“All ashore!”

The captain’s voice rang out over the din of activity both inside the ship and throughout the harbor. It sent a chill to Quinn’s heart, knowing this would mark the end of his quest.

If all went well, he would have his ransom by the following day and would be on his way back to Scotland, back to Lennox. He’d already taken far too long.

Would his brother still be alive and healthy by the time he reached the prison?

He studied Ysmaine from the corner of his eye. She was unreadable, lost in thought. What was she feeling as they prepared to disembark? What did she truly think of him, of what he was about to make her do?

A quick flash of a smile soothed him somewhat, telling him there was nothing to fear. Not that he had feared, or so he told himself.

He would be able to bear never seeing her again as long as he knew she did not think poorly of him. If her memories of him and their time together were pleasant—as pleasant as could be, under the circumstances—he would rest well at night.

“We will take lodging at an inn off the harbor,” he reminded her, “and that is where you will set about writing the letter to the Marquis. I’m certain someone in the village would accept a few pence for the trouble of transporting it.”

They had decided the previous evening to take this course of action. Ysmaine would write an impassioned letter to the Marquis, telling him she had been taken captive and that her captor demanded a ransom for her safe passage to his estate. She would call upon her personal ties to the man—she had still not revealed them to Quinn, insisting on keeping her private affairs to herself.

Even after he had spilled out his heart to her, sharing the most shameful tale in a life full of shameful tales. For he was not proud of many things he’d done. Lives he had taken for whatever reason. Some men bragged of such doings, but not him.

Bridget, however, was entirely another matter. For she had made a fool of him, and this was not something he suffered easily. After so many years and so much more life lived, he still felt the acute sting of wounded pride and a broken heart whenever his memory took him back to that horrid day in the village.

Were it not for her, might he have settled down with some likely lass? Perhaps, after all, when Brice had approached him with an offer to join the band of traveling soldiers Quinn would come to think of as his family, he had accepted because there was nothing better to aspire to.

Bridget had taken the heart from him, plain and simple, and he had lived a wanderer’s life as a result.

Foolish, and he knew it well. He’d never been the type to lie to himself about his actions, not like some who would fight to their dying breath in an attempt to defend themselves. He had no difficulty looking back on that quickly-made decision and knowing it had been made with far too little consideration for his future.

At the time, he’d been certain of having no future. He had even considered for the briefest of moments, when his shame and desolation were at their worst, the notion of getting himself killed in a tavern brawl or throwing himself into the swift-moving river.

He did not regret agreeing to join up with Rodric, Brice, and Fergus. They had shared many good times, had seen many adventures and had benefitted handsomely from nearly all of it. He had also experienced the pleasure of watching two of the three wed the women they loved.

But his pleasure had been short-lived, for the question of what his life might have become had Bridget been true to her word lingered always in the back of his mind. No amount of riding or hunting or laughing with his friends or even bedding agreeable lasses could wipe that question away.

He had only shared the full depth of the story with Ysmaine. No one else.

Yet she still held him at arm’s length.

Perhaps this was for the best, he reasoned as they climbed the ladder to the deck. Any intimacy between them would come to an end soon enough. Why burden themselves with unnecessary grief on parting?

Leaving her would already be difficult enough.

The captain greeted them on sight. “There ye are. It’s sorry I am to see ye go.”

It was Ysmaine he spoke to, Quinn noted. They had become quite friendly in just two days.

“We thank you for your kindness,” she smiled, extending a hand to shake his.

“If ever ye wish to return, I’ll be staying in dock for a few days before sailing back with a shipment,” he explained. “I would normally continue around France but must reach Edinburgh. These sudden changes of schedule are a plague, but there’s little I can do about it if I’m to make my living. Back and forth, then back again. Tis not an easy life, but I enjoy seeing new faces all the time.”

And it seemed he enjoyed speaking of his life, as well, Quinn observed. Or perhaps he simply enjoyed speaking to a lovely lass.

“I’m sure I would as well, had I not been born a woman.” They laughed together as if sharing a joke. Exactly what had Quinn missed while holed-up below deck?

He asked her as much once they were off the ship, and she waved him off with a soft laugh. “He is a kind man,” she smiled. “Perhaps you might be able to return to Scotland with him.”

“Nay, lass,” he muttered with a shake of his head. “Remember, I am your escort. It would not do for me to return to his ship in my own tunic, speaking not a word of French.”

