I’ll keep ye safe, lass. The Highlander’s whispered promise echoed through Davina’s thoughts while she watched his companion, Will, yank the tip of an arrow out of his shoulder.

Soft golden light from the setting sun filtered through the sparse canopy above their small campsite and fell on the man Davina assumed was the troupe’s leader, the man who pulled her from the flames, the one who swore to protect her. His companions had called him Rob. He was taller than the others, or perhaps it was his air of control, even as the wooden shaft tore through his flesh, that made him appear bigger, stronger, and capable of anything.

But could he… would he truly protect her? She wanted to believe that he meant it, because every single person she knew in her life was dead, and if Rob was her enemy disguising his purpose, then there was nothing more to hope for.

But she was no fool. Edward and more than a hundred of his men had not been able to protect her, though they had tried. Certainly four Highlanders, two of them barely even men yet, would fall even quicker. Or would they? Saints, but they were savage looking, with their bare knees and huge swords dangling from their hips. What were they doing at St. Christopher’s? Were they truly bringing her someplace safe, or to her enemies? Either way, she could not stay with them. If they were innocent, she would likely get them killed. She could ask them boldly if her enemy had sent them but they would not tell her the truth.

Grief clouded her thoughts, but not enough to make her trust the one who might or might not have rescued her. How had her enemies found her even before the coronation? Someone had informed them. But who?

The sisters had never kept the truth from her. Davina knew why she had been taken from her mother’s arms as a babe, abandoned by her father, and sent off to St. Christopher’s. She understood the value of her existence, for twice now it had cost her everything she loved. When Edward had arrived at the Abbey from King Charles’s court, he had told her of the men who sought her demise. And dear God, there were many. Though his warnings birthed a fear in Davina that was almost palpable, she understood his reasons for telling her. Ignorance of one’s foe was as dangerous as facing them on a battlefield. And so, she lived in uncertainty and unease, always aware of the danger around her.

In the fading light, she watched Rob walk toward the pebbly brook and bend to the water’s edge where she’d washed the soot out of her own hair earlier. He scooped some water up in his hands to wash his face. His wound needed cleaning, but Davina was thankful that he didn’t remove his clothing to bathe. She had lived among many men in her life, but not a single one of them emanated such raw strength as this one, nor were any of them as broad of shoulder as he. She was certain it was the primitive belted plaid swinging about his bare knees when he stood to his feet that helped accentuate the comparison—the dusty skins wrapped around his calves—one, with the hilt of a dagger sticking out of it—that bore testimony to his vigor. This man spent his days doing more than sitting idle with his comrades, drinking and waiting for battle to come to him. Following him with her gaze as he turned from the stream and moved around the campsite, she found his gait easy and confident with the kind of pride carried by generations before him. When he angled his head to look at her and found her staring at him, she swung her gaze to a nearby tree.

“Ye know, lass,” he said, and she was aware of him moving toward her. “If my sister could be as quiet as ye are fer but a quarter of the time, she’d likely have found a husband by now.”

Squatting now before a pile of embers to her right, Will let out a low snicker. He was temptation incarnate, that one, Davina thought when he glanced at her and winked. As darkly intriguing as a wolf, with pale gray eyes and a set of fangs to match.

“Leave Mairi oot of this,” said the boy who had defied Rob so boldly when he was told to go to England. He looked to be about nine and ten, lean bodied and quite at ease on his mount on the way here. Dark, silky waves eclipsed eyes that were a dozen different shades of green and golden brown, smoldering eyes that burned with a sense of purpose almost as intense as Rob’s. “Ye both know why she hasna’ wed.”

“Aye, Colin,” Will laughed, sprinkling twigs over the building flames. “The men are afraid o’ her.”

“I believe Colin is referring to my brother Connor.”

“I am referrin’ to him, as well, Finn. Though I dinna’ blame Connor fer fleein’ to England.” Will’s eyes gleamed above the flames, playful and teasing on the young man whose visage alone had made Davina almost forget—for just an instant—the horrors of the day.

