Holding his sword before them both, Graeme reached back and grabbed Anna by the arm. He shoved her hard.

“Get to my horse!” he shouted above the fray.

Anna’s mind was so flooded with fear that she could do naught but obey. She bolted to where the animals were tethered in the trees. The horses sidestepped wildly, their eyes rolling and their ears pulling back as the battle raged all around.

A new terror washed over her as she approached Graeme’s bay. What if she were trampled to death by the frightened beasts?

“Saddle and bridle him!” Graeme’s voice sliced through her panic. He was still backing up toward her, deflecting his attacker’s blows with his sword. As he shoved his opponent away, he darted a glance at her over his shoulder. “Now, Anna!”

There was no time to hesitate, no time to let her fears take over.

She grabbed the nearest saddle and hefted it up with a grunt. She was barely able to hoist it over the enormous bay’s high back, but the fear surging in her veins gave her added strength. With a nonsensical murmured word to soothe the horse, she bent and buckled the saddle under its belly.

The clang of Graeme’s sword against his enemy’s was growing louder. As Anna fumbled with the bridle, she dared a look in his direction. He was only a few paces away now, though he seemed to be fighting on his heels, defensively batting away his attacker’s advances.

Fingers trembling, Anna secured the bridle on the horse’s head and looped the reins over his neck.

With a sudden surge of strength and speed, Graeme went on the offensive, slashing out against his enemy. In two strokes, he’d overpowered the bandit, delivering a deadly slice across the man’s neck.

Graeme spun and bolted toward her as fast as his limp would allow.

“Grab hold of the pommel,” he ordered.

Anna wrapped both hands around the saddle’s pommel. One of Graeme’s big, rough palms was suddenly under her bottom, pushing her with great force up and onto the saddle.

His sword still drawn and dripping with blood, Graeme swung up behind her.

“MacKay!” Jerome’s bellow cut through the chaos and roar of the battle.

Anna’s gaze landed on Jerome, who stood in the middle of the melee. He, too, held a bloodied sword, and several of the bandits’ bodies lay sprawled around him.

To her relief, Anna noticed that her Munro and Ross guards were all still standing, whereas their attackers’ numbers were beginning to thin.

“What the bloody hell are ye doing, MacKay?” Jerome shouted, his dark eyes blazing with fury.

“I’m getting her out of here—to safety!” Graeme barked back.

With no further hesitation, she felt Graeme’s legs squeeze into the horse’s flanks. He slapped the reins with one hand, still brandishing his sword in case any of the bandits attacked them as they fled.

The bay surged forward, eager to escape the noise and turmoil of the skirmish.

Anna clung tightly to the pommel as the night-darkened forest blurred around them and they sped onward. Her heart hammered in time with the horse’s pounding hooves, but as they drew farther from the melee, her fear drained away. Graeme was warm and solid behind her. She knew in her very bones that he would never let any harm befall her.

Time seemed to bend as the horse galloped on through the shadowed woods. She had no idea how long they’d been riding, but it must have been a long while, for when Graeme reined in the bay, the animal’s flanks rose and fell rapidly with his hard breathing.

Anna realized with a start that sometime during their wild flight, the fierce summer storm had ebbed. Only a light misting drizzle lingered in the air.

With a grunt of pain, Graeme dismounted behind her. He wiped his bloodied blade on the rain-dampened moss and re-sheathed it at last.

“I think we lost them,” he said. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet forest, whose only sounds were the horse’s breathing and the muted whisper of the soft rain in the trees.

“Wh-who were those men?” Anna asked.

“Bandits, most likely,” Graeme replied. “They wore no clan colors, and if they had succeeded with their surprise attack, they probably would have happily gutted us all and taken aught of value they could.” Graeme’s gaze scanned the forest around them. “In these times of war, men grow desperate—and overconfident. Some seek to capitalize on the chaos that war brings by attacking supply convoys or even soldiers who are equipped by the King.”

“Why?” Anna asked, shaking her head in confusion. “We are all Scots, arenae we? Why would those bandits seek to harm and steal from their own?”

Graeme’s gaze lifted to hers. “Aye, we are all Scots, but that hasnae stopped us from unending in-fighting. Just look at our clans. The MacKays and Rosses have no true quarrel, but our alliances and feuds with other clans means that we cannae—”

He cut off sharply, and Anna wondered what his next words would have been. Was he only thinking of the fact that their clans couldn’t seem to get along, or that the two of them couldn’t be together?

Graeme cleared his throat. “A few desperate or greedy men will always try to prey on others. Thank God we were no’ all asleep when they struck, else we may no’ have made it out alive.”

Anna swallowed. “Aye. From what I saw just before we fled, it looked as though the Rosses and Munros had the upper hand.”

Graeme nodded, then moved beside the horse to mount once more. “I saw that too. We’d best make our way back to them. Jerome will have my hide for riding off with ye, but I could think of no other way to keep ye safe.”

