Quinn felt the breath leave his lungs, as though he had fallen from the saddle and landed on his back. He’d done it more than once and knew all too well that sudden rush of air from his body, and the sickening moment when pulling in another breath had been impossible.

He suffered the same sensation while standing with his hand on the door’s leather latch. Her announcement had sent the world shattering to pieces around him, opening the door seemed beyond his abilities.

All this time, he had acted while under the impression that the lass was to be the Marquis’s bride. A man waiting on his bride would pay any price set on the woman’s head, would he not?

But the Marquis was not awaiting his bride.

This cast everything in a new light, and that light did not favor Quinn’s plan.

“What is your business, then?” he asked, careful to keep his voice low. He wanted nothing more than to shake her, to demand she make things clear. That would merely frighten the lass and make it more difficult than ever to receive an answer.

“It is none of your concern,” she replied, arching her brows. “He is waiting for me, that is all.”

“Are ye important to him in some way?” Quinn demanded.

“He sent two guards to escort me to him,” she reminded him. “As I told you before, the first guard died early into the journey at the hands of a thief.” Her brows all but left her forehead when she said this, an unspoken reminder that he was little better than that unknown man in her eyes.

He would merely have to take a chance and continue on their way. After all, she was important enough to him that he went to the trouble. Perhaps she had a point in that.

Whose fault was it that he’d believed she was his bride-to-be? None but his own, as he had never asked her to explain the nature of her acquaintance with the man. He had assumed.

“Come now,” he grumbled, opening the door. “We had best be on our way.”

When he noted her limping gait, guilt tugged at his conscience. “Here.” He offered her his arm on which to lean.

She merely tossed her head. “No, thank you. I can walk on my own.”

“Ye don’t look as though you’re doing a very good job of it,” he observed as she limped from the house and out to the small garden in front. To her credit, she kept her head high. A proud lass, to be certain, even after she had been brought so low by illness.

The healer had just finished her work and was wiping dirty hands on the hem of her kirtle. “You’ll be leaving me, then,” she observed as she stood, a basket over one arm, having worked in a garden filled with plants the likes of which Quinn had never seen.

He would have mistaken most of it for common weeds had he come across it on the side of the road, but she had planted it all in neat, orderly rows and obviously tended to it with some care. It was her livelihood, he reasoned, and thus in her best interest to do so.

“We have already taken advantage of your kindness for far too long,” Quinn reminded her, quick to take the healer’s supplies to the horse and add them to the rest of what he’d already packed. They would leave one of the pair behind, as Ysmaine would ride with him.

A beautiful horse was the least of what he could leave for the woman who had done so much for them, and she agreed, having also accepted a few pence for her troubles.

He grumbled to himself out of impatience as Ysmaine took the woman’s hands. “Thank you,” she whispered in a tremulous voice. “I would have died were it not for you.”

“And for him,” the healer reminded her, raising her voice slightly to be overheard.

Quinn snorted. “I merely rode the horse.”

“Just the same, thank you,” Ysmaine insisted. “I wish there was something more I could give to you. At least a fair price for having spent the days in your home.”

“I took care of it,” Quinn muttered, joining them. “We had best be on our way, or have ye forgotten you’re expected somewhere?” It rankled him terribly that he had been so wrong. How could he have been so foolish? What had in his mind been a sizable ransom dwindled in the harsh, cold light of truth.

“Perhaps we shall meet again,” the woman suggested with a smile. “One never knows.”

“Oh, I hope we do.” Ysmaine looked back over her shoulder at the healer as Quinn all but dragged her to the horse.

“Remember,” the woman called out, “keep the bandage clean and dry. You ought to be able to go without it in another two or three days.”

“I will remember,” Ysmaine promised. Only then did she turn her attention away from the woman and toward the single saddled horse who dug at the ground and snorted with impatience.

Quinn thought he knew how the beast felt.

“Why only a single horse?” Ysmaine whispered, looking about herself, then, with a gasp of horror, “Did something happen to the other? How much did I sleep through?”

“Nay, lass,” Quinn replied. “She didna tell ye, did she?”

“Tell me what?” she asked, eyes wide and unknowing.

“You’ll be riding with me, sideways in the saddle, for ye should not ride astride and open the wound once again.” He did not wait for her to reply or even allow her a minute to absorb the information before taking her by the waist and lifting her onto the horse’s back.

“I’m certain I can manage on my own,” she sputtered, then turned a shade of red which brought to mind her fever. This was not the result of illness, however, and he knew it, what was worse, she knew he knew, which only served to darken her cheeks further.

“We’ve only another day to ride,” he explained, gruff and rather abrupt as he adjusted himself behind her. He had not foreseen how rather pleasant, and therefore unpleasant, it would be to ride so near her warm, soft body.

Knowing she was not to be another man’s bride made her all the more desirable, as though an invisible wall had fallen between them, leaving no further barriers.

Though that did little to erase past betrayal from his memory. Would that it might.

Ysmaine made a fuss of arranging her kirtle, pulling it close to her legs. “I do not approve of this course of action,” she muttered, half to herself. “I find this quite unnecessary.”

“I do not recall asking for your approval,” was Quinn’s sharp reply. “And I have no great desire to wait even longer while ye recover from yet another illness, which means it is a wiser course of action by far for ye to ride in this fashion.”

“I might have been able to ride on my own, seated sideways in the saddle,” she protested.

“I would not take such a risk while you are still not entirely in full health. Ye might fall backward from the saddle, riding sideways.”

She snorted. “You have little confidence in me.”

