Davina looked out over the gold-dappled surface of the great Firth of Clyde. She’d read about its importance during the Battle of Largs, when the Vikings were driven back from their brutal ambitions, but she had never hoped to see it, and never this close. Riding along the coast would be difficult at times, Rob had told her, but the tide, in most places, would wash away their tracks. Davina certainly had no objections. She’d never seen such a grand body of water before, or the sky swathed in ribbons of scarlet and gold as the sun slowly descended. She should have grown sleepy against the cushion of Rob’s supple muscles behind her, especially when he tucked her closely to him beneath the wrappings of his plaid, but her heart thrashed wildly in her chest at the sights and sounds around her. Her breath caught at a school of distant harbor porpoises breaking the surface to soar across the horizon. Their freedom touched her with a poignancy that blurred her vision and made her throat burn, for she shared their exhilaration. Thundering along the sandy shore, Davina let the cool wind shed her of the weight of her existence, her past, her future. She was leaving it behind with the aid of a man who had fought his way through flames and six enemy soldiers to rescue her. For the first time in more years than she could remember, she felt safe. Truly safe. Her mind tried to argue that those who wanted her dead could still find her, but when she voiced her concerns for his family to Rob, he vowed that Gilles would die by his hand should the Admiral ever dare step foot on MacGregor land. He swore to protect her, and even more meaningful than that, he wanted to. It was a wonder she had never dared to hope for.

Of course, she worried that poor Edward believed he’d failed her. She offered him her most tender, thankful smile each time she found him looking at her that day. Her dearest friend had fallen on the battlefield because he’d fought too many alone, and for too long. Yet even wounded and exhausted he’d risen from the ashes to find her. No, Edward had never failed her, but he’d never given her hope before.

Rob did.

She smiled and drew out a soft, cleansing sigh as the sun went down with her eyelids.

She was awakened a short while later, cradled against Rob’s chest as he strode on foot toward a small clearing. She couldn’t see him but she knew his strong arms held her, his steady heart beat near hers. Only when he set her down—and he did so as gently as his size would allow—did she feel exposed to elements around her.

She sat up, meaning to do her part and help build the camp, but he stopped her with a husky order. “Sleep, lass.”

She couldn’t, not when the freedom from worry of what tomorrow might bring had been awakened. She even smiled at Will when the first spark from his birch bark became a flame. He winked at her in response and she rolled her eyes.

“You’re faring well through all this, my lady.” Edward folded his legs at her feet and handed her a small bundle tied at the top with string.

“What do I have to fear when I am in the care of such courageous”—she opened the sack and pulled out a generous hunk of black bread—“and thoughtful men?”

“It’s pleasing that you think so of me,” he said, then lowered his voice so that only she could hear. “But there is something I feel must be told between us.”

He looked ill and Davina suspected what he wanted to say to her. She knew he loved her. She knew how difficult it must be for him to see her riding with Rob. But Edward knew her well, and perhaps he saw even more. She couldn’t bear the thought of hurting him and reached her hand out to comfort him.

“Edward, I—”

“Is that black bread?” Finn bent to have a closer look at her lap.

“It is, young sir,” Edward answered him. “And there’s honey to go with it.”

In the firelight, Finn’s eyes flickered with a hint of wickedness as he turned them on Edward. “Did ye pilfer it from the nuns, then?”

“No.” Edward returned the boy’s smile, seeming to forget the grim talk he wanted to have with Davina. “You have a familiar look to you, lad,” he said while Davina tore off a chunk of bread and handed it to Finn with the sack.

“My brother is Captain Connor Grant,” Finn told him, settling in close to Davina and squeezing the honeycomb over his bread. “Mayhap ye know him.”

Edward thought about it then shook his head. “I don’t. But I have not left St. Christopher’s in the last four years. I don’t know many of the other captains.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Finn glanced up at Rob, about to sit at Davina’s right. “I don’t resemble Connor, do I, Rob?”

Davina glanced at Rob to find him staring at Edward with a scowl so dangerous it would have frightened away the moon had he looked up at it.

“Rob?”

He blinked his gaze to Finn and his jaw twitched before he spoke. “Aye lad, ye do, but ye resemble yer mother more.”

“Aye,” Finn agreed and gave Colin the sack when his friend joined them. “Connor looks more like our uncle. Him, ye most likely have heard of, Captain Asher.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Because he was King Charles’s High Admiral, and now he is King’s James’s.”

“A word o’ caution, Asher.” Will slid down the trunk of a thick oak and caught the wedge of cheese Rob tossed him. “Once Finn begins speakin’ aboot his kin in the King’s Army, he’s likely to go on all night.”

But Edward wasn’t listening to Will. He was staring at Finn, his dark eyes wide with disbelief. “Your uncle is the High Admiral?” He shook his head slightly as if he doubted the good of his ears—or his tongue for seeking confirmation. “But he cannot be.”

