“But he’s been gone for days!” Beitris said, worry evident in her tone. She stood in the middle of the main room of the stone house, her fingers tightly clutching her kirtle, feeling an unusual urge to hit something, anything. Her father had long warned her about her temper, but at this moment, her father, decorum, and ladylike behavior were the furthest thoughts from her mind.

“He does not need watching after, Beitris,” Elspeth said from one of the chairs in front of the old fireplace. “He is a grown man. A warrior. A soldier. A fighter.”

“But he—he’s out there alone!”

Elspeth sighed. “Ye know I’m not terribly fond of the man, Beitris, but he is a man. Ye are nothing but a woman, and one without sight.” She moved to stand beside Beitris and placed a gentle hand on her arm. “I do not say that to hurt ye, ye know I never would. But what do ye think ye can do? How do ye think ye can help him?”

Beitris turned to the sound of her friend’s voice, frustrated that all she could see was a dark wavering shadow against a dark gray background. She’d often been frustrated by her blindness, but never so deeply as this. Combined with worry, her worst possible fears constantly racing through her head, she needed to do something. Anything!

“Beitris, ye must settle yerself.” Elspeth tried to guide Beitris to a chair, but she proved stubborn and remained where she stood.

“Elspeth, I have a bad feeling. I fear that he’s been wounded. He could be lying out there, dying, and—”

“And what, Beitris? How could we possibly find him? Look what happened on our way to the village. Two women riding alone in the woods? It just isn’t done!”

“But what if something has happened to him?”

Elspeth groaned in frustration and copied Beitris, stomping her own foot on the floorboards with a thud. “And what if it has? What could we do? We are not trained soldiers, we have no weapons with which to fight. We have no skills, and I daresay it would be a struggle for either one of us to swing a sword. So, ye tell me, Beitris. What exactly is it ye propose we do?”

Both women frustrated, Beitris groaned, disgusted at her weakness, her inability to help Alasdair. “I don’t know, but I’ve got to do something!”

Elspeth said nothing for several moments. Beitris heard the silence, knew her friend was watching her, studying her. “What?”

“Yer growing fond of him, aren’t ye? Yer falling in love with him.”

For a second, Beitris prepared to protest, to tell her friend she was silly, that she was concerned, that’s all, and it was that mere concern prompted that empty feeling in her chest at the thought of something bad happening to Alasdair. Was her growing fear merely the thought of being alone again, having to move back home with her father, or perhaps in with Elspeth at her small cottage? Was it her fear of nobody else wanting her, no one wanting to be burdened with her care for the rest of their lives?

Nay, and it wasn’t just a sense of gratitude that Alasdair had married her, either. He had been forced into it, much as she had. But he’d made the effort. Made an effort to fix the stone house to make sure she didn’t catch a chill in the evening, who acquiesced to her desire to have furniture in a certain spot and not move it. He didn’t baby her, didn’t treat her like she was an invalid. He had shown patience, taking his time, telling her about every wall, every corner, every creaking floorboard in the house. He had gently held her elbow as they roamed the yard those first few times, telling her where clumps of shrubbery grew, when the land dipped, giving her steps as measurements that she could imagine in her head. He’d cleared a path for her from the house down to the edge of the lake, and she knew that the day that she and Elspeth were attacked, he had been preparing a large garden plot for her and was working out an irrigation system to save her work.

Elspeth was right. She turned her friend had nodded. “I am… I have,” she said, her voice filled with wonder. “I know ye don’t like him, Elspeth, but—”

“I apologize for that, Beitris,” Elspeth broke in softly. “I didn’t think that he would appreciate ye. I didn’t think he would want to be troubled with ye, that he would treat ye like ye deserved to be treated. While I’m still not sure about all of that, I do admit that he’s treated ye fairly, not like a burden, not like someone who needs to be watched after every moment.”

Beitris smiled. “Ye like him too, don’t ye?”

Elspeth merely mumbled a reply, then turned toward the kitchen area.

She knew that Elspeth wouldn’t answer and turned toward the front door. “I’m going to gather the eggs. Maybe we can bake some bread today.”

She didn’t receive a reply but didn’t really expect one either. She reached for the wicker basket left beside the front door, clutched it in her hand, opened the door, and stepped outside. She felt the early morning mist in the air, which usually dissipated by midmorning, sometimes hanging on until almost noon. The air smelled fresh, wet with moisture. To her left, down near the lake, she heard the soft quacking of ducks. In the trees near the wood line, the chattering of birds, and from in the house, Elspeth’s soft humming.

She stepped toward the small hutch that Alasdair had built for the hens and the rooster that Elspeth had brought from her home, knowing she had exactly twenty-five steps from the front door to the small fenced-in area. She had gone maybe fifteen steps when she paused, her head tilted, a frown marring her brow. Her hand tightened on the handle of the basket, and it took several moments for her to realize what had prompted her to stop.

The birds. They weren’t chattering anymore.

In the stable, she heard the soft shuffling of the horse munching hay, a swish of his tail, the stomp of a hoof. She turned her face toward the wood line, her eyes squinted, as if she tried hard enough, she could see what was out there. Suddenly, she heard a fluster of movement as birds took flight from the trees. Silence.

“Elspeth!” she called softly. Moments later, she heard Elspeth’s footsteps on the wood floor and her voice from the threshold.

“What is it, Beitris?”

“What do ye see out there? Is anybody coming?” Her heart raced. “Do ye see any riders?”

Nothing for several moments, and then Elspeth answered. “Nay,” she said, approaching Beitris. “I don’t see anything. What’s the matter?”

“No birds.”

“What?”

“The birds were chattering, and then they took flight, over there by the wood line.” She started to move in that direction. Elspeth grasped her hand and warned her about clumps of moor grass in her way. They had gone maybe thirty steps away from the house toward the wood line when Elspeth suddenly gasped.

“What is it? What is it, Elspeth?” Beitris asked, swallowing thickly, eyes wide, heart racing.

What if those men had come back? They had no weapons. Nothing. They’d be caught in the middle of a field, nowhere to run, no shelter, no—

“I think… I think it’s a body, Beitris! Wait here!”

Beitris cried out in protest as Elspeth left her side. She heard her friend rushing forward, stopping maybe another twenty steps further on. She heard Elspeth gasp again in surprise and then her voice, tremulous and filled with fear as she muttered something. Before she could speak again, Beitris moved forward, shuffling her feet close to the ground, knowing she needed to move slowly but fighting against it, arms swinging back and forth to make sure she didn’t run into anything. She knew she wouldn’t, but it helped maintain her balance as well.

“What is it?” she asked, having only taken five or six steps. “Elspeth! What is it?” Her fears overcame her, and she knew the answer before Elspeth even replied.

“It’s Alasdair,” Elspeth said, her voice choked. “He’s terribly wounded. He’s alive, Beitris, but he’s in very bad shape!”

Beitris froze, a hand clapped over her mouth in horror, but then she recovered, and as quickly as she dared, she moved forward. Elspeth’s hand reached for her and guided her down onto her knees. Her heart pounding now, her brain refusing to comprehend, she placed her hands down on the ground, felt Alasdair’s broad back and shoulders, and then her hand landed in something wet and sticky. She caught the scent of blood.

A moan erupted from her throat as she tried to assess Alasdair’s injuries. Her hands skimmed his back as she tried to find the origin of all that blood.

“Alasdair,” she groaned. “Alasdair, ye can’t die on me, ye hear me? Ye can’t! I won’t let ye!”