CATRIONA WOKE TO the sound of the endless whistling of the dotterels’ morning song from the garden. Spending most of the night tossing and turning had left her feeling even more tired than when she’d gone to bed. She glanced up at the shelves of all the toys Ennis had carved for her, which she still sometimes took down to hold. Each lovingly-whittled wooden figure eerily matched some creature she loved from the island. As a wee lass she would pile them on her bed at night, clutching a hare or a duck as she wept herself to sleep.

On the walls of her room Senga had painted the rolling fields of the glen, framed by oaks and scattered with wildflowers. The colors had faded now, but Catriona still found them a comfort. During those first months her new family had done so much to make her feel at home in this strange place, but wooden animals and painted glens couldn’t replace the island.

She would have to forget it, and find contentment here, where she was loved and wanted.

As Catriona stretched, her sensitive breasts pressed against the soft old night dress, and a mild ache welled between her thighs. The reminders of Gavin made her pull a pillow over her hot face. She’d given herself to him willingly, and had discovered pleasures she hadn’t known existed. She wouldn’t feel shamed over that.

Getting out of her childhood bed and dressing for the day had her finding marks from Gavin’s loving all over her fair skin. The little love bites and whisker burn made her sigh as she covered them. She’d carry more than memories with her for the next week. In a strange way she felt almost branded by him, as if the marks would turn into ink and become permanent, even if they were just in her memory.

’Tis done, Catriona thought as she touched a tingling spot on the side of her neck. I’ve naught to regret.

In the front room Ennis and Senga were having their morning meal, and smiled at her as she retrieved a bowl and filled it from the pot of oatmeal on the table.

“I’ve a new mint blend,” Ennis told her as he poured a mug of fragrant brew for her. “With a pinch of honeysuckle and verbena, to give it sweetness.”

Catriona took a sip and sighed. “’Tis very good.” She met his gaze. “But you neednae dose me with mint. I’m calm now.” She picked up her spoon, and idly stirred her oatmeal.

“That’s the face you gave us when you brought the neighbor’s cow herd into the yard,” Senga said. “Two hundred head, milling about you like happy kids as they ate their way through the garden. I reckon that was when we ken what we’d taken on.” Her expression softened. “Happily, lass. You’ve been a joy.”

“I didnae know what a garden was,” Catriona admitted. “You were very patient with me.” As they were now, waiting for her to confide in them.

“You look exhausted,” Ennis said and frowned. “There’s a bruise on your neck, too. Did you have a fall?”

“No, I…I dinnae wish to burden you.” She tugged at her collar to cover the spot, and felt her cheeks pinking. “I need work. I wonder if the cows still like me. Mayhap I should go to work at the dairy.”

Ennis reached across the table to touch her hand. “You can trust us, Moggy, whatever it might be.”

“Aye, I do. ’Tis just…I’ve been foolish.” She could keep it to herself, for they’d only worry more if they knew, but Ennis and Senga were more than family. They were the keepers of all her secrets. “Since last I visited, a man came to build a house on the island. A highlander.”

Catriona told them of Gavin, and how she’d tried at first to discourage him from settling on Everbay. How she’d felt when he’d crossed the barrier, and how quickly her feelings had grown from curiosity to longing. The way she had tried to help him learn the ways of the island, and how she had nearly betrayed herself and her secrets to him at the falls.

“I told him naught, but I gave myself to him before I left,” she said finally, ducking her head. “I wanted to have just one time to remember.” She looked up to see Senga frowning. “I ken ’twas wrong to be with a man unmarried. But I’m no’ a bairn anymore. I’m a woman now, and I cannae have a love of my own here nor on the island. I dare no’.”

“You love him, then?” the other woman asked.

“If I were free to, aye. I would. I would make him happy again.” She cradled her mug between her cold hands. “He works on a fisher, where he has friends. Friends who would talk of me, their Blue Lady.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “And Daimh would come for me and finish it.”

“So, you left this highlander no’ kenning where you’d gone?” Senga said and shook her head. “He’ll be driving himself mad now, looking for you. Lass, there’s naught crueler than that.”

