After two days in a light carriage journeying over roads pocked with late-winter’s displeasure, it was too much to expect Tabitha to remain calm, but she made a valiant effort.

Arriving finally at Kallin, the greeting they received was not, however, what Amarantha hoped.

“His Grace is no’ in residence,” the young woman at the outermost gate said firmly. She had yellow hair plaited tightly beneath a straw hat, and she wore a long coat, heavy boots, and lines of worry across her pale brow.

“Yes, indeed, for he is currently at Haiknayes,” Thomas said cheerfully. “He has sent us here with instructions to await his arrival.”

It was the story Amarantha and Tabitha had told him. Though he was clearly suspicious of it, he had assisted them without question.

“Fret not,” Amarantha said when they had turned back toward Glen Village. “They will give us warm welcome at the Solstice Inn.”

Mary Tarry, the keeper of the Solstice Inn, showed no surprise at Amarantha’s elegant gown, costly bonnet, or fine kid gloves. Instead she received their party with the same forthright welcome she had given Anne Foster months earlier.

“Welcome back, Mrs. F—”

“Garland,” Amarantha supplied.

“Mrs. Garland it is,” she said with a wise eye. “I’ll have refreshments in the parlor for ye an’ yer companions immediately.”

Amarantha glanced at her friends. Thomas was directing Plum in the distribution of luggage to their bedchambers.

“That would be lovely, Mrs. Tarry,” she said quietly. “But I would prefer a spot in the corner of your kitchen.”

Mary Tarry smiled reluctantly. “I’ve no doubt, lass.”

It was clearly a rare occurrence: the local laird striding into the inn’s kitchen and spearing every person there with the dark fire in his eyes. Everybody—from the cook plucking chickens, to the maid stirring a pot, to the inn’s fiddler plucking a tune, to Sophie sharing news with Amarantha as she sewed an exquisite undergown—everybody halted their activities and stared.

Kilted about the hips in dark blue tartan, he stood with muscular legs firmly braced as though on the deck of a ship. The sight of his half naked calves sent Amarantha’s pulse into an aggressive canter.

“Where is she?” he snarled.

“I am here, Urisk,” she said, setting beside the inkpot her pen with which she was writing a letter to Kallin’s steward. She did not stand; her wobbly knees might not support her, and she was through with cowering from any man’s displeasure.

He came forward and towered menacingly over the table. Then, as though only now noticing the stillness of all but the stew noisily bubbling in a pot over the hearth, he waved his hand.

“Be about your business,” he said less harshly.

When the others had renewed their fiddling and chatting and stirring, Amarantha spoke quietly.

“Why have you come here? Your guests at Haiknayes—”

“The devil take the lot o’ them.”

“That is what people are saying, of course.”

There was laughter behind the disquiet in his eyes.

“If you intend to read me a particularly long lecture,” she said, “it would probably be best done elsewhere. Everybody here was happy until just a moment ago.”

He rounded the table, took a seat backward on the bench beside her, and looked down at her letter.

“There’s a mistake,” he said.

“What—where?” She pulled her hands away from the page. “No there is not. My penmanship is excellent.”

Under the table, he caught her hand in his. His thumb brushed over her palm. Pleasure scurried straight up her center.

“’Tis in the salutation,” he said, stroking again.

“Oh?” It was difficult to make sound without air, and even more difficult to lift her attention from where the plaid dipped between his thighs. She dragged her eyes upward.

“Aye.” Resting his gaze upon her lips, he traced the tip of his thumb up the inside of her forefinger. The fluttering reply between her legs shot her eyes wide. Slowly, one edge of his lips curved upward. It was the roguish grin of years earlier, but tempered now. There was no teasing in it, only pleasure.

Another of her fingers was thoroughly caressed beneath the table.

“What is the mistake in the salutation?” She could barely whisper as his thumb trailed up the tender inner skin of her third finger.

“It shouldna be dear sir,” he said, holding her hand with only his fingertips against her palm and the pad of his thumb over the base of her ring finger where, five years earlier, she had worn her betrothal ring.

“Shouldn’t it?” she said.

“It should be dear Miss Finn.”

Cassandra Finn was steward of Kallin?

He released her hand and rested his upon his thigh.

“When did you arrive?” she said.

“Night before last. They didna tell me o’ your arrival till this morning.”

“So His Grace was actually in residence when we sought entrance yesterday?”

“Aye. Hard asleep after a night spent in the lambing barn.”

“The Laird of Kallin and master of Haiknayes not only repairs roofs and chops wood, he also brings lambs into the world?”