When she’d first set eyes on the one called Finn she thought it might be possible that God had sent one of His fairest, undoubtedly Scottish, angels to save her. His hair was pin-straight and almost as pale as hers beneath his bonnet of rich emerald, the same color as his eyes. He sang when he spoke and his eyes twinkled and danced like stars across Ireland’s moors. Just looking at him made her feel better. Unlike Colin, who possessed the same dark, dangerous appeal as Rob, Finn was so beautiful Davina felt pity for any young lady who fell in love with him.

“Connor’s not afraid of anything,” Finn corrected, resting his back against a tree and tossing a handful of berries into his mouth. “Why d’ye think King Charles made him a captain?”

Davina wasn’t surprised by this bit of news. The dead king was known to have taken many Scots, even Highlanders, into his army. She wondered if Edward knew Finn’s brother. Had known, she corrected, fighting another wave of emotion that threatened to spill from her eyes.

She turned away from the men and found Rob squatting before her. Dear Lord, but he made every other male, including the ones around her, look ordinary. In the dimming light she couldn’t see the gold flecks that gave fire to his vivid blue eyes, but she knew they were there. His nose was straight and classically cut, his jaw wide and shadowed just enough to lend to his rugged appearance. Beneath lips crafted, she was certain, for the sole purpose of leading women astray, the hint of a dimple defined the unyielding strength of his chin.

“Are ye hungry?”

“I should help,” she said, pushing herself off the ground.

“Ye should sit,” Rob corrected, reaching for her robes and gently pulling her back down. “We need to speak,” he said, growing more serious, “and as much as it may displease ye, ye’ll be doin’ most of the talkin’.”

Involuntarily, Davina felt her lips press together. It wasn’t safe for her to do the talking, for she tended to run on with a topic well beyond its natural end. It was because she hadn’t had anyone new to talk with, or hear about the world with in four years, that she was less cautious when she was speaking. She didn’t want to converse with this stranger, but she was going to have to find a way to avoid it without piquing his curiosity. If her enemies did not send him, he might just as easily give her up to them if he discovered her secrets.

“Whatever you like, sir,” she said, relaxing her mouth. “But before we do, I beg you let me tend to the wound in your arm.”

He sized her up with a slow, silent assessment that made her teeth itch. The force of his gaze, the sheer power of will he possessed to refuse her if he decided she was simply putting him off, sent a fissure of panic through her. In that moment, she admired Colin immensely for standing up to his disapproving scrutiny.

“Sir, I wouldn’t want you to fall ill with a fever because of me,” she added earnestly to encourage his compliance.

“Verra well,” he finally conceded, misgivings clearly etched in his features. “But dinna’ call me Sir.” He sat back, giving her leave to touch him. “I’m no’ a knight of the realm, and I’ve never been considered a gentleman.”

Davina didn’t know what to make of that declaration, or why the husky timbre of his voice when he said it sent an odd quiver down her spine. “I’ll need water,” she told him, barely looking at him, her hands folded in her lap. She wasn’t about to fall victim to a temptation that was, and always would be, denied her.

“Will.” He turned briefly to the others. “She needs water.”

“You need to shift a bit,” Davina instructed, trying to think of what he might ask her, and what she might or might not answer.

“Aye, that would help.” He smiled as he turned, scattering Davina’s thoughts like dry leaves in the wind. How could his virility be as tangible as a touch and yet his smile be so guileless and awkward—so much more honest and open than his friend’s, who appeared before them on his haunches?

“Ye’re gushin’ like a peach-faced whelp,” Will said, wearing a smirk that boded ill for Rob. “Are ye certain the fever hasna’ already come upon ye?”

Davina caught the pouch Will tossed her just before the pad of Rob’s boot struck him in the chest. A smaller man would have sailed an inch or two off the ground, but Will only landed hard on his rump and laughed.

“Go easy on him, lass,” Will said, springing back to his feet. “He’s soft,” he added over his shoulder when he was a good enough distance away to safely rest for the night.

Soft? Davina doubted it as she surveyed Rob’s back. Even draped in yards of wool he appeared as solid as the mountains in the distance. “After I’ve cleaned the wound, I’ll need your dagger to cut a few strips of fabric so that I can—”

“Ye’ll no’ be gettin’ my dagger, lass. Though I understand why ye shot me—”

“That arrow was mine?” Her eyes opened wide on him and any hope she had in him helping her faded.