“Why can’t he?” Finn asked, looking a bit insulted.

“Because the king’s High Admiral is Connor Stuart.”

“Aye, I know.” Finn bit into his bread and closed his eyes. “’Tis like heaven.”

Davina could feel Edward’s eyes on her, willing her to look at him. But she couldn’t. Finn was a Stuart. Her gaze traversed his features—his pale, silky hair peeking out from beneath his bonnet; his straight, regal nose. Of course, why had she not seen it earlier? “You are a cousin to the king?” she heard herself asking.

The beautiful boy opened his eyes and set them on her. “Aye, a few generations removed on my mother’s side. My father was a close friend of the late King Charles. He helped restore Charles to the throne with the aid of…”

“Och, hell, no’ again.” Will leaned his head against the tree and closed his eyes.

Finn cast him a wounded look. “She doesn’t know the tale. And what’s so wrong about telling it? I hope someday to be as braw as my kin.”

“I think you’re very braw,” Davina told him, stretching her hand to his. She smiled when he looked at her and scooted a little closer to him. “I would like to hear the tale.”

“Hell,” Will muttered. “I’m goin’ to sleep. Colin, ye keep watch tonight.”

“But I’m…”

“Colin,” Rob cut him off when his brother tried to protest. He said nothing else as he stretched out close to Davina. He didn’t have to. Colin tightened his jaw, threw Will a cool glance, and nodded.

An hour later, Edward joined Rob and Will in their slumber. Davina didn’t know how any of them could sleep through such a wondrous tale. She could not wait to meet Finn’s mother. Oh, what mettle it took for a woman to learn to wield a sword and battle with men! And Connor Stuart, imprisoned in the Tower of London and tortured for months. Yet he too possessed the courage and resolve to withhold the information his enemies had tried to gain from him. It was no wonder Finn took such pride in his family. He had every reason to.

“What became of the man who betrayed your Uncle Connor?” she asked Finn, hanging on his every word and impatient for the next.

“James Buchanan became an outlaw. My uncle searched for him for two years and finally found him living in Suffolk under a false name. He was hanged in London with the blessing of King Charles.”

“Chilling, but justified,” Davina proclaimed, much to Finn’s delight. She studied him a moment longer in the firelight. Oh, how she liked this young man. His large, open smile was like an embrace, inviting one into his warmth. And she wanted to go. She wanted to tell him of her family, and how she had yearned for them every day of her life. But finally God had answered her most fervent prayer. How hadn’t she known before this?

She blinked, suddenly mortified at how long she’d been smiling at him. When he blushed she turned away—and looked straight into Colin’s watchful eyes.

“Ye’re an odd lass,” he said, crouched on his haunches beyond the crackling embers. Davina wanted to look away, but the power in his gaze held her still. “Why d’ye have such interest in things that dinna’ concern ye?”

“But they do concern me,” she countered, trying to muster the control she now knew ran through her veins.

She had misjudged this quiet, unassuming lad. First by thinking him any less striking than a dark stallion on the verge of charging. Second, by forgetting that he was there, speaking little and observing more. “They concern us all, do they not?” She forced a smile, aware that she had to be more vigilant with this one.

“Nae, no’ all. Most lasses I know concern themselves with cooking and sewing. Most lasses I know”—he looked her over with suspicion searing his green eyes to gold—“save fer my sister—and ye.”

“Rob told me of Mairi. She—”

“I know why politics concern her.” Colin stopped her before she could sway the conversation. “But why ye?”

She shifted her gaze to Finn and found that he too was waiting for her answer. “What else would you have me care about?” she asked them both quietly and looked down at her lap. “I’ve lived each day knowing that the people I loved would most likely die because of me. Nothing I ever had was tangible. Everything could change in one horrifying instant. And it did.” She looked up at them and now it was Colin’s turn to look away. “I read, Colin. I immersed myself in my lessons because what I learned belonged to me and my enemies could not touch it. And I learned about the king because I did not have a father.”

Oh, damnation, why was she going to cry now? She narrowed her eyes on Colin, angry with him for making her think on her past. “One more thing,” she said before she ended this talk. “I can cook and sew as well as any woman.”

Leaving them both staring at her, she flipped around in Rob’s direction, shoved her hands under her head, and closed her eyes.

Rob watched her beneath the moonlight. She was so close that his fingers ached to reach out and wipe away the tears escaping from under her lids. He’d heard everything Colin had asked her, and her reply. The emptiness in her life pained him to the marrow. He was fortunate to have had so much growing up, so many who loved him and who he loved in return, without fear of losing them. Gazing at her while her sweet lips moved in prayer and then as she drifted to sleep, Rob wasn’t certain which of the two was a greater loss in her life: the absence of her family, or of any sense of permanence.

“I’ll remedy it all, Davina,” he whispered, finally lifting his fingers to the curve of her cheek. “Fer God has assigned me to it.”