“’Tis my understanding the ewes do most o’ that work.”

“I daresay,” she said.

“In truth, I know little o’ sheep. The farmers lambed. I carried an’ repaired. After swabbing decks an’ hauling cargo, barn work seems a holiday,” he said with an almost-smile. She wanted to reach up and caress it. And then she wanted to put her lips on it. “The estate’s a wee bit shorthanded.”

“And you supply labor, yourself, wherever needed?”

“Aye.” His gaze scanned her face. “When I’m no’ otherwise occupied with a beautiful woman on a rooftop.”

“From ship captain to duke to devil to farmhand. What will you attempt next, I wonder.”

“In fact these past few days I have been considering a new venture.”

“Have you? Mercantile, no doubt. This must mean you have finalized your business partnership with Mr. Tate.”

“The venture I have in mind requires a different sort o’ partner altogether.” He bent his head. “Why did you leave Haiknayes without word?”

“Mrs. Aiken’s pursuer,” she said, curling her fingers around the lingering sweetness he had produced there, “is your cousin.”

His brow dipped. Then he took up her letter and tucked it into his coat pocket.

“Come, lass,” he said, standing. “’Tis time you had a tour o’ Kallin.”

He commanded a light carriage from the Solstice’s stable and drove her and Tabitha into the glen and up the narrow road along the river. Unlike in October, the birches were now entirely bare of leaves, no snow blanketed the valley, and the rusty red and emerald of the hills rising to either side were stark. Yet it was the same untamed, peaceful beauty through which Amarantha had walked a dozen times, seeking answers.

Seeking him.

Not a rigid, contained fortress like Haiknayes, Kallin was a collection of parts spreading from a central tower, a fortified manor house of stone resting comfortably amidst grazing pastures and paddocks, flanked by outbuildings and nearby woodland.

As the carriage approached, the door opened and a footman appeared, small and slender and garbed in neat breeches and coat that approximated modest livery.

Tabitha touched the top of Amarantha’s hand. The footman was brown skinned. And a woman.

“Your Grace,” the footman greeted him stiffly.

Another young woman emerged from the stable and went to the horses’ heads. With a pale face liberally coated in brown freckles, she wore men’s clothing too: trousers, shirt, waistcoat, and cap.

“Miss Pike,” the duke said to the footman, offering Tabitha his hand to descend. “Where is Miss Finn?”

“She is doing inventory with Molly in the distillery. Shall I fetch her to the house?”

“No. Leave her be. I’ll find her there.”

The foyer was broad and high, laid with a wooden floor that shone with polish, and appointed simply with a finely carved bench and a brass candelabrum on a table by the doorway.

Sophie entered behind them.

“Good day, Your Grace,” she said with a quick curtsy.

“What brings you from the village, Miss Crowne?”

“Last night I told Mrs. Aiken about the sewing machine. When you left the Solstice just now with Anne—that is, Mrs. Garland”—she grinned at Amarantha—“I saw that Mrs. Aiken went with you, so I rode up behind the carriage. Mrs. Aiken is an accomplished seamstress.” She turned to Tabitha. “Would you care to see the machine?”

“Very much.”

With a bright smile, Sophie led Tabitha away.

He took the step that brought him close to her.

“Alone, at last,” he said.

“The promised tour, Urisk?”

Amarantha stood at a window in the highest story of the central tower. The glorious glen spread out in every direction: the glistening river; the mountains rising far to the north; and the fields that stretched along the flanks of the river to the south, salted now with sheep.

“Do the residents of Glen Village come and go as they please, as Sophie just did?”

“Some.” He stood in the doorway, one shoulder leaning into the doorjamb.

They were in a parlor, sparsely furnished but lovingly, just as the handful of other rooms in the manor that he had showed her. This one included a rocking cradle near the hearth and a collection of wooden alphabet blocks. She had not yet seen an actual person.

“Do those belong to Rebecca and her little one?”

“Aye,” he said.

“But Clementine is too big now for the cradle.”

“’Tis for Miss Poultney’s wee one.”

Amarantha’s stomach felt abruptly very empty and odd.

“Maggie Poultney has an infant?”

“Aye,” he said. “Nearly six months old now.”

“Who is the child’s father?”

“The lout her father had promised her to,” he said in a low rumble.

“She did not care for her fiancé?”

“She didna care for the beatings he gave her.”

“I see. And Cassandra Finn?”

“A pious lass devoted to doing the work o’ God,” he said, moving toward her. “Like another lass I once knew.”

“Doing the work of God—here?”

Coming to stand before her, he crossed his arms comfortably. “She believes it to be.”

