“Mercy, I cannae go on.” Her cheeks pink with exertion, Nella flung herself onto the burn’s grassy bank. Breathing heavily, she glanced over her shoulder at the gorse and broom-studded abbey hill rising steeply behind her. “Another step is too much. My feet would refuse if I even tried.”

“I am sorry.” Madeline was. “We will pause here until you’ve caught your breath. A rest will be good for us both.”

“I will be fine. I am worried about you.” Nella glanced at her as she tugged off her boots. “What frightened you so? A tomb holds nothing more than the dust of old bones.”

“Bone dust had nothing to do with it.”

“Nae? Then why did you run from the shrine?”

“Something happened.” Madeline reached to remove her own boots. “I picked up the emotions of an unhappy soul.”

Nella lifted a brow. “You do that all the time.”

“This one was more distraught than most.”

“Why do I not believe you?” Nella went to the burn and dipped her toes into the rushing water. “Come,” she added, wading in. “The cold water will wash away whatever troubled you so much.”

“I am not troubled.” Madeline smiled, not wanting to worry her friend.

She also didn’t know how to explain her wild dash out of the cathedral and into the abbey grounds. Dear heavens, she bore scratches from the juniper scrub edging the burn. Nella was similarly afflicted. She’d seen the red scrapes on Nella’s calves as she’d removed her boots.

Guilt pinched Madeline as she swatted at the twigs and bits of bracken clinging to her cloak. Regrettably, they didn’t budge, proving pesky reminders of her foolishness. She gave her skirts a shake, again to no avail.

She wasn’t surprised.

Some things were just inescapable.

The truth was she could run to the ends of the world and not put him behind her.

Despite his accusations, the memory of him spooled around her heart. Awareness still coursed through her. Fluttery sensations rippled in her belly, yet her chest felt tight, making each breath a struggle – difficulty that had nothing to do with the dash from the cathedral.

Worse, she couldn’t un-see him.

The tall, powerfully built pilgrim lingered in her mind, his image burned there. She fancied his darkly handsome face in the leafy green shadows of the nearby wood, his dark eyes peering at her from the trees.

She shivered, feeling as if he’d strode up to her, closed strong fingers on her chin, and let the power of his gaze compel her to his will.

Madeline rubbed her arms against the tingly sensation sweeping across every inch of her. Feeling besieged, she glanced at the burn, relieved to see that Nella was too busy splashing water onto her face to notice her discomfort.

Grateful for that blessing, she stared up at the cloud-fleeced sky.

What was she to do?

Romanticizing about her shadow man had been sweet. A way to pass lonely hours and cold, worry-fraught nights. Having him tower over her in the cathedral was a different matter.

It was dangerous.

He drew her in ways she couldn’t explain. Just remembering the moment their eyes met, made her almost light-headed again. Her skin felt ‘prickly’ from the surge of crackling heat that had sizzled between them. And the more she thought of him, of their brief encounter, the harder her heart thumped.

There was something about him.

He was different from the shuffle-gaited, staff-clutching pilgrims she’d grown accustomed to seeing on the road.

Indeed, he was unlike any man she’d seen anywhere.

Common man, merchant, or lordling.

He’d loomed up before her wearing nothing more grand than a rough, travel-worn cloak, yet he’d made her think of an angry Celtic god.

Her breath caught. Her pulse leapt, and even now she could feel the weakening of her knees. Those truths sank her heart. Never had there been a worse time for a man to stir her interest, make her almost ache to see him again.

However unwise.

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath of the cool, damp air. And another and another until she’d filled her lungs with the pungent scents of gorse, pine, and cold, rushing water.

It didn’t help.

All the clean woodsy air in Scotland wouldn’t wash away her need. A powerful longing that once awakened would give her no peace until she’d surrendered. But how could she when she didn’t even know his name?

All she had was his emotion – the fierce, undying love carved so deeply into the walls of his heart.

Her own heart twisted.

She already knew the depth of his emotion. She’d felt it every night, its intensity almost crushing her soul each time her ‘abilities’ brought him near, at times even thrusting him into her dreams. All those ‘visits’ revealed not just his pain but his never-to-be-severed bond with one single woman.

A faceless woman he cherished beyond measure, and who now bore Madeline’s envy because for one cast-her-cares-to-the-wind moment she wanted to be that woman.

“What is it?” Nella called to her above the burn’s rushing waters. “You’ve gone pale and you tremble. A plague on moldy relics and mumbling monks if sharing the air with them taxes you so.”

“What?” Madeline blinked, the pilgrim’s hold over her fading, his handsome face slipping back into the shadows until only the thumping of her heart remained.

She also couldn’t shake the sense of something dear and precious spinning out of reach.

Nella was staring at her. “You are not yourself since we left the tomb. St. Kentigern is mighty. Perhaps he-”

“He sleeps in peace.” Madeline brushed at her skirts again, sure of it. “He isn’t the reason I fled.”

“Ahhh…” Nella considered. “So it was the pain of some piteously cursed miracle seeker?” She peered at Madeline from the shallows of the burn, her skirts knotted above the white-foaming water. “That must be it, for Madeline of Abercairn would run from no one. But she would bend under someone else’s agony.”

“The Lady of Abercairn is no more.” Madeline examined her broken fingernails. “She ended on the same blazing pyre that holds my father’s ashes. His, and those of the innocents whose sole crime was their inability to defend themselves against the swords of a traitorous Scotsman and the cravens who follow him.”