“I didnae mean to hurt him.” She looked to Ennis for support. “His heart belongs to another. For him, ’twas but a dalliance.”

“If he’s as honorable as you’ve said, I think no’,” he said gently. “A man like that wouldnae rest until he found you again. If he’s druid kind, and found the portal… Lass, you were a bairn when you came here. Think what might happen if this man did, even by chance.”

The thought of Gavin enduring the terror of the first crossing through the portal made her heart skip a beat. Doubtless he would come out fighting, here in a place where no one could defend themselves against such a man.

“You must tell the highlander everything,” Senga said firmly. “All of it. Then hear what he’ll say, and who has his heart now.”

“You could bring him here with you,” Ennis suggested before Catriona could reply. “We’d help you both to settle, you ken that. And you’d both be safe from Daimh.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. “You’d do that for me?”

“We prayed for a child, but were never blessed until you came out of that hayrick,” Senga told her. “You’re as much our daughter as you are Tavish and Isela’s child. Of course we would.”

All of her troubles unraveled as she realized it was the perfect solution. “But do I tell him about the portal, and you, or bring him through and then explain?”

“He wouldnae believe you,” Ennis said wryly. “Bring him here first. He’s a highlander, so ’twill no’ all be strange to him.”

A raven landed on the sill of the open window by the table, reminding Catriona of what she’d forgotten. “I’ve a nestling to return to the cliffs, and I would bring back some things from the village that belonged to my family. I’ll stay the night, and return on the morrow.” She let out a breath, and grinned at her family. “I dinnae ken how to thank you for this.”

“Leave his weapons on the island,” Senga advised her. “I dinnae fancy facing down a highlander who wields a dirk and cudgel.”

* * *

Gavin emerged from the brush and held his torch aloft as he scanned the muddy ground again. The flickering light revealed that the rain at dawn had washed away his own tracks, so he had no hope of finding Catriona’s. He had bellowed her name so often his voice had been reduced to a raw rasp.

Where could she be? Had she fallen and knocked herself out? Had he terrified her into leaving? How had she gotten off the island?

It was his own facking fault. If he hadn’t fallen asleep under the tree, this wouldn’t have happened. He’d have gone after her as soon as he’d realized she wasn’t coming back.

Gavin retraced his steps to the falls, and stared down into the churning pool as he went over everything in his head again. Yes, she’d been upset when she’d run out of the cave, and even after she’d calmed down she’d told him she was leaving. That had been the final straw for him, that and the good-bye kiss. He’d snapped, and poured all his frustrations and longings over her. He’d shown her exactly how he’d felt but she’d responded so freely and beautifully.

It couldn’t be the sex that had driven her from him. He’d given her the chance to walk away and she hadn’t. Everything that had happened after that had been by choice—hers and his.

It was something to do with the damned cave.

He went to the hidden entrance and walked through the cascade that hid it. He shielded the torch with his jacket, trying to preserve the flame. Inside the murky little recess, the torch dimmed then flared, showing him more of the interior than he’d seen. He saw a small pallet with old linens and blankets, and the scratched stick-figures on the walls.

She must have hidden in here before, when her uncle had chased her. The thought of Catriona as a little girl, concealing herself here long enough to nearly starve, made his stomach turn.

Tired and heartsick, he sat down and leaned back against the wall. This was where she’d slept, he guessed, on the pallet huddled under a wool blanket. She couldn’t have been very old to fit, perhaps a young child. The math began to add up in his head. Catriona looked to be in her mid- to late-twenties. Twenty years ago, she would have been a young child.

Twenty years ago, the undead had come to the island and massacred the druid tribe that had lived here.

Something caught Gavin’s eye, and he shifted the torch to illuminate the wall beside him. She’d etched another drawing on this wall. It was much larger than the other, and showed the stick figures of her tribe being throttled, bitten and torn apart by other figures with traces of chalk in their lines. Of course, chalk to make the undead figures white. She must have witnessed the massacre and etched it in the stone. Not for her own amusement, but so there would be a record of it. Now he understood the terror that had kept her so isolated and private about her life.

