So be it.

Hours later, long after moonrise, the words still echoed in Iain’s head. Equally annoying, his every attempt to vanquish them proved a fool’s exercise.

And so he raced his shaggy-coated horse along Doon’s beach, streaking past thatch-roofed fisher cottages and sailing over any obstacles in his path.

The shame of his banishment kept pace, pounding through him in time with the drumming of his horse’s hooves on the pebbled shore.

Ne’er again set foot…

He frowned, a fresh tide of anger washing over him, his fiercest scowl powerless against the pursuing words. They tore after him with the persistence of hell-hounds scenting blood.

Even more troubling was the sensation of being watched.

Observed by unseen eyes, his progress down the moon-silvered beach well noted, and not by the pesky ‘guard’ riding beside him.

Blinking against the wind, Iain glanced at his brother’s friend, half-expecting, nae, hoping, to find the knave’s gaze on him.

It wasn’t.

Gavin appeared determined to match Iain’s pace as they skirted or jumped their horses over the many upturned skiffs and coracles scattered along the beach.

If anything, he seemed determined not to look at Iain.

But someone – or something – was.

And the sensation gave him shivers. Chills that slid through him in search of a chink in his armor, a way past the barriers for a glimpse at his soul.

His heart.

A place so forsaken, even he didn’t care to peer into its depths.

Instead, he glanced at the bay where so many MacLean galleys rocked at their moorings. With their sails furled, the single masts and upthrusting sterns and prows reached like bony fingers to the pearl gray sky. Each ship banked twenty-six oars, though a few boasted forty, and one or two had only sixteen.

Swift and feared at sea, the galleys lay silent in this clear and windy night, their slumber guarded by the enclosing headlands, the lot of the ships at peace, save one.

The ship that waited for Iain.

His brother’s prized birlinn, a sleek twenty-six-oared beauty, the gem of the fleet. Already drawn halfway onto the beach, the ship’s deck swarmed with men preparing for departure.

A knot of dark-frowning crewmen struggled with two packhorses, their attempts at urging the poor beasts to step over the birlinn’s low-slung side reaping little more from the frightened animals than white-eyed snorts of protest.

Big, burly clansmen, full-bearded and bare-chested, stood waist-deep in the foaming surf, the open sea behind them. These were the souls who, very soon, would hurl their all into pushing the ship into deeper, wider waters. Others, seasoned MacLean oarsmen, bustled about on board, clearly eager for the shipmaster’s shout to raise the great square sail.

Iain scarce noticed the scrambling men, hardly heard their calls and chants. He took even less notice of someone’s repetitive beating on a metal-studded shield. His gut clenching, he focused on the ship’s long row of vacant-eyed oarports.

He’d swear they stared at him.

Cold and accusing stares, but by no means as penetrating as the one coming at him from a much greater distance than the soon-to-be-launched birlinn.

Doing his best to ignore the prickles at his nape, he urged his horse into a full gallop. But the moment his beast obliged, surging forward in a burst of speed, it found the sought-after chink.

A wee but vulnerable tear in his heart, a crack narrower than a hairbreadth, and so well hidden he would’ve never believed it existed.

But it did.

His senses roared with the knowledge, unleashing a fresh tide of chills. No longer cold and menacing, the sensation rushed into long-neglected areas. His blood flamed and his heart hammered. Worse, seductive ‘prickles’ raced across his nerve endings as if he’d both plunged into an icy sea even as flames scorched him. His breath snagged and for a moment, he wondered if this was his end.

The world darkened, only the edges visible, while a crackling border of silvery lightning sent sparks showering around him.

“Dia!” Iain jolted, lurching as he almost slid off his saddle.

“Before you!” Gavin’s shout sliced through the madness.

The spell shattered, splintering away to reveal Doon’s innocent strand. Iain managed to grab his saddlebow, righting himself just in time to hurtle past a mound of broken creels and barnacle-encrusted drying nets.

Barreling up beside him, Gavin seized his reins, jerking Iain’s horse to a halt.

“Have you run mad?” He looked at Iain, his eyes wide. “You nearly plowed into that stinking pile.”

Iain stared at him, his hands clutching the saddlebow so tightly that his knuckles ached. He couldn’t answer for his throat had closed and his mouth felt drier than cold ash.

Aye, I’m full crazed, he wanted to shout.

Instead, he snatched his horse’s reins and wondered if he’d been spelled?

Cursed?

Too bad he didn’t believe in the like. Nae, he wasn’t under an enchantment. But he did have a problem.

How could he ‘lose his hotheadedness’ when he might well have lost his mind?

Sure he didn’t know, he hurried his horse down the remaining stretch of beach as the cold inside him returned. Glad for its familiarity, he tried to pretend he’d imagined everything.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t.

It’d happened.

Several nights later, as Iain’s ship sped across the silver-glinting waters of the Hebridean Sea, a different kind of cold plagued Madeline Drummond.

Many miles distant, she tossed and turned in a fitful sleep. The best she could hope for in an abandoned cot-house. Fist-sized chinks in the walls bid entry to the wind, while the damp of the earthen floor seeped through her borrowed cloak.

Beneath two woolen plaids, Nella’s generous warmth pressed protectively against her, but even that well-meant comfort failed to banish the chill.

Nor could her friend’s nearness ease the anguished heart hammering so fiercely in her breast. A heart not her own, but clinging to hers in need. As it had done each night since she and Nella left Abercairn.

It was a man’s heart, she knew. Strong-pounding, and good. Just damaged and needing repair, the balm of light and love.

Another blast of icy wind whistled through the wall gaps then, once more sending shivers down her spine. But neither the cold nor her troubled dreams kept her own heart from reaching for the pained one seeking such desperate union with hers.

So as she slumbered, some needy part of her deepest soul sent the shadow man of her dreams all the warmth and comfort she could summon.

And if good fortune hadn’t abandoned her completely, one of these nights she’d reach him.