Alana had said her goodbyes. The shoulder of her nut-brown kirtle was still damp with Nurse’s tears. Mairi had sobbed unconsolably when she learned of Alana’s immediate departure; they’d only been working in the garden hours earlier.

Everything had changed so quickly.

It was easier not to look back as her heart shattered.

Could they not hear it? Did they not understand? No, for they were merely men who were strangers to her. They knew nothing of her life, her heartache, of the fact that they would collect silver for handing her over to the man who was to be her husband.

Brutes. All of them. Nasty, ill-mannered men who merely pretended to be civilized. The way they spoke to her, as though they were anything better than the brute of a man who’d sired her.

Or the man who had purchased her hand in marriage. While she knew nothing of him, she had little respect for men who purchased their brides, sight unseen. Who married simply to secure a title or landholding.

She had little respect for them because they so rarely treated their wives as a woman ought to be treated—at least, in her estimation.

Just riding with these four turned her stomach. All them long-haired, wide of shoulder, broad of back. The one with the dark beard had been rudest of all, though he’d attempted to cover up his rudeness with false kindness.

She’d rather he be cruel outright. She was accustomed to cruelty.

Nurse’s tear-swollen face flashed across the forefront of her memory, but Alana pushed the image away. There was no time for such sentiment. It would only lead to further pain.

“Have ye had your dinner?” one of them asked. Young, handsome in a roguish sort of way, his dark hair gleaming in the sunlight. She knew without asking that this was the unofficial leader of the group. He even rode in front, his gelding’s tail swishing lazily back and forth and fanning the odors coming from its rear directly into her face.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste and wondered if this was what the entire journey was to consist of. The stench of horse shit and of four wild Highlanders.

Still, he was asking a question and deserved an answer. “Aye, I have.”

“Good to hear. Very likely we’ll be roughing it tonight.”

Roughing it? Her nose wrinkled again, though this time it was an unfamiliar term which led to her reaction. “Pardon me?”

He hesitated, as though waiting for her to say something else. When she didn’t, he prompted. “Pardon what?”

She rolled her eyes at the back of his head. “Pardon me, what do you mean, we’ll be roughing it?”

“He means you’ll be sleeping out-of-doors, in the open air.” The one with the beard and unpleasant temperament fell in beside her, their horses abreast on the wide road. “All apologies if that is beneath your standards, but your intended is not promising enough silver to afford us accommodations throughout the journey.”

The way he spoke—and the inflection in his words—brought her blood to a boil. “I don’t recall stating anything to that effect,” she murmured, clenching the reins tight enough that she thought she might snap them. “Sleeping out-of-doors is nothing I’ve not done before, thank ye kindly. I was unfamiliar with the term, is all.”

“I see,” he replied with the briefest flash of a smile. “Aye, I suppose you would’ve had to sleep out in the open when you ran away.”

If she hadn’t been so concerned with keeping her mare moving straight along the road without allowing his horse to push her off into the brush alongside, she would’ve reached out and slapped his face. As it was, her cheeks flushed heatedly as she struggled to control her temper.

“Brice!” The man riding in front shot a filthy look over one shoulder.

“What of it?” he asked with an insolent shrug.

“He’s only out-of-sorts because he’d looked forward to a comfortable bed tonight,” one of the men riding behind them snorted. The one riding beside him snorted, too, and the two of them clearly enjoyed teasing their friend.

“Is that so?” Alana asked with honey in her voice, tilting her head to the side. “My apologies if sleeping in the open air is beneath your standards.”

A moment of silence—and then the three men riding with them burst into hearty laughter, which Alana herself joined in on after a spell when she saw how angry it made the man they’d called Brice.

What had she done to him to make him dislike her so? Nothing she was aware of. It was as though he’d arrived at her home determined to be nasty, when she was little more than property being bought and sold and transported without a say in the matter.

She had not even been granted a say in when her escorts would arrive. Demanding they leave at once was at least a bit of control she could exert over the situation, though it had pained her immeasurably.

And yet, breathing the same air as Douglas Stewart pained her far more than that. She refused to so much as think of him as her father from that day on. He was merely the man who’d sired her and nothing more.

The ache in her chest caused tears to spring to her eyes. No, she could not shed them in the presence of these strangers. Especially not while Brice continued to ride beside her. She turned her face in the other direction, focusing her gaze on the stately birch and ash trees which would soon change the colors of their leaves.

She would never see another autumn in Scotland.

An invisible hand clenched her throat, squeezing tighter all the time until she would either weep or die. Control this. Control it. Control it as you always have. Nurse was the only person who’d ever seen her cry, save her mother. Not even Douglas had ever witnessed his daughter’s tears.

As though he would care if he had.

