For a moment he only stared at her. Then he turned away and scraped his hand over his face.

“She sailed to Leith?” he said, his voice muffled against his palm. “Directly from Kingston?”

“Yes. I questioned every sailor in port until I found evidence of the direction she had taken. Then I went after her. I did not come here to accuse you of evildoing.”

“You’d no’ be the first.”

“I came here to try to understand why, without friends or companions, and without telling anyone—without telling even me or her mother or sisters that she was with child—she traveled across an ocean to you.”

Wind through the belfry high above made a hollow whistle.

“Where is the child?” he finally said.

This she had not expected. She supposed she should have.

“He is with the farmer and his wife. The woman had only just weaned her own babe from the breast and took Penny’s child to nurse. When I told her I found this astonishing, she said that her father had helped found the abolitionist society in Glasgow, and that all of God’s children are brothers and sisters. She and her husband are good people. Penny’s son is safe.” She folded her hands.

“He’s no’ mine.”

“I did not suggest that he was, did I?”

“I didna know her. I know nothing o’ her except what you’ve told me now.”

“Fine.”

“You believe it?”

“I have no other word on the matter than yours, do I?”

It was as though no time had passed, not a year, not a month, not a day. His gaze upon her was fixed, waiting, as though he knew she withheld her thoughts. It gave her the oddest, most unsettling sensation of wanting and wariness at once. Years ago, there had only been the wanting. And pleasure. And guilt.

Now she had no guilt. Now she had purpose.

“In fact, the child is fair,” she admitted. “He is like my husband and my husband’s father. Penny was not fair. And of course you are not.”

“Babes are sometimes born fair, then turn dark later.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Perhaps my mother was fair,” he said, his eyes hooded. “Or my father.”

“I know they were not.” She could not seem to look away from the thick muscle defined by the fabric of his coat sleeves tight over his arms. Foolish, heedless flesh. “Nor your grandparents.”

“Aye?”

“It was, of course, the first inquiry I made of you after Penny’s death.”

“You’ve known it—”

“Since last autumn. Moreover, I know you were not in Kingston last winter. I have, you see, done quite a lot of research.”

His arms fell to his sides.

“Then do you think, lass, you might’ve told me all o’ this the other night?”

“At the assembly rooms?”

“Aye.”

“You did not give me the opportunity. And, admittedly, I was nervous. I was not expecting to see you. Not at that moment, anyway. It took me off guard.” As had his hand on her hip, then her buttocks, then her breast. But she needn’t admit that.

“You’re no’ nervous now?”

“A bit. You are obviously a little mad. Allowing everybody to believe you are some sort of depraved warlock is not the behavior of a sane man.” Her sweet lips were tight, as though repressing a smile. “Rather, encouraging people to believe it. I saw the book you were reading in the library that night.”

“Aye, I’m probably mad.” Where this woman was concerned, definitely. And by God if it didn’t feel fantastically good to know she did not believe the rumors about him. “But no more mad than a woman who secretly searches for a missing friend for more than a year when she might ask any o’ her own friends to help, a woman who pretends to be a peasant in a tiny village in the middle o’ Scotland when she is the daughter o’ an earl. No?”

“Do not presume to understand me,” she said, the pleasure gone from her eyes. “When I went to Jamaica I left behind everything that was dear to me. I was alone. Penny threw open her home and embraced me as a sister. She gave me another family. I have absolutely no interest in how you have spent the past five and a half years. I have long since put that curiosity behind me. I came here now to learn what Penny sought from you at Kallin, which I hoped would lead me to her son’s father, whom she was obviously searching for in Scotland. For that reason only.”

I was alone.

Judas, he’d been a fool.

Then and now. A reckless fool.

She had changed. The sincerity in her voice was the same as the girl that had driven him so mad—so irrevocably, desperately mad that it had altered the course of his life. That she was here now, standing before him, could not be real.