The words spoken, she straightened her back and locked away her grief. Her anger. Her father’s honor, and her purpose, would be better served if delivered with a cooled temper and a steady hand.

She started to remind Nella – and herself – of the reason for their journey, but a trilling curlew swooped out of nowhere, nearly clipping her head in its swift ascent to the rowans cresting the abbey hill.

Almost a hedge, the trees flanked the buttressed wall of the Bishop’s Palace. Behind it, the cathedral loomed proud and grand, its spires soaring taller than the palace turrets.

Madeline frowned.

Had she truly burst through the palace gates, dodging the bishop’s own guardsmen, and giving poor Nella no choice but to tear after her? Had they really careened through orchards and herb gardens, sprinting past startled lay brothers? Clambering over walls and other obstacles like rabble?

Like beggarly thieves?

Aye, they had.

A shudder swept her, hurtful and shaming. “Do not speak of ‘the Lady of Abercairn’ again.”

“Nae?” Nella snorted. “If she is no more, then who was so bothered by a pesky sacristan not so long ago?”

“You notice too much.”

“That is why we are friends.” Nella swiped water droplets from her face. “We see beneath the layers, taking the good with the bad. The sacristan took his duty too seriously. And so the Lady of Abercairn had to defend hers.”

Madeline couldn’t help but smile. As so often, Nella lightened her mood, letting her forget her cares.

“He was a nuisance, wasn’t he?”

Nella leaned toward her, eyes twinkling. “Like as not, he needs a good bedding.”

“Nella!”

“That is my name, aye.” Her friend laughed.

“Praise the gods.”

“Och, I do.” Nella bent and scooped more water onto her face. “They receive my thanks nearly every hour.”

“Then all will be well.” Madeline pushed back her hair and eyed the swift-moving burn. The icy waters would cool more than her aching feet. “I think I will join you,” she said, struggling to pull off her right boot. “I will also tell you what I felt at the tomb. I ran because…” She paused to catch her balance. “It was him.”

Nella’s eyes rounded. “Your shadow man?”

“Aye.” The boot came free. “And more powerful than ever before,” she added when her left boot slipped off without a fight. “Between his emotions welling inside me and the sacristan’s hovering, I could hardly breathe.”

“You should have said.” Nella tucked a damp-frizzled lock of red-brown hair behind her ear. “Now I see, my lady.”

I hope you do not, Madeline almost blurted.

She wasn’t ready to admit she’d met the man – or how.

She didn’t want her friend to guess that he’d spelled her. Especially when the few words he’d tossed at her had been so harsh.

For a moment, other masculine slurs echoed in her mind. Scornful voices expressing what her suitors truly thought of her and why they’d come to Abercairn seeking her hand.

Criticisms she’d suffered over the years, hearing them not with her physical ear but with her heart, thanks to her unusual talent. A plaguey gift surely bestowed on her by the devil himself.

The taunts still cut deep enough to send humiliation coursing through her…

One suitor found her breasts too large, comparing them to the udders of a milk cow. Another considered her hair such a glaring red he feared gazing at her would scorch his eyes. The most recent also disliked her tresses, thinking silently that her curls were so unruly, an iron-tined comb would fail to tame them.

That same man also compared the width and fullness of her lips to the River Tay.

Most mortifying of all: nearly every suitor agreed she was passable enough to bed if a man dwelt on the depth of her sire’s purse.

One by one, those would-be husbands had crushed her confidence and stomped over her feelings until she wanted nothing but to be left alone. Perhaps even to seek the solitude and blessed peace of a veiled life.

And now, for good or nae, she must.

She blinked, furious at how deeply her shoulders had dipped upon recalling the slurs, troubled more to find Nella’s perceptive gaze on her.

“You were not meant for the cloister,” the other woman commented with all the surety Madeline lacked, and so admired in her friend. “You would wither away behind enclosing walls.”

“So I would.” Madeline didn’t deny it, her gaze on a long series of splashing rapids. “Nor is a nunnery even close to what I’d once hoped of life.”

She sighed, wishing the cascading waters could carry away the remembered barbs.

And her dreams, for recalling them hurt far worse. Especially now that she’d come face-to-face with the manifestation of her heart’s desire.

She turned back to Nella. “I never wanted anything but love. True and passionate, earthshaking love I’d give to the man who claims my heart, as he would respond in kind,” she admitted. “Not false feelings summoned in awe of my father’s castle and lands, his coffers of silver and jewels.”

Nella set her hands on her hips. “You think to find such a man behind convent walls?”

“You know why I shall take the veil.” Madeline shrugged off her cloak and gathered her skirts to join Nella in the burn’s chill waters. Stopping after a few feet, she folded her arms against her ribs, hugging her waist. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. A man capable of such love only exists in bard song.”

“Or in dreams?”

“That, too.”

And at the sides of the fortunate women who hold their hearts.

As her shadow man’s heart was given. Wholly and irrevocably, just as hers was inextricably tied to his. The strange bond leaving her to ache for what she knew could have been so dear if only they’d crossed paths in another time and place.

Sure of it, she unfolded her arms and pressed a hand against the small of her back. Such disturbing notions were best pondered later, when she was no longer tired, hungry, and dispirited.

Perhaps after she’d avenged herself on Silver Leg and was safe and secure behind the walls of a suitably remote and obscure nunnery.

But even as she hitched her skirts higher and waded deeper into the burn, a tiny voice inside her laughed at the foolishness of her intentions. No matter how she turned it, there was nothing she could do.

Her fate was set.