“Ye remember what we discussed, do ye not?” Quinn’s voice was little more than a low grunt in Ysmaine’s ear, barely audible over the harbor’s commotion. She had never seen such activity all at once, and so many people rushing back and forth as though there was a fire to put out.

She did not smell smoke.

It was an effort to turn her attention from the madness around her and nod in agreement. “Yes, I remember.

“And ye intend to keep your word?”

She rewarded him with a withering glare. “When have I given you reason to doubt my word?”

“Ye haven’t,” he muttered, his eyes moving back and forth, though his head remained still. “This is the most important of all, however, and ye know it. If anyone aboard the ship knows the nature of our being together…”

“They will not,” she reminded him. “You are a guard sent to me by the Marquis. You are merely escorting me to my destination, which is Cherbourg.”

“Nothing else?”

“You speak nothing but French, so you will not be able to understand the owner of the ship or any member of the crew,” she added, wondering how well this would plan would serve them. How long would it be until someone who spoke the language decided to converse with him?

Her heart thudded harder every time she imagined this taking place. How would he react? He was unskilled when it came to thinking through a problem before reacting, hence the manner in which he had captured her carriage.

While he believed he’d been clever and brave, she saw his actions for what they were, the desperate flailing about of a man in trouble, one who would go so far as to throw himself in front of an approaching carriage in order to startle the team which pulled it.

He might have killed himself in the process.

He might very well have killed her, as well. It was a miracle that she hadn’t broken her neck.

A lot of good it would have done him, attempting to secure ransom for a dead woman.

She would have to keep a close watch on him, nothing less. If approached, she would do the talking for them both.

It was nearing nightfall, yet the activity in the harbor seemed to slow not a bit. Ysmaine’s stomach let out a rumble loud enough to color her cheeks, though Quinn seemed not to notice or care overmuch.

“Hungry?” he asked after a while, making her blush again.

“A bit.”

“It sounds as though ye are more than a bit hungry,” he chuckled.

“Must you?” she hissed.

“Not that I blame ye,” he added. “I’m hungry as well and was giving thought to finding a place in which to take our supper.”

She would offer no argument, as they had not stopped for anything but water and nature’s needs since first leaving the healer’s home. The flat, wide, well-traveled road into Burghead had made the going easy, though they had encountered ever-increasing numbers of travelers the closer they’d come to the harbor village.

Which was when Quinn had suggested they create a story both could use once they’d reached the village. No doubt the people they’d cross paths with were accustomed to travelers from all walks of life, with any number of stories to tell about their adventures.

So long as they two kept quiet and refrained from attracting attention, they ought to avoid notice, at least, that was what they’d agreed upon. Would that the people with whom they came into contact might be kind enough to cooperate.

An ear-splitting crash made her jump and cling to Quinn, who sat behind her as he had all along. He stiffened but did not move to push her away. “Only a barrel dropped from the back of a cart,” he explained as he steered the horse around the puddle of ale the barrel had left behind.

“I’m not accustomed to this,” she admitted, flinching as a team of horses cut in front of them on its way to the harbor, driven by a man standing fully upright in the carriage. How he did not fall, she would never understand.

She would never understand any of it. The noise! Enough to crack her head open. So much movement, so many people and animals pressing in on one another. She heard bits and pieces of at least ten different conversations, watched as women tossed buckets of foul, gray water from open windows, listened as peddlers called out to passerby and flinched away from curious eyes, eyes belonging to men interested in only one thing about her.

“Pay them no mind,” Quinn advised, casting a doleful look in the direction of one such man. He rode without a saddle on the back of a gray mare, his hat cocked at a jaunty angle and a knowing smile on his face. As though he’d seen what she looked like beneath her kirtle and was interested in knowing more.

When Quinn glared in his direction, however, the man moved on. Quickly, too.

This eased her considerably. Quinn would not allow one of these men to touch her, nor would he allow any sort of misfortune befall her. She was too important to him for such a thing to come to pass.