But the light of deviltry in the cloverleaves was gone, the spontaneous flare of joy in her smile absent. Now emotions passed across her features coolly, cleanly. He could read those emotions as though they were drawn with a fine pencil tip upon paper.

“Lass, I am sorry for your loss. Deeply sorry.”

Her lips parted.

He waited for her to speak.

She pivoted and walked into the church.

Of sober gray stone and all simplicity without, within it was carved and mellowed and ancient, almost foreign. He had not entered it since he had been a boy, not since he and his cousin had shaken the dirt of Scotland from their boots and set off to sea, to war—and other horrors of their own making.

A lamp burned before the sanctuary. In a side chapel votive candles flickered in the blue and red light filtering in through a window. He watched her walk toward the chapel, step into the colors cascading from the sky, and rest her fingertips upon the stone railing.

Tying his horse, he hesitated in the doorway. The likelihood of erupting into flames if he crossed this threshold seemed fairly high. But, by God, she was here. Whatever the reason she had come, his damn heartbeats would not slow.

He passed within. Sacred stillness coated him, bathing his ears with silence and curling into his nostrils. He walked toward her.

She dropped to her knees on the floor, folded her hands neatly before her, and closed her eyes. Splashed with the rich rainbow, her skin was not comfortably creamy, but gold and crimson and blue. He took in the drape of her gown on the bare stone floor and the heels of her boots and the hint of ankle revealed, thirsty for these details of her after the desert of years.

“Lass, there be kneeler cushions in the—”

“Hush, Urisk. I am praying.”

There was nothing for it but to go to his knees as well.

“Judas—”

“He is listening.” She glanced upward.

“This floor is bloody cold an’ hard.”

“Not unlike its overlord, I daresay.” She did not turn to him or open her eyes. He took his time studying her.

“How do you endure it?” he said.

“The cold, hard heart of its overlord? With patience and good manners.”

“Praying on your knees, on the stone.”

“Oh. This is nothing. I was married to a missionary for five years.”

“Aye.” In his own ears the syllable sounded surly. “You were an unlikely candidate for that post.”

Her face snapped toward his. The emeralds glittered with fire.

“You’re no’ married now,” he said.

She rose to her feet and left the church. Gabriel went after her. She was striding up the drive toward the castle, between the rows of trees with their nearly bare branches. But when she reached the gate she halted.

Sweeping off her hood, she looked upward.

He did not follow her gaze. Her face held him rapt. She had a pert nose upon which no powder obscured the plentiful freckles, a chin that was slightly pointed, arched brows, and lashes the length of a man’s fantasies. His fantasies. He had fantasized about her so many times, so acutely, that awaking from the musings he’d often found himself disoriented. When he did so while standing at the helm, he finally made himself halt that imbecility.

Mostly.

“What is the significance of this symbol?” she said.

“’Tis a secret.”

“Oh, please.”

“I’m no’ inventing this.” He laughed. “It is a secret.”

“A secret you will now share with me, Urisk.”

“Are you familiar with the Order o’ the Rosy Cross?”

Her brow crinkled. “The Rosy Cross?”

“The Masons.”

“There is a Freemasons lodge in Kingston. Some of Kingston’s most influential men are members, but also much less exalted men. So the lairds of Haiknayes belong to a cult?”

“A brotherhood.”

“Are you a Mason?”

“My father an’ brother were. Have I satisfied your questions?”

“Not yet. And I wish you would not call me lass. I am no longer a girl.”

“What would you have me call you?”

“Mrs. Garland.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll no’ call you by another man’s name.”

Above her right brow was a tiny scar, years old, barely pink, that he had never seen before. Her cheeks were glowing. He wanted to lay his lips on those pink peaches, one at a time, and taste their dusky heat. And on the little scar.

“What caused that scar?”

“A scratch that healed poorly. No one else has ever asked me about it.”

“I’ve no manners to speak o’.”

“When you are speaking to me, at least. With your other guests I have noticed you are remarkably gracious.”

“I want to taste it,” he said.

“It?”

“That scar. I want to taste your every imperfection.”

