

When she closed her eyes and curled up in ...