“Might we stop?” she managed to choke out.

Brice snorted. “We’ve only just begun, and you wish to stop.”

There he was again! There was one good thing about his attitude; it chased away her sorrow.

Her head snapped around in his direction, eyes flashing. “If you’d rather I answer nature’s call while riding beside you, by all means. I will do my best.”

That got him. He looked away, what she could see of his mouth above that beard of his set in a hard line.

She did not even need to relieve herself. She’d merely wished to escape behind a tree and cry for a spell. But she could not take back her words, not after having snapped them so viciously.

When they stopped, she slid from the saddle and handed the reins off to the leader. He, at least, seemed to have a bit of kindness to him. Not that she liked him any more for it, since he was delivering her to the man who’d force her into marriage.

But he was better than Brice.

She wandered into the woods, his voice ringing in her ears. “Don’t think you’ll be running away, now, lass!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she called back, fists tightly clenched at her sides. A terrible man, awful, simply begging her to pummel him.

As if the journey itself and what it represented weren’t terrible enough.

“And my name is Alana! You’d best use it,” she called over her shoulder as an afterthought. Under no circumstances would she be called “lass” for the entirety of their journey, as though she were nothing more than a horse or a head of cattle.

She found refuge behind a gnarled, old birch and leaned the back of her head against it, closing her eyes to play her favorite game. Perhaps, if she stayed perfectly still and didn’t open her eyes, she might simply cease to be visible.

And they would leave her alone.

It hadn’t worked once in her lifetime, but that did not mean she would cease hoping. Then more than ever, she needed for something to go her way.

“…five days. It should take five days—a week, at the most, to reach it.” The voice floated to her from the road, and it must have belonged to one of the two men who’d been riding behind her.

“Aye. What of it?” Brice asked.

Amusing, really, how she could already pick up his voice from the others. Perhaps because he sounded so sullen and nasty.

“Do you intend to behave this way for the length of the journey, brother?”

Brother. So, one of the other men was his brother. Her heart went out to him, whichever one he was. Since only one of them had hair streaked with red, as his Brice’s was, she assumed that to be the one in question.

“He had best not, if he knows what is good for him,” the leader grumbled. “There is too much silver being promised for any of us to behave in such a manner.”

Silver. That was all she meant to any of them. Nothing of the fact that she was a human with feelings. Nothing of the fact that she was a woman and might at least be treated with a bit of courtesy because of that.

No. She was nothing more than a full purse to them.

Tears rolled down her cheeks, sneaking their way out from beneath closed eyelids. Damn all of them for making her cry this way. For speaking of her as though she mattered so little.

“Are ye all right there, lass?” the leader called out.

“Aye,” she replied, if only to assure him she hadn’t run away. She did not wish to imagine how unpleasant it would be for them to come looking for her.

“Aye, you bastard,” she whispered to herself, tapping her fists against the rough tree bark in time with the beating of her broken heart. “I’m here. And I’m planning to get away from you, whether you like it or not. We’ll see how clever you are.”

She would need a plan, this time. No sense in running off without one. She hadn’t gotten far before. Now, she had four men who would certainly look for her if she slipped away.

There had to be some way to divert their attention long enough for her to make an escape. Or she might leave in the night, while they slept.

Yes. Even if one of them sat up to keep watch, there had to be a way to sneak off. She might behave as though she were going to relieve herself again—only the most brutish excuse for a man would demand to accompany her. Even Brice wouldn’t be that unseemly.

Would he?

“Lass! We’re growing impatient!”

“Coming!”

It was almost as if he’d heard her thinking about him. Impossible, of course. She wandered out from behind the tree and watched the men as she approached.

If running away didn’t work, there was always another option.

Was she daring enough to do it?

It would mean debasing herself terribly, but that debasement would mean her freedom from a life spent as the wife of the earl. A man she’d never met. She only knew his name. Not his age, nor his appearance, nor whether or not he had a kind heart.

As she mounted her mare once again, there was no escaping the gaze of the young man who’d been riding behind her. Not Brice’s brother. The other one. Handsomer than the rest.

And his eyes had most definitely been on her backside as she swung a leg over the horse’s back. She’d felt the appraising gaze of Douglas Stewart’s men enough times to know the feeling.

Perhaps he would be the one to take her virginity and leave her unmarriageable.

The very idea left her shaken, cold. Hoping her mother couldn’t hear from her place in the Heavenly Kingdom. Oh, what would she think of her daughter? How many tears would she shed?

You, too, went through this, she silently reminded the image of her beautiful mother which was always in her heart. That sweet, smiling face. That serene temperament—even Alana could admit that she’d inherited much more of Douglas than Elizabeth in that area.

Mother, would you not have done what I hope to do if you had it to suffer all over again?