Madeline rested her head against a folded towel she’d placed over the edge of the linen-draped tub. Sinking lower into the heated water, she concentrated on every one of Iain’s emotions ever to spool around her heart or drift through her dreams.

Her eyes half-closed, she curled her fingers over her knees, and recalled them…

Yet she couldn’t forge a new path into his heart, or invite him into hers. No matter how hard she tried, she could no longer reach the deepest part of him. All she felt was her own emptiness, her hunger and doubt.

That, and the two words that hovered in the air between them. Shimmering before her, but elusive as the wisps of steam rising from her bath.

She thought the words were entwined destinies.

If so, she knew what they implied – an unbreakable bond between Iain and the woman who held his heart. Ties that reached back in time, and forward, connecting the two for eternity. Love that existed before they’d drawn first breath and that would go on even after they’d expelled the last.

Her eyes stinging from tears she refused to shed, she sat up and plunged her fingers into the little pot of soft, lavender-scented soap. Blessedly, the warm water relaxed her as she scrubbed her arms, then her legs, scouring her skin until it tingled and shone with a fine rosy glow.

Sadly, she couldn’t rid herself of the stain of the two words.

They flitted about in the half dark, taunting her from the shadows and reminding her that she had her own path to follow and that another woman accompanied Iain on his.

Yet…

He’d looked on her with favor, and more than once.

He’d certainly enjoyed kissing her

But how could he desire her, and the proof of his arousal had been unmistakable, if his heart belonged to someone else?

So wishing that for once she’d be able to make use of her gift at will, she drew a deep breath and held it, then slipped beneath the water to wet her hair.

She soaped her hair and scrubbed her scalp with special care, appreciating the fine and fragrant lather. A pleasure every bit as enjoyable as the swirl of warm water rippling across the top swells of her breasts.

Uncertainty lapped at her, too. If she couldn’t probe the depths of Iain’s heart to find answers, she’d voice them directly.

She’d ask him.

Her decision made, she reached for a pail of clean water to rinse the soap from her hair. The cold water sluiced over her head and down her back, making her shiver, but also carrying away any last hesitation.

Feeling more in control of her fate than she had in weeks, she lifted her chin and reached behind her to twist her wet hair into a thick rope. She’d hardly begun to wring out the moisture when a crash shook the walls.

“Mercy!” She shot to her feet, her heart slamming against her ribs.

“By the hounds!” Iain grabbed his sword hilt – only to lower his hand again as swiftly.

A glance through the still-vibrating shutter slats revealed the cause of the ear-splitting commotion. Gusting winds had ripped the ale-stake from its hinges and sent it plunging to the ground.

“It was the ale-stake,” he said, turning to face Madeline. “The wind-”

He froze, jolted to the core.

In his surprise at the crash, he’d forgotten about the lass bathing.

Now…

She stood in the wooden tub, her naked glory rendering him speechless. White-hot heat surged through him, shooting straight to his groin, his need hard and tight.

She stared back at him from eyes wide with shock, her nude body wet, glistening, and rosy. Damp hair, a tangled mass of dark red ringlets, hung over one shoulder, the curling tendrils clinging to her naked flesh, molding sweetly to each lush curve.

“Sakes!” He tried to look away, but making his heart stop beating would have proved easier. Fire raced through his veins as he stared at her, his gaze on the rivulets of water trickling down her breasts. Some pearled on the hard-budded peaks, clinging there for long, tantalizing moments before dripping off one by one.

Then a droplet fell onto the red-gold curls topping her thighs, and his entire world contracted to the fierce lust thundering through his loins.

He stared at the bead of water, watched it disappear into the wet curls, and the moment it slipped from sight, his wits returned.

“Forgive me, lass.” He turned back to the window, glowered down at the felled ale-stake.

He’d also been felled.

At least the throbbing part of him that shared distinct similarities with the long, hard length of the ale-stake.

Worse, the lass wanted him. He’d seen her desire, for a woman’s eyes tell all. Leastways, if a man looked deep enough, and he had, even in that fleeting glimpse before she’d lowered her lashes.

And as much as a certain part of him would wish otherwise, his heart and, aye, his honor, wouldn’t allow him to touch her so long as shadows of doubt clouded her eyes.

Pain had been there, too.

And frustration.

All warnings of just the sort of shaky foundation he did not want to build a new life upon. The kind of ghosts he would not allow to loom between them.

He’d started one marriage with a maid whose eyes held shyness and fear. Time banished those shadows, even replacing them with love, but it’d never been the urgent, all-consuming passionate love he knew he could have with Madeline. If he didn’t let the raw and fiery lust gnawing at his innards drive him to rushing her.

Nae, that, he would not do.

Even if she danced naked before him and begged him to take her.

He wouldn’t lay a finger on her – in that way – until nothing but purest love, shining and untroubled, shone in her eyes.