If only she were important for some reason other than the ransom she’d fetch.

There was little point in entertaining the thought, or in revisiting the fantastical idea that he might care for her. He did no such thing and had made it quite plain, had he not? Theirs was a business arrangement.

Even so, this did not stop her from clinging to him a little more than was necessary. She could not help but give in to temptation, when his body was all but joined with hers. Every breath he took, every beat of his heart, every movement of his chest, shoulders, arms, she felt it.

After all, she would never see him again. Who could blame her for taking what little comfort she could in him while she could?

Why are ye doing this? Her father’s voice, strident and powerful as it had been in her dreams. She’d never heard him in her head throughout the four years since his passing, why did he have to make himself known just then?

Ye would allow this Highlander to use ye for profit. Ye would lie for him, when it would be so much better for ye to tell the truth and have him hanged for what he’s done.

Yes, her father would believe all of this and more, but she did not. She merely suffered pangs of the most bitter guilt as a result of what she knew he—and her mother, too—would think if they saw her then. If they knew she was willing to lie, to debase herself in such a manner. She was little better than his accomplice, his partner in this crime.

And she allowed him to use her in order to collect his money.

But it was all for the sake of his brother! She would have argued this point until she no longer had the breath with which to fight, had they been able to hear her. He did not use her for his own gain.

What’s more, she had agreed to aid him. She had not only refused to stand in his way. She had decided to do whatever she could to free his brother. Lennox, his name was. He had a wife, children. It was for their sake, not for Quinn’s, that she allowed this lie to go on.

She was a liar, just as he was, and a thief as well. For she would see to it that Quinn collected the Marquis’s money under false pretenses. She would even encourage it, if need be.

She would be forgiven.

Would she not? Was not a sin only as sinful as the intention behind it? She had always believed so.

Did Quinn feel that way about his life? What he did to make his living, she had a distinct feeling there was much he had not shared with her. Much violence, much privation.

Perhaps many people had suffered because of him, if not directly. The wives and children of men he had killed, or the mothers and fathers. Missing their loved ones, perhaps starving because the young men who had earned the family’s living or worked the land would no longer be able to do so.

And yet he’d had his reasons for doing as he’d done. Either because he had been compelled to kill or risk being killed, or because he had been protecting another. As he had protected her.

She might have died at the hands of that terrible man in the woods.

If given her choice, had the whole thing happened again, she certainly would not have begged Quinn not to kill the thief. She might even have helped him.

No such man deserved to live. Not when they took pleasure in bringing pain to others too weak to defend themselves.

“Are ye listening?” Quinn grunted, leaning close so that he might speak into her ear. She willed away the thrill that was his breath against her ear.

“There is so much to see,” she explained. A feeble excuse, but it was preferable to his knowing what went through her mind.

“I asked if your leg was feeling poorly,” he explained.

“Not at all. I had almost forgotten the pain. I’m certain I will remember it the moment we dismount.”

“Aye,” he agreed with a wry grimace. “That is normally the case. We forget the pain until it is time to move again, then, it’s as though the pain is angry that we ever forgot it existed.”

She laughed, as this was the case exactly. He had such a way of speaking plainly the words she wished she could find. To think, it was she who was so carefully educated.

To think how she had considered herself so superior to him when they’d first met.

He brought the horse to a stop in front of a likely looking tavern and dismounted before helping her down. As she had expected, the new movement after so much time spent sitting in the same position made her clench her teeth to suppress a cry of pain.

Quinn frowned. “Ye might take a bit of the tincture the healer prepared for ye, to help ye through the rest of the night.”

She shook her head. “Perhaps later.” The tincture provided blessed relief from the pain, but it also left her feeling as though there were a fog in her brain. She could not think clearly; it made her want nothing more than to sleep.

She did not wish to sleep. She did not wish to miss a moment of her remaining time with him.

“Come,” he bade, offering her his arm after securing the horse. She leaned on him, remembering how she had refused to do so that morning. How could she have been so stubborn?

How could she have done so many things?