“She shot ye?” cried Finn, voicing the disbelief that marked the faces of his companions.

“Aye,” Rob answered, drawing out a heavy sigh as if it was the last thing he wanted to admit. “And I dinna’ feel at ease with her holdin’ a knife to my back.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Davina argued. “I would never stab a man….” Something he’d said suddenly struck her. He’d mentioned earlier how she’d almost killed him, but she’d been too grief-stricken to catch it. “How do you know the arrow came from my quiver?” When he didn’t answer right away, another realization hit her like a cannon to her chest, making it difficult to breathe. “How do you know Edward is dead, or who he was? You were not acquainted with him, were you?”

“Nae, I didna’ know him,” he said quietly, avoiding her searching gaze.

“And you knew I was inside the Abbey.” Everything was beginning to make more sense now. Dear God, he was one of them! It didn’t matter that he was a Highlander. Her enemies were powerful men with allies in almost every country and fat enough purses to hire mercenaries if their soldiers failed. Trust no one. Her fingers balled into fists and her eyes glistened with tears. Here she was concerned about the man who likely took Edward’s life. She didn’t think about the other three watching her. She didn’t care if they killed her.

“Bastard!” She leaned over him and snatched the dagger from his boot.

His reflexes were too quick and he caught her wrist with bone-crushing strength. Before his companions even had time to gain their feet to rush to his aid, he flipped her completely over his shoulder, delivering her flat on the ground so hard it knocked the air from her lungs. Before she could roll away and run, he pinned her with his weight and halted the others with a stroke of his hand.

“Are ye bewitched? Possessed by a demon?” he demanded, his eyes on her as merciless as his fingers still squeezing into her wrist. “Is that why they want ye dead?”

“You know the answer to that,” she bit out, then swung at his jaw with her free hand. He blocked her fist with his forearm and grimaced as pain lanced up his arm to his wounded shoulder. “You killed Edward to get to me.”

“Who the hell is Edward?” Colin demanded, hovering over them both. He took one look at his brother’s dagger clutched in Davina’s fingers and bent to pluck it from her grasp.

“Captain Edward Asher,” Rob informed him, holding fast against her renewed efforts to free herself. “He was struck doun after he begged me to save her. Aye”—Rob returned his hard gaze to hers when her struggle ceased—“’Twas yer captain who told me about ye.”

Was it true? Was that why he saved her? “Edward would not have told you that I shot you.”

“His eyes did, when he saw yer arrow in my hand.”

Dear God, Edward would have recognized her feathered arrows. “What else did he tell you?” Davina asked, breathless from their fight and still wary of him.

“No’ enough, but ye’re goin’ to remedy that as soon as ye give me yer word that ye’re done tryin’ to kill me.”

“First I would hear all that Edward told you.”

He stared down directly into her eyes and hooked one corner of his mouth in a grin that sent her pulse racing. “Ye’re no’ in a position to bargain.”

“Nor are you,” she countered, trying to match his confidence. “You’re dripping blood all over my robes. When you lose consciousness neither of us will get our answers.”

Rob’s smug smirk vanished when Will chuckled above them. “She’s clever.”

Davina waited beneath her captor while he weighed his options. He could kill her so easily now and bring her body to the men who wanted her dead, but if he already knew her secrets and why she’d been hidden at St. Christopher’s, why did he insist on questioning her? Did he truly save her because Edward had asked him to? And what if Edward had told him more about her? This Highland warrior might have rescued her with good intentions, but perhaps when and if Edward told him the truth… Oh, she didn’t know what to believe, and she certainly couldn’t think with him on top of her. Saints, he was heavy, and as stubborn as a bull. Well, she could be just as inflexible. She shifted, trying to pull more air into her lungs, and became uncomfortably aware of every muscle that formed him. Though the Abbess had frowned upon it, Davina often touched the men of Edward’s regiment; a tender, light touch to an arm while she spoke, a playful shove when they teased her about her pitiful lack of skill at chess. She’d felt their bodies, but never on top of her. Rob’s weight and the heat of his body had quite a dizzying effect on her senses. She would have kneed him in his nether regions if her robes weren’t tangled around her legs.