He seemed so settled, so entirely at ease, his gaze upon her as peaceful as the house was in its beautiful valley.

“Why are they here? And Miss Pike? And your groom, who seems to be Irish by her speech? And Sophie? And all the women at Glen Village who are loyal to you too?”

A glimmer of deviltry shone in his dark eyes.

“’Tis no’ a harem, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I probably should be thinking that, shouldn’t I?”

He smiled. “How is it, Amarantha Vale, that you know what a harem is?”

“How is it, Urisk, that you would even mention such a thing to a lady?”

“A lady who journeyed thousands o’ miles alone in search o’ a friend, then hundreds more in search o’ a scoundrel?”

“You are admitting now that you are a scoundrel?”

“I was referring to wee Luke’s father, o’ course.”

“Why . . . all of this?”

“Come,” he said. “I’ve one place more to show you.”

They left the house, the dogs trotting along with them and occasionally dashing off to investigate scents.

“How many women live here?”

He opened a gate to a footpath.

“Eight. Two have rooms at the Solstice as well. Two who once lived here stay now only in the village. The three other women who have care o’ the sheep live in the farm a half mile along the valley.”

“There is no one else here? No men?”

“None. By their request.”

“Except you.”

He chuckled. “If they could send me away forever, they would.”

To one side of the footpath a trail rose steeply beneath tree cover. “This way.” He offered his hand.

“Thank you.” She picked up her skirts with both hands. “I can manage.”

For a moment his gaze upon her was thoughtful. Then he went ahead of her up through the trees.

“I don’t suppose you are taking me to a private hideaway in order to have your wicked way with me, are you?” she said half-hopefully.

“With such a skittish filly? What would be the fun in that?”

“Skittish filly? Are you saying that I must be broken to . . . to . . .”

“To ride?” He laughed. Then in an entirely altered voice: “No. Never.” He lifted a low-hanging branch and waited for her to pass beneath. As she did, he said, “I would die before I would see you tamed, wild one.”

Swiveling her neck, she met his gaze.

On the battlements in the dark it had been so easy to fall into him. Now she hardly knew how to be with him, whether she should touch him. She wanted him, as she had years ago, with that same powerful ache. But her feet would not move forward, and her hands that needed to be on his solid, muscular strength would not obey; they were buried in her pockets.

With a deep breath, he gestured to a place beyond her shoulder.

“We have arrived,” he said.

They had come to a crumbling line of stones, the sort of old fence that wended all across Scotland, this one overtaken by woods years ago. Set against the remains of the wall was a large stone. Carved in bold capitals in the center of the stone was Sanctuary, and carved around the word were names.

“Molly,” she read, “Margaret, Pike, Cassandra, Rebecca, Zion . . . Did you make this?”

“They did, to honor my former partner’s death. I didna know it was here till my visit last fall when Miss Finn showed it to me. Her powerful sense o’ duty to me required it, I imagine,” he added, the lines deepening about his mouth. “They’re no’ all trusting. With good reason.”

“Who was your partner?”

“Torquil Sterling.”

Her fine cinnamon lashes fanned.

“Torquil Sterling? The rakehell merchant? The Torquil Sterling who lived in Kingston and Montego Bay and anywhere else on Jamaica that he could find gambling and spirits, and women unafraid to be seen enjoying both with him? The care-for-nothing man who engaged in fisticuffs with planters and tradesmen and sailors indiscriminately, for the amusement of it?”

Gabriel scratched his jaw, recalling the occasions on which Tor’s fist had collided with it for no particular reason other than the drunken foolery of young men.

“Much o’ the year, aye. When he wasna traveling.”

Her face was like an intricate map, its legend so familiar to him that he could navigate it in starlight, sunlight, and, he suspected, no light at all.

She shook her head. “They said that he ran African captives illegally under cover of sugar and indigo, that he paid custom house officials exorbitant bribes to turn a blind eye.”

“Who said it?”

Watching the thoughts pass behind her eyes, he waited for her voice that was to him like the music of the river and wind in the boughs and every church bell he had ever heard.

“Plenty of res—respectable people,” she finished, and her gaze swept him up and down.

“You’d best no’ be doing that, lass, or I’ll be stealing you to a hideaway now after all.”

She pressed her lips together and Gabriel wanted to bite them. All of her. But she was holding herself distant today again. Her words from the ramparts had seared themselves upon him like a brand: I made such a horrible mistake marrying as I did.

He must wait for the wild creature to come to him. Even if the waiting was testing every fiber of his self-restraint.

“Explain, please,” she said, pinning her attention to the stone.