Until his own ghosts were laid as well.

He burned for her nonetheless. Knowing her naked, wet, and willing, so near behind him and yet so far, proved the greatest trial.

Aware of his ragged breath, he stared down at the ale yard, watching as someone flung open a door and a stream of shouting men poured out to gather around the downed ale-stake.

He recognized two men.

The miscreants who had thought to accost his lady.

And he welcomed their timely appearance, for they took his mind off the sound of Madeline stepping from the bathing tub. They also reminded him of the danger facing her, a thought that cooled his ardor in one fell swoop.

The men slunk along a wall, heading toward the stables, their path keeping them close enough to the light spilling from the windows for Iain to brand their faces into his memory.

For the second time that night, he dropped his hand to his sword hilt. But this time he let it linger there. Caressed it. As he lived and breathed, those two jackals would not walk away from their next encounter with him – not having witnessed his lady’s terror upon seeing them. Such horror bespoke unspeakable villainy.

And that was something he meant to find out.

Guilt jabbing him for the distress he was surely about to cause her, he opened the leather purse hanging from his waist belt and retrieved the little silver leg.

“Tell me when you are decent, lass, for I would speak to you,” he said, curling his fingers around the votive, his impatience to get answers from her kindled by the men’s appearance.

“I am covered,” she said, after several moments of soft rustlings.

Iain turned. She’d wrapped his sister’s arisaid about her and stood watching him from eyes gone wary.

“I dinnae want to fash you, but…” He left the sentence unfinished. “Know I wish words came easier to me. Leastways better ones than usually do.”

“You speak fine.” She stood tall, watching him. “I must ask you something as well, and would rather have a more tactful way to do so.”

“I will answer any questions, after you tell me why you were gathering these” – he held up the ex-voto – “from cathedral shrines and holy wells?”

She stared at the votive, the color draining from her face. “Where did you get that?”

“Gavin found it,” he told her, setting the little silver leg on the table. “He saw it fall from your hand when you ran from Glasgow Cathedral.”

“I was not stealing the votives. I was looking for them, that is all.”

“Why? You must tell me.” He took a step forward, his heart wrenching at her anguish. “Only so can I help you. I cannae challenge a faceless demon.”

“No one can help me.” She lifted her chin. She was not going to cry. So she reached deep inside herself, probed for the crackling anger she preferred keeping hidden away.

One glance at the little silver leg, helped her find it.

“Can you bring my father back to life? Perhaps reverse time and undo the hideous act that killed him? Can you aid the innocents who died with him?” She spoke past the hot lump swelling in her throat, her voice rising with each word. “A young goatherd burned alive, see you? Tossed onto a pyre, and just because he happened around a corner at the wrong time.

“Surely, as well, because he served my father.” She lifted a hand, dashed at her cheeks. “Can you save him, too? Dougie was his name. He was not even old enough to have a beard.”

She glanced at the ceiling, tears rolling down her cheeks. “There were others. Dougie was the youngest, and loved by all.”

“Holy gods.” Iain stared at her, outrage churning in his gut. “Tell me that isn’t what happened at Abercairn?” Bile rose in his throat for he saw the answer in her eyes. “Your father and others were put to the pyre?”

He crossed the room, wrapped his arms around her, tried to give her his warmth if he couldn’t comfort such great horrors. “Say you did not witness such things?”

“I did.” She clung to him, trembling. “Aye, that is the fate of Abercairn,” she said, her voice breaking. She released a long, shaky breath. “Abercairn, my father, and the young lads Sir Bernhard Logie burned before the castle gates.”

She looked up at him, her face pale, her eyes glistening. “Do you know how much I loved my father? More than the whole of the world, I did. It is true I hardly speak of him, but that is because I cannot bear the pain of thinking of him, of remembering.”

Her fingers dug into his shoulders, her words a swift-flowing current. “And the lads! So young, yet Logie’s men seized them – goatherds, most of them. The men threatened to burn them unless my father opened the gates. He did, and quickly, but Silver Leg burned them anyway.”

Iain’s breath caught, icy cold slithering down his spine. “Silver Leg?”

“Aye.” She pressed fisted hands against her eyes. “Sir Bernhard Logie is his name, but his byname is for the little silver leg votives. Word is he was lame as a boy and some obscure saint cured him, so now he makes pilgrimages to shrines. He leaves the votives as tokens of his appreciation.

“He is one of the Disinheriteds, come back from England in support of Edward Balliol.” She paused, drew a breath. “His own holding, the one he lost, isn’t as rich as ours. He wanted Abercairn, and so he took it.”

Iain frowned. “Your father? What of him? Was he not able to defend his home?”

“My father was an ill man,” she said, blinking hard. “A greathearted man and much-loved laird. But he was a man of letters and learning, not a warrior. He made an easy target for one as ruthless as Silver Leg.”