He must have sensed her discomfort because his penetrating gaze on her softened, sending a flutter across her belly. “I’m no’ yer enemy,” he said thickly, meaningfully.

But everyone was her potential enemy. Edward and even the Abbess had made certain she understood that. She’d never had a friend because there were never any children at St. Christopher’s besides her. No villagers to chance sighting her, or hear a rumor of her existence. No one but Davina, the sisters, and a small regiment of the King’s Royal army who knew who and where she was. Everyone could be bought with coin… or fear. Anyone was capable of betraying her.

“You’re hurting me.” She broke their gaze and turned her face away from him, afraid that he might sway her from her caution.

Thankfully, he wasn’t a completely uncaring barbarian and rolled off her. The instant she was free, Davina rose to her knees and crawled backward a few inches, her eyes wide on all of them. For the moment, Colin was the only one glaring at her as if he distrusted her as much as she did them. Will was watching her with something akin to admiration curling his lips, while Finn’s cherubic expression had gone soft on her.

“Was Asher yer husband?” Rob asked, clutching his shoulder as he sat up. His expression on her was harder to read, for it was neither angry nor forgiving.

“No, he was my friend.” She felt a small pang of relief that obviously Edward hadn’t told him anything of great importance. But that still didn’t explain what Rob and his men were doing at the Abbey on the morning they were attacked. “What were you doing at St. Christopher’s?” she demanded of whoever would answer.

“I was acquainted wi’ one o’ the sisters there.”

Davina glanced up and caught the silvery sparkle in Will’s eyes behind his mop of straight, minky hair. Acquainted indeed. Did they think her so simpleminded as to believe that one of the sisters would have anything to do with such a devilish rascal?

“Sister Margaret Mary was once m’ nursemaid,” the handsome wolf told her, seeing the doubt in the quirk of her brow and easing it.

“Now I’ll ask ye the same question,” Rob said, snatching Davina’s attention back to him. “What were ye doin’ there?” He pulled on the plaid swathing his shoulders and her eyes followed the wool as it slipped down his chest.

“I lived there.”

“But Asher called ye Lady Montgomery.”

“My parents were peers. They died when I was a child and the sisters of St. Christopher’s raised me.”

He said nothing but let his eyes linger over her robes. Then, in a sterner voice, he asked, “Which duke and earl did ye speak of earlier?”

She watched him try to pull his tunic up over his belly using only one arm and failing. “The Earl of Argyll and the Duke of Monmouth.” No harm in telling him that much, since he likely knew already.

He stopped moving and looked at her, surprise and a flicker of alarm making his eyes spark like jewels in the twilight. He cut his gaze to Will. “Monmouth? King James’s nephew?”

“James is not yet King,” Davina reminded him.

Both Highlanders looked at her at the same time, but it was Rob who spoke. “And ye are no’ a novice of the Order.”

“But I am. I will take my vows next spring.”

Rob’s eyes darkened briefly as disappointment skittered across his features. Just as quickly, his resolve hardened, along with his jaw. But the flash of something soft in him was a thousand times more dangerous than his friend’s effortless charm.

“Monmouth and Argyll have both been exiled to Holland,” Colin said over the crackle of flames.

Davina nodded. “And it was their Dutch army who attacked us.”

“Why do they want ye dead?”

She turned to Rob when he asked the question. What if he truly didn’t know? She wanted to believe that he didn’t, that he’d saved her for no other reason than he was a decent man. She did not know the world or how to stay alive in it on her own and needed someone to help her, just for a little while. That moment of vulnerability she saw in him tempted her to trust him.

“’Tis ye they were after, aye, lass?” he continued when she remained silent. “All the sisters were killed with the hope that ye were among them.”

Davina swiped a tear from her cheek at the stark truth of his words. They were all dead because of her.

“Why? Who are ye?”

“I am no one.”

Oh, how she wished it were true. She would give anything, anything to have it be true.