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from his own somewhat ridiculous thoughts. He found his gaze continually dropping to where her hands were. She really had lovely hands, long slender fingers, pale, unmarked skin. If he’d taken note of those, he might not have been caught so off guard by the realization that she was female. They were definitely a woman’s hands, and a woman who had not damaged them with hard labor. Being a healer, she didn’t have the dry, work roughened skin and callused fingers of the average peasant. In fact, her hands could have passed for a lady’s.
    “What are their names?” Jo prompted and Cam forced his gaze away from her hands again.
    “Aiden and Douglas,” he answered, glancing over the path ahead.
    “And they’re both younger than you?”
    “Aye. Douglas is three years me junior, he’s the eldest of the two.”
    “And Aiden?” she asked.
    “Seven years younger than Douglas. Still a lad, really, though he thinks he’s a man at fifteen,” Cam muttered dryly. “And like all youth he thinks he knows everything and is invincible.”
    “Of course he does,” she said with amusement and then asked, “Were your brothers not sent to train in the homes of other nobles? I thought that was common amongst nobility.”
    “Aye, all of us were. Father insisted. But Mother couldn’t bear us to be away long and so I was away for two years, Douglas was gone two and a half years and Aiden for three,” Cam murmured.
    “It got easier for her with each child,” Jo noted.
    “Aye,” Cam murmured and then grinned and added, “That or I was her favorite, Douglas her second favorite, and Aiden a pain in the arse she was happy to be rid of.”
    “You are awful,” Jo said on a laugh, lightly slapping his belly with one of the hands clasping him there.
    Her laugh definitely wasn’t that of a boy. It was high and tinkling. He liked it, Cam thought, glancing down again at the hands splayed on his stomach. They rested low, just inches above—
    “I gather Douglas is your favorite brother then?” Jo asked, interrupting his thoughts.
    Cam shrugged. “We are closer in age, but . . .”
    “But?” she queried when he paused.
    “We have little in common,” he admitted quietly and then explained, “Douglas is terribly serious and grim all the time, while I am not.”
    “Hmm,” she murmured, shifting against his back. “ ’Tis usually the other way around. The eldest is usually more serious and the middle child less so.”
    “Aye, and that is how it was when we were growing up,” Cam admitted.
    “What happened?” Jo asked. “When did that change?”
    Cam squinted thoughtfully as he considered the question. He’d never really troubled himself to work that out. Now he did and wasn’t sure he liked the answer to her question, but she was waiting for one, so, sighing heavily, he admitted, “After me wife’s death.”
    “Ah,” she murmured.
    “Ah?” he asked, stiffening. “Ah what?”
    He felt her shrug against his back again. “Tragedy often changes people.”
    Cam grunted, but felt dissatisfied, both with her words and the realization he’d just had. While growing up he had always taken his responsibilities and charges seriously. It had been hammered into him that he should, and so he’d been dutiful about everything, performing every task required of him . . . until his wife, Lacey, had died.
    Like him, Lacey had taken her duties seriously and had done all she was expected to without fail. Their marriage had been arranged while they’d both still been in swaddling. When their parents decided that it was time for that marriage to take place, they’d both accepted and gone into it without fuss or ado despite their being complete strangers. Lacey had dutifully welcomed him to her bed, if not eagerly, then with calm acceptance. She’d even got with child quickly, as was expected and carried the child without complaint right up until the day it had killed her. And that was when Cam had begun to throw off the