He paused, his right foot in the stirrup and his left supporting all his weight. His hand dropped to his right thigh and massaged it for a moment. “Damned cursed leg,” he muttered.

Sadness and shame washed through Anna—sadness for all that Graeme had been through, and shame that he assumed she would love him any less over an injury he’d earned serving their King. There was so much more to explain. Her heart ached with the need to reassure him that his wound meant naught to her.

“Stop,” she said just before he boosted himself into the saddle.

He froze, looking up at her, his eyes dark and unreadable in the moonless night.

Without waiting for his assistance, she lifted her leg over the bay’s neck and slid to the ground with a little grunt.

“What are ye—”

“I need to finish what I started to say,” she replied. “Just before the bandits attacked, I told ye I wrote back to ye.”

Graeme stilled, his eyes flickering with sadness. “Ye neednae go on, lass. I ken that ye cannae change things now—neither of us can. As I said before, mayhap yer father was right—mayhap it is best to let this die once and for all.”

She stared up at him, her throat growing tight. “It matters to me,” she managed at last. “If naught else, I need ye to ken the truth of things. It breaks my heart to imagine what ye must have thought, what ye must have been through in the Bruce’s camp as ye waited to receive an answer from me.”

Graeme let out a long, slow breath. At last, he nodded reluctantly. “Verra well, then.”

Taking the horse’s reins in one hand and Anna’s elbow in the other, he guided them toward two large trees that would provide shelter from the drizzle.

As Graeme tethered the horse under one of the trees, Anna found a dry patch of old pine needles beneath the boughs. The two trees’ branches overlapped and wound together like embracing arms, forming a dense bower overhead that completely blocked the rain.

Graeme lowered himself beside her, extending his stiff right leg as he did.

In the misty dimness, her eyes found his and warmth swept through her veins. Her heart hitched, thumping against her ribs. She shouldn’t let herself feel so much for him, for her life was not her own anymore. Yet her body responded of its own volition to his nearness.

“Ye cannae know how much yer missive meant to me,” she began, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I read it over and over. If the touch of my eyes on the parchment were the same as the touch of a hand, the ink would have been rubbed away by now and the parchment turned to dust. Thank God it was no’.”

Anna slid her hand inside her cloak and placed it over her heart. Blessedly, the stout wool had kept the bodice of her gown dry. She pulled Graeme’s missive from beneath her shift and began unfolding it.

“Ye…ye kept it?” Graeme murmured, his gaze widening on the square of parchment.

“Aye. I hid it against my heart all this time,” she said, the missive trembling in her fingers. “I dinnae even need to read it anymore, for the words are emblazoned on my heart.”

Still, she finished unfolding it and extended it toward him to prove her words.

“I wept tears of sorrow to read what ye had been through with yer leg,” she said, “and tears of joy when ye laid yer heart bare and asked me to be yer wife.”

Slowly, he took the missive from her and scanned it. He let out a ragged breath.

“It feels like a lifetime ago that I wrote these words,” he said. He lowered the missive, staring out into the darkened trees. “I was a fool.”

The words were softly spoken, but Anna did not miss the bitter edge they held.

“Nay, Graeme, ye werenae.”

“Aye, I was. I was a fool to think that love could overcome our clans’ dislike of each other, and the fact that yer father wanted the Munro Laird for ye, and…and this.”

He cast his hand over his extended right leg, his sandy brows lowered and his mouth pinched into a frown.

She caught his wrist before he’d finished the gesture. “Listen to me, Graeme MacKay, and listen well. I dinnae care a lick what state yer leg is in—or whether ye have legs at all.”

His startled gaze met hers. He blinked, then opened his mouth to respond, but she went on before he could form some other reason against her loving him.

“The news of yer injury had naught to do with my engagement to Laird Munro, or the fact that ye never received a missive from me. As I told ye, my father made the arrangements with Laird Munro and forbade me from writing to ye. But that doesnae mean that I didnae try. Or that I loved ye any less because of yer wounded leg—and I can prove it.”

She reached into her bodice once more and removed the second missive she kept there.

“Read it,” she said, extending the missive toward him.

He took it with a wary glance at her, then unfolded it and smoothed it out on top of his missive to her.

His eyes scanned the words she knew by heart. She’d told him how frightened she’d been at the thought of losing him—not just to the injury, but to anything that threatened to separate them. That feeling of certainty that she never wanted them to be parted, she’d written, made her love him even more deeply. And it was because of that certainty that she could say without hesitation that…

“…Ye accept my proposal to be wed,” he said out loud.

“Aye,” she replied, her throat tight with emotion. “I accepted ye. There is yer proof that I didnae stop loving ye once I learned of yer injury, or set ye aside unfeelingly when my father arranged for me to wed Laird Munro instead.”

Graeme’s eyes captured hers, and she saw pain war with love in their green depths.

“Damn it all,” he murmured a heartbeat before his arm snaked around her waist and pulled her against his chest.

He dropped his head, and suddenly he was kissing her.