“’Twas the appearance Torquil kept as a cover for what he said to me was his calling.”

“A religious calling?” she said with obvious disbelief.

“No. But a calling, nonetheless: assisting women to safety.”

“The opposite of his reputation, then.”

“Aye.”

“And you—” She stole a glance at him. “You were his partner in this?”

“One o’ them. He had others, a dozen or more, but all o’ them men an’ women o’ actual character.”

“Unlike you,” she said with a small smile. Sunlight falling between the trees struck her skin like petals of gold.

“Some in the Indies. A tradeswoman in Plymouth. A merchant in Bristol. An’ in Nantes, the man who became my partner after Torquil’s death. Good people, still busily doing what they’re able now.”

“How did you become involved?”

He leaned back against the trunk of a tree and folded his arms.

“Years ago, when I was still sailing, I had a bad night.”

“I understood you had those occasionally.” Her eyes were following a rivulet of silver water rushing haphazardly along a gully between the trees to the Irvine below.

“This night was exceptionally bad.” The worst of his life. “My cousin, Jonah, killed an innocent man.”

Her gaze snapped up to him.

“He was never tried for it,” he said. “Never punished.”

“But—You knew about it?”

“Aye, after Jonah came to tell me. He was insensible with distress. It was an accident. They fought, an’ the man fell. Hit his head.”

“Yet you did nothing?”

“The man was a cane worker, brought on ship before the law changed.”

“An enslaved man?”

“He had bought his freedom. But my cousin’s employer was a rich planter. Even had I accused Jonah publicly, he wouldna suffered for it.”

“Perhaps not, but to remain silent—You should not have.”

“Jonah was a brother to me. More than a brother. He had saved my life when we were lads. An’ . . . there was more to it.”

“What more?”

“Earlier that night I had spoken words that had nothing to do with him. Angry words. Jonah misunderstood them. Afterward, he told me that those words had given him justification to fight the man.”

“What were the words you spoke?” she said.

No one should come between a man an’ the woman he wants.

“Words unfit for a man o’ honor.” So he had sought out the only friend who would hear his confession without judgment, a rakehell with whom he drank and gamed, but whom he had not truly known until that night. “Sterling offered me a penance for the wrong I had done. He said that in helping him I could atone, an’ he made me an invitation. I accepted it.”

“He said, ‘Lieutenant Hume, help me illegally wrest abused women from their captors and hide them where they will not be found,’ and you said, ‘Of course’? Just like that?”

“Just like that, lass.”

Except he had been Captain Hume.

She backed away several steps, then pivoted about. The bracken crunched with her swift descent between the trees.

He caught up with her on the footpath. She walked quickly despite the bumpy trail, her cheeks and the tip of her nose rosy from the cold.

“I have had a thought just now,” she said as though she weren’t running away from him.

“What thought?”

“That I have occasionally been wrong.”

“You have just had that thought? For the first time?”

She halted abruptly and stared at him for an extended moment.

“For years you have done this, kept these women’s secrets, given them a safe haven away from those who wish to harm them, and all while the world has believed you to be a villain?”

“I am a villain. I’ve the dungeons to prove it.”

Her lips were tight between her teeth, her eyes aglitter.

“Come,” he said, moving away from her because if he remained he would surely do something unwise. “There’s a fine pair o’ oxen an’ a dozen new lambs in the barn on the other side o’ those pastures.”

“You imagine I wish to see these animals because . . . ?”

“No’ the animals. ’Tis the northernmost we can walk an’ still return to the house by lunchtime.”

“Why do you wish to walk north?” she said, following him, her beautiful voice light now, the nearest sound to heaven he knew.

“’Tis no’ for me, lass. ’Tis for you.”

“Then why do I wish to walk north?”

“To run as far as you can go, I imagine. Today, that is. Now, if we’d another fortnight or two, we could ride up to Inverness, then hail a boat to Orkney. You canna go farther in these islands. Though I’m no’ certain you would want to go quite that far, in truth—no’ in this season. ’Tis a punishing long boat ride, they say, an’ I hear ’tis blistering cold the entire—”

Her hand slipped around his elbow, resting so lightly upon his coat he could barely feel it. But there it was. She had taken his arm. Finally.

“Journey,” he finished with a choked throat.

Miracles were falling from the heavens like snowdrops, and it had only required a short story about the night his life had turned inside out.

“We will save Orkney for another day, then,” she said. “For now, the oxen and sheep are an excellent plan.” Her eyes were on the road ahead, her smile oddly shy.

