It was barely past dawn when Fergus first questioned why he’d been so insistent on riding with the lass.

While she had agreed—grudgingly so—she had obviously decided to make him as unhappy as possible in the process.

“Must we ride so slowly?” she called out over her shoulder.

“Are ye in a rush?”

“I had merely asked myself how you manage to stay awake in the saddle, riding at this pace.” She looked back at him. “I told myself yesterday that you rode so slowly because you knew I tracked you and you wished to make it easier for me.”

He rolled his eyes but held his tongue.

“I would not try to tell you how to do your business,” she assured him.

“Oh, nay,” he muttered. “Ye would never do such a thing.”

She fixed him with a cold stare. “You are so accustomed to telling me what you think I ought to do.”

“That was different, and ye know it well.”

“I know no such thing.”

“Ye are welcome to ride on your own at any time.”

“Truly?” Her eyes were wide, innocent. “That was not what you said last night, when you all but begged me to ride along with you.”

“I never begged. I’ve never begged a woman in my life, lass, and I’ve no intention of starting now.”

“You would not cease providing reasons why I ought to.” She turned around to face the road ahead. “No matter what excuse I offered, you told me why I needed to accept your company. Now, you tell me I ought to ride alone. You seem to change your mind rather abruptly.”

“Perhaps I am not changing my mind, but rather going out of it,” he muttered.

“All the more reason for you to have company on your journey,” she reasoned. “One ought to not make such a long ride on their own if they are not in their right mind. There is no telling what hardship might befall them.”

How did she continue to get the better of him?

At the very least, she worked her way into his mind and would not let him go, the questions and doubts she stirred up making it impossible for him to think clearly.

As a result, he was in a worse mood than normal.

A pity, that, since the day was a lovely one. A cloudless sky, a gentle breeze, and when they rounded a bend in the road which marked a vast, grassy clearing on both sides, the landscape opened enough that the Grampians were visible.

Some of the tightness in Fergus’s chest loosened at the first sight of the mountains, knowing his destination was within reach.

Elspeth pulled up on the reins, bringing her mare to a stop. “What is it?” he asked, ready to engage in yet another of their arguments if she so much as turned a cold eye his way.

Instead, he found her smiling. The sort of smile he would’ve expected to see on the face of a child.

Had he ever found her coarse? Perhaps a bit worn? How had he not seen the beauty in her? For when she smiled as she did now, her entire heart poured from her, lighting everything around them.

“I had never seen them,” she explained, all sauciness gone from her voice. “The Grampians.”

“Never?” For a lass who spent her life out-of-doors, she had not traveled far. “Where do you come from? Where were you born?”

“In the north.” She tapped her heels to the mare’s ribs and started off again, her eyes never leaving the far-off purple peaks. “The Cairngorns were all I had ever seen, and they are quite lovely.”

“Aye, they are that.” Even if they did mark the home of such a loathsome man as his uncle.

“But this.” She nodded toward the horizon, a wistful note in her voice. “I would wish to see more of them.”

“Ye might. I will pass through them, skirting Ben Nevis and the Duncan clan. Och, if ye think this is something, you ought to see it from Phillip Duncan’s manor house. Like something close to Heaven, if you’re believin’ in such things.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know that I do. I hope there is, but I do not know.”

“Nor do I.” Something they had in common, for once.

There were two types in the world, he had come to realize after having seen so much of it—those who faced hardship and needed to believe there was something better waiting for them after they’d died, and those who could not believe in such things because such belief had been beaten out of them.

What sort of creature might she have grown into had her hope and innocence not been beaten away?

In the end, she was not half-bad as she was. If only she would cease her endless fighting, the need to prove herself. He might even have found her bearable.

She was not entirely unpleasant to look upon, either. Riding slightly behind her as he was gave him the chance to admire the strong lean legs she’d tucked her skirts around that she might ride astride. The hem of her kirtle stopped at her knees, then, and the lass did not wear stockings.

The way she climbed trees and roamed freely around the woods would have destroyed a pair of stockings. As it was, the first thing the lass did upon making camp for the night was to remove her worn leather shoes. She preferred to be barefoot.

He would not complain at the sight of those shapely legs with their creamy flesh but reminded himself how powerful those legs were. Woe to the man who thought little of her, due to her size.

She shifted in the saddle, raising herself slightly to adjust her skirts, and he admired her fine, firm backside.

He envied a saddle for the first time in his life.

What would that firm, round flesh feel like beneath his hands?

He snorted, prying his eyes from her form. The man who dared touch the lass would touch nothing else as long as he lived for lack of hands, Fergus guessed.

“What are you snorting at?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder.

“Ye don’t want to know,” he chuckled.

Another glance, one eyebrow raised high. “You’re thinking on devilishness, are you not?”

“What makes you believe it?”

“I know the sound of a man whose mind has turned to wickedness.” She snickered, clicking her tongue to dissuade the mare from wandering to a likely patch of clover alongside the road.

“Have ye known many wicked men, then?”

Her shoulders fell as she sighed. “I was thinking of my brothers, if you must know. A pair of wicked lads—one more than the other. Have you any brothers?”

“Aye. One.”

“Which of you leads the other into devilish schemes, then? I would guess you would be the one, if given a chance.”

“You would be correct.” Had he not lead his brother into war, after all?

Her laughter was like the tinkling of bells—not at all what he would have imagined from a wild thing such as she.

“I thought so. One of the twins always leads the other into his devilish ideas. The brash one, the brave one. The other is gentler, more thoughtful.”

“Do ye care more for the gentle one than for the devilish one, then?” He imagined his father and mother, how they had always found Brice easier to love thanks to his easy nature and quick-wittedness.

She shook her head. “I love them both for who they are, even if I’d like to knock their heads together.” Her shoulders slumped again as her voice trailed off, then heaved a sigh.

He hurried the horse that he might ride beside her rather than slightly behind. “You miss them greatly.”

Her nostrils flared, her jaw worked. She wished to favor him with one of her sharp remarks. When her mouth opened, however, one single word came out.

“Yes.”

How could a single word hold such pain? Such longing? Such regret?

He might have offered her what little awkward comfort he could, but she pressed her legs to the horse’s sides and drove it forward.

While he did not know the lass well, he knew enough to give her the space she needed rather than race to catch up to her. He watched her gallop away, the braid which hung past her shoulders bouncing against her straight back, her thighs holding her just above the saddle.

She was rather beautiful in her way. Like a wild animal, free and untamed.

The thought of another bringing her pain tightened his chest, curled his hands into fists around the reins.