“I am sorry, lass.” Iain slipped a hand beneath her still-damp hair, kneaded the back of her nape, amazed he could move his fingers so gently with such rage pumping through him.

But Madeline needed soothing.

She needed more than that. Tenderness, love, a secure home and children – all things he couldn’t give her, though he would tear apart every hill in the land to help her.

“Nae woman should be touched by such heinous acts.” He shook his head, his blood boiling. “In truth, nae soul – save the fiends responsible.”

“I know.” She hesitated, drew several great breaths. “I will never forget what I saw. The horror of my father led to the flames. The sight is branded into my memory, burned across my soul. The two men belowstairs…” She closed her eyes, tears leaking from beneath her lashes. “They escorted him.”

“Fiends!” Iain roared, the revelation sealing the men’s fate. “I should have run them through.” His blood fired, his rage making the room seem red-hazed. “Rest assured I shall avenge you, lass, and if I must track the bastards across the width and breadth of the land.”

Horror at what she’d been through churned in his gut, twisting his innards, squeezing his heart. “I wish I could have spared you, but this I can do. Vengeance will be yours.”

“It is not your battle.” She shook her head. “But I do want justice. My father was a scholar, a kind and quiet man. He should not have died on a pyre. He-”

“God’s mercy.” Iain tightened his arms around her, his own heart breaking. He tucked her head beneath his chin and rocked her. “Poor, sweet lass.”

“It happened the day Nella and I left Abercairn,” she said in a voice so small he hardly heard her.

“The day you decided to join a nunnery?” A tragedy he would not let happen.

“The day I vowed to kill Silver Leg.”

Iain’s jaw dropped. “That is why you searched for the votives?”

“Aye.” She nodded. “I couldn’t avenge my father at Abercairn. Too many of Silver Leg’s men are there. So I thought to catch him unawares, at a shrine, and-”

“Dirk him with the wee blade you carry in your boot?”

“That was my plan. And why I meant to enter a convent afterward. Only so could I atone for the sin of murder in a holy place.”

Iain shook his head. “Sweet lass, ne’er have I heard anything more doomed to failure. And ne’er have I seen a lass less suited for life as a nun.”

Much to his relief, a spark of rebellion flashed in her eyes. “You have a better plan?”

“So I do,” he said, setting her from him.

His mind raced as he bent to take the sphagnum moss tincture off the brazier. He also snatched up a few small linen towels from the stool next to the bathing tub. These, he carried to the bedside table, using the few moments away from her to tamp down the triumph beginning to surge through him.

The lass didn’t know it yet, but she’d given him a far more satisfying way to atone for his own sins than prostrating himself before moldering bones and bathing in supposedly sacred waters.

Better yet, he’d help her reclaim Abercairn Castle, avenging her father’s death and gaining time to woo her properly.

Much pleased with the prospect, he returned to her and struck his most valiant Master of the Highlands stance. Thus ready – legs apart and his arms folded – he drew back his shoulders and gave her what he hoped would appear as a smile of confidence and encouragement.

One he hoped she wouldn’t be able to resist.

If he didn’t look the fool, which wouldn’t surprise him as he was so out of practice at smiling. Being anyone’s valiant hero was new territory.

But he must have done something right because she blushed prettily and smiled in return.

She lifted her chin, her eyes shining. “What is your plan, good sir?”

Why, to charm and seduce you, sweeting. And make you mine for all our days, his heart declared.

“I shall tell you as I soothe your ankles and wrists with the sphagnum tincture,” he promised, guiding her toward the bed. “And you have my word I will tend only those parts of you that are aching.”

He almost grinned at that last, and would have attempted it if she hadn’t ground her feet into the rushes and tugged on his arm.

“Aye, sweet?”

She lifted a brow, her smile gone. “I thought I was to use the tincture?”

“I have changed my mind.” He felt a thrum of anticipation. “You should only rest, be seen to properly.”

“Some would say that is most inappropriate.”

“So they would,” he agreed. “They also dinnae matter, only you.”

“Still…” She held his gaze, her chin high. “You no longer wish to bathe?”

“I can wait. Seeing to your hurts, inside and out, is all I care about.”

She blinked at that. He’d thought she’d smile again. But she peered at him, the shadows he’d noted earlier slipping back to cloud her eyes.

“There is something I must ask you,” she said, her gaze earnest. “And I must know the answer before I lie down on that bed for your admittedly welcome ministrations.”

“Ask away. I shall keep nothing from you,” he said, and meant it.

“Are you married?” she blurted, high color spotting her cheeks. “Is there a lady of your heart?”

Iain blinked, surprised but secretly pleased she’d asked.

It meant she cared.

“You are perceptive, sweeting.” He took one of her hands between both of his, squeezed lightly. “I was married, aye.” He told her true. “But my wife has long since passed. She is dead and has been for o’er a year.”

