After saying goodbye and thank you to Frederick and Aggie, Rodrick and Muriel left the Carruthers’ holding.

With Muriel perched in front of him, Rodrick steered Caderyn back to the Mackintosh and McLaren keep. He knew she was furious and frustrated, but he did not care at the moment. He had won. Somehow, he had managed to convince her to go with him.

They had ridden more than an hour in stony silence before Muriel finally spoke to him again. “I want to know the entire truth about how me brother died.” ‘Twasn’t a question, ’twas a full out order. Rodrick chose his words as carefully as a healer chooses her herbs. One wrong statement and Muriel might very well climb from the horse and run back to the Carruthers’ keep.

“I was no’ there when he died,” he told her honestly.

“Where were ye?” she asked, apparently forgetting what he had told her weeks ago.

“I had been injured,” he reminded her politely. “I was recoverin’.” He hoped she wouldn’t ask how.

She turned slightly to look up at him. “How were ye injured?”

God’s teeth, he did not want to tell her the truth. “That be no’ important.”

“I think it is,” she said, scrutinizing him closely.

Looking straight ahead, he focused on the horizon. If he lied, she would know it or eventually find out the truth. “Charles tried to kill me.”

Her eyes widened in horror as her mouth fell open. For a brief moment she might have thought he was jesting. Then she saw the seriousness of the matter etched on his face. “Why on earth would he do such a thing?” she asked in bewilderment. “I thought ye were friends?”

“I thought so as well. Until he stuck the dirk in me chest.”

Unable to continue looking at him, Muriel turned away. After a lengthy silence, she said. “I be so sorry, Rodrick.”

He could hear the tears in her voice. “Do no’ fash yerself. Yer brother did what he thought he must do to protect ye.”

It had taken a few months of trying to figure out Charles’s actions before Rodrick finally understood. A desperate man will sometimes do things that do not make a lick of sense. While he might never forgive Charles for trying to kill him, Rodrick at least understood his motivation. Everything he did was for Muriel.

“Why did ye come fer me?” she asked in a low, hushed tone. “And please, do no’ tell me ’twas the right thing to do.”

Rodrick fell silent while he debated on whether or not he should tell her about the dreams.

“Rodrick, I would like to ken the why of it. It has to be more than a simple sense of honor. Me brother tried to kill ye, yet ye fought to rescue me. Fer the life of me, I can no’ understand why.”

The why of it might take a lifetime to explain. However, if he were ever to expect her to be honest with him, he would need to be honest with her. “I began to have dreams,” he said. “Verra vivid dreams in which a bonny lass was crying out to me fer help. I assumed that lass was ye.”

Turning again to face him, her face bore an expression of sheer perplexity. “Ye came to help me because of a dream?”

“Aye,” he said. “I did. ’Twas a dream that plagued me fer weeks.”

“Plagued ye?” she asked.

“Aye,” he said with a nod. “It haunted me, Muriel. ’Twas the same each time. Ye were asking me to help ye.”

“But how did ye know who I was? How did ye know who to look for? We had never met,” she said with a bit of disbelief and wonder.

He smiled warmly. “As yer brother lay dyin’, he told Ian about ye. Later, I found letters from Kathryn McCabe written to Charles. Whilst a description of ye was never given, I knew ye were in dire need of help.”

“And ye rode all the way to Skye to find me,” she said. “All because of a dream.”

He could see it did not make much sense to her how a once complete stranger would or could come to someone’s aid like that. Hell, he still wasn’t sure he understood it himself. “’Twas more than just a dream,” he said. “In me gut, I knew ye needed help. I could no’ just ignore the dreams, or ye.”

Dumbfounded, she could only stare at him incredulously. Everything he had done, every act, every risk taken, was all because of a dream. She supposed she should be grateful to him for listening to it, for if he hadn’t? She shuddered to think of where she would be right now if he had ignored the ethereal pleas for help.

Had she not begged God for His help? Had she not cried for months, pleading with Him to send Charles to her?

And that day, when she was being forced aboard Captain Wallace’s ship. Had she not then begged for someone, anyone to help her?

Studying Rodrick closely for a time, a sense of calm began to drape over her heart. God had answered her prayers in the form of a hardened warrior named Rodrick the Bold.

* * *

With her head held high, Muriel returned to the Mackintosh and McLaren keep with Rodrick. Borrowing some of his courage — for he seemed to possess a never-ending supply of it — she woke the following morning with a new sense of determination. If whatever dark deed her brother had done did not matter to Rodrick — who had very nearly died by Charles’s own hand — then it should not matter to anyone else.

While she did receive a few curious looks and even fewer hard stares from the clanspeople, no one had much to say. At least not to her face. If anything, she was met with cool silence.

Muriel dived into her daily routine with determination. While she would not bring up the subject of her brother, she was fully prepared to respond should anyone else be so inclined. She would agree that he had in fact behaved most deplorably as it pertained to the clan. She would even go so far to admit that his actions had been traitorous. However, she would also politely explain the reasons behind his actions. If they still could not forgive Charles, so be it. But she refused to allow anyone to hold her responsible for his actions. Nay, everything lay at the feet of Rutger Bowie, for ’twas he who had started the entire sordid affair.

After the first week since returning, she was growing more and more frustrated. No one, not one single person had anything to say on the matter of Charles. What was the use of having a properly laid out retort if one couldn’t use it?

Later that night, while she and Rodrick walked around the outer wall, he sensed her upset.

“Ye be awfully quiet,” Rodrick noted.

Pursing her lips together, she let out a rapid, frustrated breath. “Did ye tell everyone no’ to discuss the matter of me brother with me?”

“Nay,” he replied, his brow drawn into a curious wrinkle.

Muriel chewed on the inside of her cheek for a time. “I fear I do no’ understand it then. No one has said anything to me about him since our return.” While they might not have said anything, she had the oddest sensation that at least a handful of them wanted to give her a piece of their minds.

Rodrick shrugged his shoulders. “I remember somethin’ one of the men who raised me used to say. Do no’ go borrowin’ trouble.”

“I do no’ think I am borrowin’ trouble,” she told him curtly. “I am simply wonderin’—”

“Why it is no’ one is burnin’ ye at the stake?” he asked with a grin. “Lass, I tell ye that ye need to stop worryin’ over things. The people will either come around or they will no’. All ye can do is show them who ye are.”

“And who am I?” she blurted out, uncertain anymore she could answer that question.

Rodrick stopped and smiled warmly. “Ye be a good, bonny lass who is goin’ to marry this scraggly, old, scarred warrior someday.”

“Ye be no’ old,” she argued.

Rodrick chuckled at her reply. “But I still be a scraggly, scarred warrior, aye?”

“I would no’ call ye scraggly either.” While she could not begin to call him handsome, she wasn’t quite sure what she would call him. But scraggly? Nay, he was not that.

“What would ye call me?” he asked playfully.

Uncertain if he were only teasing or being truthful, she answered as honestly as she was able. “I would call ye a good, kind man,” she replied, her cheeks growing warm with just a bit of embarrassment.

Her answer seemed to please Rodrick, for he laughed and chuckled off and on for the next hour or so.

She could live to be a thousand years old and would never understand men.