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brother’s eyes, Drake said, “I offer a proposition.”
    “Is there something about my face that attracts all your damnable propositions?”
    “Aye. It rather looks like mine.”
    They didn’t finish the fourth game.
    Hours later, when Stephen climbed back through the window, Drake was sitting up in bed, an empty tankard clutched to his chest and a single candle licking shadows across his bruised face. Drake’s twin swayed unsteadily. A grin swept from cheek to cheek. The flame flickered and highlighted his countenance, bruised as badly as his brother’s. A nasty cut at the hairline had swelled into a lump. His ear was mashed. His nose oozed blood. His chin was discolored. His cheek was scraped. And his jaw appeared disjointed, though it worked well enough when he pulled a tankard out from his tunic, tipped it back, and drank thirstily.
    “Is that how I look?” Drake said.
    The empty tankard clanked onto the floor. Stephen put a finger to his lips and shushed himself before saying, “Aye, dear brother.”
    Drake caught him before he fainted dead away. Clutching his brother, he laughed himself silly while trying not to rouse the rest of the household.
    “As you see, I would do anything for my brother.” Drake’s proposition to Stephen earlier that evening had been to pick a fight with anyone but himself. Stephen gripped his side and moaned. “Now what?”
    “You get into bed.”
    “Is that all? Expected it would be more dire than that.”
    Drake relieved him of his belt and scabbard and the bundle he clutched firmly in his hand. “Who did you pick the fight with?”
    “Who else? Drogo Atwell. Something I have to tell you.”
    “It can bide.” Drake used a damp cloth to wipe away the blood.
    “You should know …”
    “Stop talking. You’re spitting blood onto Nelda’s counterpane.”
    Swallowing their laughter, they shushed each other until a wave of nausea gripped Stephen. Drake propped him over the basin. When he finished, Stephen collapsed against the pillows.
    “I know you were the fifth man,” Drake said simply.
    Stephen’s eyes fluttered open.
    “You gave yourself away when you told William the odds were five-to-one.”
    “I did, didn’t I, dolt that I am.” He saw the humor and laughed despite spasms and twinges. “I deserved this beating. My punishment. Your revenge. And you didn’t have to lift a finger.” He chortled again through groans of pain. “Am I forgiven?”
    “Not until you tell me everything.”
    Stephen didn’t know any more than Drake. Trapped with enraged men out for blood, he dared not come to his brother’s rescue. Had he, he likely would have received the same thrashing. “So after everybody went above stairs to drink themselves into oblivion, I talked them into bringing you out when it was dark and hanging you in the woods.”
    “That was thoughtful.”
    “Please, Drake. I feel bad enough.”
    Whenever they got into fights, Drake was the one to hold a grudge and Stephen the one to beg for forgiveness. He needed it now. It would have to wait. “Go on.”
    “I … I didn’t believe they’d really hang you. It was just the drink talking. But I convinced them they wouldn’t want to leave any evidence behind for others to find.”
    “Eminently logical.” Of the two, Drake was the rash brother who reacted without thinking whereas Stephen was the rational brother who always thought ahead, sometimes with frustrating observance.
    “And I …” Stephen faltered. “I was thinking of father. I could have gone for him, but I was afraid of what he might do. To storm Twyford Castle would have brought vengeance upon the fitzAlans. You know the Twyford clan. They would have stopped at nothing to eradicate every fitzAlan in the county, and damn the consequences. And I …” He faltered once more. “… was worried what father would think of me. What you would think of me. I wanted to bring you out myself. To … to make up for my cowardice,” he said at last. As to