“That is correct.” He need not look at her to know she fumed with ill-concealed rage. This pleased him, for she had already proven far more troublesome than she was worth.

That worth having decreased in a matter of moments.

He ought to have asked, to have made certain. Rodric would have, or Brice. They would have shown more wisdom, more strategy. They would never have rushed headlong into such a treacherous endeavor, especially one with a questionable result.

With one last nod toward the healer, who waited in the shadow of her door for their departure, he pressed his heels to the horse’s sides, and they were on their way. The sun had barely risen, and the woman had assured him they would reach Burghead by evening if they rode at a stately pace and kept to a minimum their stops along the way.

In light of the storm through which he’d fought to reach the village, the clear, sweet air and bright sunshine which reigned on the morning of their departure seemed akin to nothing less than Heaven itself. It was the sort of morning through which any rider would prefer to travel.

Ysmaine made a point of looking behind them, watching the road. “What are ye looking for?” he asked, his eyes trained on the road ahead.

“I am not looking for anything. I am merely watching to ensure we are not followed.”

“I highly doubt that will be the case, and I would know better,” he reminded her. “You were unaware of the men in the village, with whom I spoke. I believe I would have better understanding of them than ye, seeing as you have no memory of the ride.”

“Be that as it may,” she grumbled, “I would just as soon keep watch to ensure they are not over-curious as to our progress. You are dressed as a guard, carrying a sword which bears the insignia of a great French family. Certainly, they would be entitled to their curiosity.”

“They cannot know I am not who I appear to be,” he insisted, though he felt little of the confidence he attempted to express.

She snorted, sending his confidence to lower depths than ever before. “You could not pretend to be anything other than a Highlander if you tried every day for the entirety of your life. It matters not what you wear. Your brogue gives you away, as does your coloring.”

“I wore a hat,” he reminded her, touching his fingers to the brim.

“Little good it does,” she sighed. “It matters not. You are a Highlander, through and through.”

“You need not sound as though this is a slight against my character.”

“I intend no such thing. After all, my father was a member of Clan Fraser, and I spent my life in the Highlands. I would rather spend such a journey as this in the company of a Highlander than anyone else.”

“Even if the Highlander in question is one who took ye against your will?” he murmured, the sting gone from his words.

She stiffened, surprised, then allowed a brief, breathless chuckle to escape. “You are also someone who saved my life on no fewer than two occasions. You’ve kept me fed and have sat up at night to ensure my safety. I ask myself if one of the two guards assigned to escort me would have taken such pains.”

She turned her attention to the road ahead of them, stirring up the scent from her hair and skin as she moved. Would that she were not so enticing. Would that he were capable of making sense of the conflicting opinions she stirred to life.

He would never have believed it possible to want someone so much while wanting so much to tell them to go to the devil. She set his teeth on edge with her sharp observations, with her way of speaking exactly what was in his mind.

It was hardly fitting for a mere woman to be aware of a man’s misgivings. She ought not know how he questioned himself. How he looked back upon his actions for evidence of what he might have done differently.

The woods thinned to the point of nonexistence, opening to wide, fresh, green countryside. He heard her sigh.

“What is it?” he dared ask, glancing at her to find a frown, a glistening eye.

She shook her head. “Nothing very much. I had only thought of how I will miss this, the land, that is.” As though there were cause to fear he might misunderstand and believe she spoke of their travels.

How she wounded his pride, and how he resented his weakness.

He opened his mouth, prepared to deliver a stinging response, but the tremble of her chin made him think twice. He cursed his thick, clumsy tongue as he stuttered, trying to find something to say.

“I’m certain there are lovely places in France,” he offered. “It cannot be so different from home.”

“Can you truly imagine anything as lovely as this?” she whispered, her head slowly turning from one side to the other as she took in the majesty surrounding them.

He did the same, slowing the horse a bit so he might be better able to see what Ysmaine saw. To the west, a large bay which flowed in from the North Sea. The water would have been calm were it not for the dozens of fishing boats coming in with the morning’s catch, flocks of hungry birds following their progress in hopes of securing a bit to eat from the nets.

The sea seemed to stretch on forever, and the breeze which came off it and traveled over ground until it reached the pair of riders carried the scent of fish and salt. It was a scent Quinn had always loved, having spent much of his life far from the sea—the smell of it meant a voyage, something exciting and new.

To the east were fields, walls of stone dividing one parcel of land from another. Ancient walls, crumbling in some places thanks to time and the harsh weather. They formed a charming scene, especially where children ran along them and jumped over the spaces where the stone had fallen away.

There was a lush beauty to it all. The deep green of the grass, the deep blue of the sky. Thick pine forests, and the way the first snow lay gently among the needles.

Quinn wondered if he could say goodbye to all of it as she was. If he would feel the same deep pull of longing he could so easily sense in her.

“You do love it, then?” he asked, his heart softening even more than it already had.

“Aye,” she said, mocking his brogue but with a gentle smile and her gaze still turned outward. “I do. It’s come to mean so much to me, and I’ll never have the chance to see it again. Isn’t it strange, though, how a person does not know what they have until they’re on the cusp of leaving it behind?”

He studied her, the face he already knew so well, the curve of her cheek and jaw, the slope of her throat, the thick hair which waved back away from her smooth forehead.

Her beauty ran deeper than that which so plainly displayed itself on the surface. The courage and determination of her, the pain she had borne without complaint. The deep love she felt for her homeland, a love which mirrored his own.

“Aye,” he whispered, realizing his feelings had moved long past the point of no return. “Tis strange, indeed.”