He did not remark on it, or on the unprecedented touch of her hand. They spoke of the glen and the furnishings in the house and the dogs following at their heels and the clouds and all inconsequential matters—nothing of import, just as they had years ago when he had burned to take her hand, to hold her, to make her his, but had not allowed himself even a taste of her. Yet it felt like paradise. The spring crackled about them and the day was fine and warm as they walked as though fantasies were indeed real.

At their destination, the oxen were appreciated, the lambs cuddled, and the return walk executed with no woman’s hand tucked on his arm, instead dangling at her side, close to his. It was temptation and satisfaction at once, and insanity above all. He’d had her pleasure in his hands at Haiknayes, and now this distance again.

She was silent for some time before she spoke suddenly.

“Penny could not have come here for sanctuary.”

“No?”

“She had a large, affectionate family and many friends. She had been free since infancy, and had good work at which she made a decent income. Why would she have left Jamaica to make a lengthy, arduous, uncertain journey across a foreign land where she had no friends, if she had no need?”

“You did.”

“I was looking for her. And my family has friends in Edinburgh. At any time I might have—” Her eyes widened anew. “Good heavens, Torquil Sterling was brother to the man Constance Read wed. Before she wed him, you courted her.”

“Aye.”

“Because of her acquaintance with Torquil’s brother?”

“No. To my knowledge, he had no idea o’ Tor’s activities.”

“Oh. Then was it for Constance’s wealth or her beauty?”

“Her wealth would have been useful here.” He made a nod to the house they were approaching. “But no.”

“She is extraordinarily beautiful.”

He nodded. “’Tis what they say.”

“You will be gentlemanly oblique now. I guess that is appropriate when one breaks off a betrothal.”

“There was no betrothal. Only conversation. I never intended to wed her.”

“How odd that you courted her, then. But I suppose that is the way of exalted lairds and such.” She waved her hand as though at all the exalted lairds strewn across the pasture. “Courting this woman and that without concern for the outcome.”

“Is that what exalted lairds do, then?” he said, feeling acutely the peculiarity of speaking of this with the only woman whom he had actually intended to wed.

“She was looking for you.”

“Constance Read? No. She was no more intending to—”

“Penny. She said your name. Not Kallin. Nothing else. Only your name.” Her eyes were overly bright. “Why?”

“Your Grace!” Pike was riding toward them from the house. “Your guests have arrived in the village. Zion rode up immediately to inform you. They’re all at luncheon now, but Mrs. Tarry says they intend to continue on here after they rest.”

“I’ve invited no guests to Kallin.”

“Other than me and Mrs. Aiken,” Amarantha said.

He looked down at her and was wholly bemused. She was not a guest. She had never been a guest.

“Who are they, Miss Pike?” Amarantha said.

“His Grace’s guests from Haiknayes.”

“The party at Haiknayes has come here?”

“Miss Pike,” he said, “instruct Zion to return to the village swiftly and bid Mrs. Tarry to delay the party as long as possible. I will ride down myself immediately.”

She nodded, turned her mount about, and rode off.

“What will you tell them?” Amarantha said.

“That the house is in poor repair and they will be more comfortable at the Solstice.”

“But they will certainly wish to come up to see the house. Will you lock the gates and doors and pretend it is uninhabited? What about the sheep, and the well-used paths and driveway? They will know that you are not telling the truth.”

“I never expected this.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Kallin’s a bit out o’ the way for house parties from town, lass.”

“And Thomas will be perplexed that Tabitha and I have come here but others may not. Your cousin will find Tabitha and—It is my fault. I came here, and you followed. I did not expect it, but you came, of course, to protect the secret you have protected so carefully for years. If not for me, they would not be here. They would not have even been at Haiknayes. I have—”

“No.” He grasped her hands. “You are no’ to blame. I am, for imagining I could keep this secret.”

“I will not allow it to be ruined. Not because of me.” She pulled her hands from his and started quickly for the house. “We will simply arrange everything so it seems to be a typical house. So that they will not wish to stay long, we will make it slightly uncomfortable, dampen the bed linens and serve the food cool and be mysteriously short on things like sugar and teacups—”

“That last will be easy to pretend,” he said with a smile that tangled the nerves in Amarantha’s stomach. Even in the midst of fear and anxiety, he had always given her pleasure.

“We will hide the Sanctuary in plain sight. And in a few days they will leave here none the wiser. Once they have returned to Edinburgh and tell the story, it will even serve to prove to all that there is nothing interesting here. But there is one thing we should probably do that the residents of this house might dislike.”

“What is it?”

“I think it would be best if we found some men.”