“Ah, of course. I had forgotten,” she frowned.

“Now is the time I need most for ye to remember what we’re at here,” he said, watching her closely. She was not about to fail him, was she?

As though she heard his silent question, Ysmaine threw back her shoulders and gave him an icy stare. “I told you, I only forgot for a moment. I will not forget again.”

“You had best not.”

It was only then that Quinn took his first look around Cherbourg, or what he could see of it from the docks. They might as well have been back in Burghead were it not for the difference in language—a thick, guttural dialect which Quinn’s ears found unpleasant, even harsh at times.

“They do not all speak French,” Ysmaine explained as they elbowed their way through group after group. “I do not recognize all of it, but I suppose people from many regions move through this port on their way to England and Scotland.”

“Aye, tis a reasonable sailing,” he replied.

She shot him a look of warning. “Remember what we’re at here,” she said, echoing the words he’d spoken only minutes earlier. “Take care of what you say, and when you speak.”

Naturally. He carried a sword bearing the crest of a French family. It would not do for him to speak with a Scottish brogue. He clamped his mouth shut as he looked up and down the row of buildings which faced the docks on the other side of a wide, muddy road.

He pointed to one on the end, and Ysmaine took his meaning. They crossed the road with care, dodging carts and carriages moving in both directions. Three men led a group of roughly a dozen squealing pigs down the very center, likely on their way to or from one of the ships.

Ysmaine laughed at the pink pigs which insisted upon taking up more of the roadway than they should. “I always feel sorry for the poor things,” she confessed. “I used to hate seeing Father or his men returning from a hunt with their kills. I do not need to be reminded that what I’m about to eat had a life of its own, even if it did not have benefit of a soul.”

That was so entirely something only she would say, and it brought a smile to his face. He would miss her presence, indeed. She was refreshing.

Ysmaine made a motion with one hand, signaling him to remain outside while she did business with the innkeeper. A smart idea, that, as he would not wish to become overfamiliar with the man. The fewer chances for him to be remembered, the better.

Only it was not to be. Moments after she stepped inside, Ysmaine appeared in the doorway and waved him inside. What was the trouble? She would not say, nor did she give any hint as to the look of perturbation which creased her forehead and drew down the corners of her mouth.

The innkeeper was a short little man, full of nervous energy. He looked Quinn up and down while Quinn made a point of lowering his head, allowing the brim of his hat to cover his eyes.

“My escort,” Ysmaine explained, touched her throat gingerly, then spoke in French. He had never heard her use the language before, learned from her mother, like as not.

The innkeeper nodded, casting an eye toward the sword in Quinn’s belt, then proceeded to do business with Ysmaine. He seemed agreeable, even eager to show them upstairs to their rooms. Propriety dictated they not share the same lodgings, which Quinn understood well—even if it meant spending pence with which he would rather not part.

He reminded himself of the windfall he would earn shortly, and this picked up his spirits considerably. Would that they could get on with it.

Ysmaine asked the innkeeper a question, judging by the way her voice went up at the end, and the innkeeper seemed obliging. He went downstairs and reappeared almost instantly, handing her a rolled-up strip of parchment, an ink pot and a quill, and a stick of wax. She bowed, nodding, and disappeared into her room.

Quinn made a show of entering his room for the sake of manners, but the moment the short innkeeper was downstairs he joined Ysmaine in her chambers.

It was a room like his, small, suitable for their purposes with a straw tick bed and a basin. She unrolled the parchment on the surface of the table which held the basin.

“What did ye tell him?” Quinn whispered, sitting on the bed. “When ye held your hand to your throat?”

“I told him you were wounded in battle years ago and could no longer speak,” she murmured as she wrote her message for the Marquis, sounding as though this sort of subterfuge was something she engaged in on a daily basis.

As though it were nothing at all.

He marveled at her. “I cannot believe ye came up with such a lie on the spot, lass!”

“I did not come up with it on the spot,” she admitted, glancing at him with an embarrassed smile. “I thought about it on the ship, truth be told.”

He grinned, shaking his head at her resourcefulness. The lass could make a living at such work if she chose to do so, with her intelligence and a type of gentle beauty which inspired trust from even the most hard-bitten, cautious men.

Had she not earned his trust, after all?