The glow upon her skin became a thorough flush.

“You never used to speak this way to me.”

He smiled. “I was an idiot then.”

“Do you speak to all women like this? Wait—no—I don’t want to know.”

“Aye, you do. An’ no, I dinna. Only to you, Amarantha Vale.”

“You are impertinent,” she said with a twitch of her lips that softened the chastisement.

“From the mouth o’ the most impertinent woman I have ever known.”

“I think you are trying to frighten me away.”

“Does a man’s desire frighten you?”

She drew a slow breath and visibly set her shoulders back.

“If it did, men being what they are, I would be cowering in corners daily.”

“You are wrong,” he murmured, smiling.

“About the general lustfulness of the male sex?”

“About yourself. You are still that girl.”

“I should think I would know that best. Now, do return your attention to this symbol, Urisk. The other parts of it, attached to the Freemasons’ star—What are they?”

“The flame, the mountain, the wave,” he said, unable to look away from her face.

“A tongue of fire. A mountain peak. A wave, as of an ocean. They are not diabolical symbols.” The cloverleaves were thoughtful. She had seen a world that most young English noblewomen never did. She had worked with her own hands as no other woman of privilege he had known.

He wanted to tell her the truth. The entire truth. Not even the villagers near Kallin knew all.

“Fire, earth, and water,” she said. “They are the ancient elements—three of the four—lacking only air.”

“I am familiar with the feeling.”

“You must cease this flirting, Urisk. It is not having the effect you wish.”

Slowly he drew air into his lungs, but they would not fill. Apparently having his heart trounced five and a half years earlier had done nothing to make him less of a thorough ass.

“The crossbar on the top point,” he said. “It is the symbol for air.”

“I see. But what does it mean?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t understand.” She turned her beautiful eyes to him and for a moment he was without speech.

“It means nothing now,” he finally said. It was merely a convenient symbol Torquil had chosen to help communicate the secret of safety without words. And somehow it had sufficed.

“Why haven’t you told anyone the truth about this?”

“No one has asked.”

“No one? The Hounds of Hell must be much more effective than they led me to believe.”

“When a ship’s come into bad luck an’ run through its stores o’ fresh water,” he heard himself saying, “the crew depends upon barrels to capture rain.”

“A ship?”

“The officers have first claim on that rainwater.”

“You have just changed the subject so abruptly even Iris Tate would remark on it.”

“’Tis their privilege.”

“I suppose I must play along.” She tilted her head. “As an officer, you never acted on that privilege, did you?”

“A commander who hordes what his men need to survive has no honor,” he said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “But, lass, when he finally takes a cup into his hands an’ tastes that water . . .”

“I have no idea what you are trying to say to me.”

“Amarantha Vale—”

“Garland.”

“’Tis unconscionably good to see you again.”

“If you had not barred me from Kallin last autumn, you might have seen me again much sooner.”

“Aye.”

“You will not seduce me this time, you know.”

A slow, one-sided smile curved his lips. “Is that my intention?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps not. Perhaps you simply invited me here from curiosity. Whatever the case, I have not come here for you.”

“’Tis a disappointment, to be sure.”

“One, however, that you must accept.”

“No other woman has ever spoken to me as you do.”

“They are all probably terrified of your dungeons.”

“Except you.”

“Except me.” Real dungeons were not always built of iron and stone.

“Will you leave,” he said, “now that you know I’ve no answers about your friend?”

“I promised Libby that I would assist with her project. You won’t throw me out, will you?”

“Never.”

“And I have not finished interrogating you.”

“What more will you ask?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want to know if the secret you are concealing has anything to do with Penny’s child.”

“You believe I am the devil, after all?”

“I will discover why you keep Kallin locked up tighter than a pirate’s treasure chest. And I will learn why, when Glen Village sits on a well-traveled byway, its only residents are women. Not a single man. Isn’t that intriguing?”

“It might be.”

“So tell me, Urisk, what exactly are you hiding?”