“But she has not left your heart? You still love her.”

“She was my wife.” Iain’s brow creased, his initial pleasure at the question swinging into confusion. But he’d sworn not to lie to her, so he’d answer honestly. “She will always be in my heart, aye.”

But no’ in the way that you are, that very heart giving the answer he wouldn’t yet say aloud.

Baldoon Castle

The Isle of Doon…

“You need what?”

Donall the Bold, proud and mighty laird of the MacLeans, couldn’t keep the astonishment from his voice as he peered down at the wee crone standing before him in his great hall.

Slight and black-garbed, save for her boots’ flashy red-plaid laces, she was Devorgilla, Doon’s resident wise woman. And just now, she drew a self-important breath.

She also wriggled her fingers, just enough to cause red sparks to leap from her bootlaces. A silly trick, but helpful when folk needed a reminder of her powers.

This was such a moment.

And as she’d hoped, the great laird before her took a backward step, duly impressed.

“I told ye what I require.” She flicked her sleeve with a gnarled finger. “Have ye bog cotton in your ears?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I heard you.”

Devorgilla smiled. “Good, then.”

Laird or nae, he’d be a fool to argue with her. She wasn’t about to leave without her will done.

Especially when her plan would benefit his brother, Iain the Doubter, whom she knew to be anything but a doubter these fine and bonnie days.

“Well?” Donall crossed his arms. “Tell me again and I’ll consider it.”

Devorgilla shook her foot, releasing a new burst of sparks from her red plaid laces, this time making sure a few landed on the laird’s plaid.

She smiled when he jumped, swatting at them. “Nae considerings.”

“As you wish.” Donall nodded, grudgingly.

The crone beamed.

“I be needing a skilled leatherworker,” she began, counting off her wishes on knotty-knuckled fingers. “A goldsmith or jewelworker, a fast-footed gillie, and passage for him on your swiftest galley.”

Donall frowned. “Why do you need these men?”

Devorgilla tsked, her eyes twinkling as she shook her head. She loved secrets and intrigues, and she thoroughly trusted in the sacred place of magic and meddling in the world – so long as it was done for someone’s good.

And she’d worked a lot of good in her time, as the MacLean laird ought to know.

“Does this have anything to do with my brother?”

“Iain?”

“He is my only brother.”

“Och, so he is.” Devorgilla gave him her most mischievous smile. “It might concern him,” she conceded, doubly pleased when interest flashed in the laird’s eyes.

“Have you had word of Iain?” He cocked a brow. “Is he well?”

“Some victuals and a place to lay my head this night?” the cailleach bargained, well aware Donall MacLean knew the game and would indulge her.

Shuffling closer, she gripped his hard-muscled arm and slid a glance across the darkened hall to where a line of sleeping men already snored on their pallets. “‘Tis too late an hour for one of my great years to traipse across the heather.”

The laird patted her hand. “All the roast gannet and bannocks you can eat. My best ale, too.”

“And the pallet?”

“In my own solar abovestairs, away from the snores of my slumbering kinsmen.”

Devorgilla cackled and rubbed her hands together, well pleased. But not so much as to grovel her appreciation.

Such boons were her due.

“So, great lady,” Donall said, giving her the title she secretly loved. “When will you require the services of these men?”

“As soon as you can spare them.”

“It will be done.” Donall gave her a nod, his lairdly assurance he’d grant her requests.

He, too, had his role to fill.

But then the hard set of his handsome face softened, his mouth curving in the faintest of indulgent smiles. Just enough for the crone to glimpse the spindly-legged laddie who’d once been too frightened of her to venture anywhere near her cottage for fear she’d make him drink liquefied toad spittle.

Or worse, turn him into one of the slimy-backed creatures.

“I’ll send the men with you on the morrow,” he promised, the caring warmth behind his words assuring her the boy had grown into a fine and worthy laird.

“Rob the goldsmith can take you before him on his garron,” he added. “That will spare you the trek across the high moor and bogs.”

“You are kind,” Devorgilla said, more touched than she cared to show.

“And Iain?” The laird pressed his own concerns again. “Have you word of his well-being?”

Devorgilla almost blushed.

She’d had better than word of Iain the Doubter, now known in some quarters as Master of the Highlands.

She’d dreamt of him.

And what a dream it’d been, for she’d glimpsed him and his new lady in very fine fettle.

But she’d keep those secrets to herself and simply answer Donall MacLean’s question with the expected dignity of her station.

“Your brother is more than well. Truth be told – and I have seen it – ‘tis fair swollen with pleasure he is of late,” she said, and allowed herself another wee chuckle.

She’d let it to the laird to catch the double meaning of her words.

His knitted brow said he didn’t, and Devorgilla wasn’t surprised.

Men could be so blind.