She showed him the message once she had finished writing it. “He did not use French when writing to me, so I did not use it in my reply,” she explained. “I told him I’ve been taken prisoner, and you demand ten pounds for my safe return. Once you have the ten pounds, you will release me and see to it that I make it safely to his estate. The innkeeper tells me it is no more than two or three hours from here.”

“And he did not seem to harbor any doubts as to our reason for being here?”

“Not at all,” she assured him as she lit a candle. “I explained that we’ve come to the end of a long journey and would like to sleep before making our way to the estate, and he was more than gracious in offering us the use of a room for the night.”

He laughed. “I’m certain he was more than pleased.”

She held the wax over the candle until it began to melt. “Quickly. Your sword.”

“My sword?”

She nodded. “I will use the crest to seal the letter.” She truly was a gifted woman. When she dripped wax onto the folded parchment, he pressed the sword’s engraved crest onto it to transfer the symbol of the d’Orsay family.

He waited at the top of the stairs, listening as she did what they had planned. She offered a young man a shilling to deliver the letter with all haste to the Marquis, and from the young man’s tone of awe and wonder, it was clear he was all too pleased to oblige.

“Now, we wait,” she whispered upon returning to her chambers. She shrugged as she sat, groaning while stretching her injured leg.

“I suppose we ought to change the bandages once more,” he mused.

She looked up at him, the glow of the candle reflected in her wide eyes. “This will be the last time we do,” she observed in a tone of wonder.

“Aye, it will be that,” he agreed. The last time he would be able to help her. By the morning, they would likely part ways and never see each other again.

It was unthinkable, but there was the truth. They were never meant to be together for longer than it took to reach Cherbourg.

She lifted her kirtle just past the knee, where Quinn was heartened to see nothing but clean bandage. “No seeping, no bleeding,” he reported while she looked away. She could never stand to look at the wound, though it was her leg involved.

“Do ye have pain?” he asked, kneeling by the bed.

“Not very much. Discomfort, mainly. Nothing to concern yourself with.” She forced a smile, her face still turned away.

“Ye have a great deal of strength,” he murmured as he applied a fresh bandage, then lowered the hem of her kirtle for the sake of discretion. It had been a rather fine garment when they had first met, but a week and more of hard travel had roughened it considerably.

Had he allowed her to bring along her other possessions, it might have been saved.

“Thank you, as do you,” she added, blushing a bit.

“And I am sorry I did not allow ye to bring what was inside the trunk,” he murmured before daring to place his hand over hers. “I was foolish, and cruel.”

She bit her lip, chin trembling. “It’s done,” she whispered. “There is nothing we can do to change it now.”

“Just the same. I am sorry for the way I behaved then. If I could go back and do it again…”

“I know.” Her hand turned under his, her fingers curling between his until their hands were firmly clasped. It was a wondrous thing, the simple touch of her palm against his.

He would never touch her again.

He looked up into her eyes, which seemed to hold all of the answers to questions he’d never known existed in his heart.

Her full lips parted, reminding him that he would never taste them as he had so longed to do since early in their journey. He would never ride with her in front of him, her body clinging to his, her warmth and softness nearly more than he could stand. He would never know the simple pleasure of being near the woman again.

Nor would he revisit the joy of hearing her laugh, of listening as she shared a part of her soul with him. Not that she was ever aware of doing so, but she did just the same. As she had when they’d seen the pigs in the road. She’d shared such a simple memory which had revealed much more than intended about a gentle spirit with a core of iron at its center.

Damn it all. He had fallen in love with her.

When a knock sounded at the door, he jumped away from her as though he’d been on the verge of doing something foolish. Perhaps he had.

He waited at the foot of the bed, both angered and relieved at the interruption, while Ysmaine answered.

The innkeeper looked past her, to where Quinn stood, then back to Ysmaine. He said something in French, then in broken English. “Downstairs. Young man for you.”

They exchanged a look of surprise. It was far too soon for him to have returned, he ought not to have been back until morning.

“Perhaps he ran into trouble,” Ysmaine murmured, following the innkeeper without protest. Quinn reached for her wishing to pull her back, his every instinct screaming that something was most certainly wrong.

He was not supposed to be able to speak, however, which meant that following her was the most he could hope to do in the situation. He was close at her heels when they reached the first floor.

Ysmaine reached for his hand the moment the pair of tall, smirking guards stepped out from the shadows just inside the door.

Guards who wore the same uniform as Quinn.