Catriona must have been a member of the tribe that had been wiped out.

Making that connection explained so much Gavin hadn’t understood. Her initial fear of him, and the strange accusations she’d made. She’d lived in so much terror that she had been in hiding her entire life. The village in the glen with its protective barrier was just a larger version of the falls cave. He’d done nothing since coming here but lure her out of the only place she’d felt safe.

Gavin would have slammed his head back against the stone wall, but knocking himself out wouldn’t help him find Catriona. He had gone to his cottage, the village and walked the shoreline. He’d searched every inch of the forest around the falls. He needed to be more methodical now. She wouldn’t have only two hiding spots on the island. As frightened as she was of being found there would be others. She’d disappeared from the trail to the pool, so he’d follow that, and see if it branched away from the falls. He might find her in another cave in the cliffs.

He had to find her.

The sunrise filtered through the rushing waters, adding dappled light to the cave as he rose to his feet and made his way out. Once outside the cascade, he shook the water from his dripping hair and dragged it back from his eyes.

“Gavin.”

The sound of Catriona’s voice stunned him so much the torch fell from his grip, and tumbled down to extinguish itself in the frothy pool. She stood only a few yards away from him, wrapped in a soft gray shawl over a spotless blue gown. Her hair flowed over her shoulders like a curtain of auburn satin, and she held two white blooms in her hand.

She looked like such a dream he couldn’t stop staring at her. “Where did you go?”

“No’ here,” she said, her mouth taking on a wry curve. “But I’ve come back. I’d have been here sooner, but I had to first see to Jester. I’ve so much to tell you.” She held out one of the flowers. “If you wish to listen.”

He crossed the distance between them in a handful of strides, and snatched her off her feet. Holding her against him, he buried his face in her hair. “I thought you’d left the island. That I’d finally driven you away forever.”

“You cannae do that, my lad.” She clutched him tightly, stroking him with her slim, cool hands. “I’ll no’ keep anything secret from you again.”

He drew back enough to look at her face. Though her eyes were underlined with dark circles, she was alive, and beautiful, and his, and that was all that mattered to him. “I’m taking you back to the cottage.”

Catriona smiled. “And there?”

“You’ll tell me everything.” He swung her up into his arms, holding her securely as he made for the trail.

She clasped her hands behind his neck, and sighed as if relieved as he carried her through the forest. Gavin caught the scent of mint and honeysuckle on her breath, and kissed her lips to taste it.

“More of that and we’ll no’ make it,” she whispered.

“Aye.” Already he wanted to fling her to the ground and strip her naked and have her over and over again. But he needed to first understand what had happened to her, and why she was so terrified of being found by her uncle.

Inside he set Catriona on her feet by the hearth, and stripped out of his wet clothes. He watched her as he rubbed his damp body dry with a cloth, and her cheeks pinked, but she didn’t look away. Once he was dressed he tossed some split logs on the fire, and drew her down to sit with him in front of the hearth.

Cradling her face, he kissed her brow, and then took in her dazzled expression. He didn’t want to ruin her delight by questioning her about the past, so he said, “We dinnae have to talk now. ’Tis enough to have you back.”

“’Tis time for the truth.” She climbed onto his lap, and took his hand in hers. “I was born here on Everbay, to the tribe of the Moon Wake people. They lived as druids do, apart from the mortal islanders, but always willing to help others. My father was a fine fisherman, and my mother a skilled herbalist. ’Twas from them I learned how to net and gather.”

He listened as she described her idyllic childhood on the island, and how much she had been loved. Only when she mentioned her father’s brother did her expression change.

“My uncle Daimh wasnae content to live on Everbay, so I saw him only rarely. When he did come he often quarreled with the others.” Her lips twisted. “I didnae like him, and not only because he angered my father. When he smiled, ’twas too wide, and when he talked, his voice scratched at my ears. Hunger always filled his eyes, and he never stopped moving, like the basker. He felt cold and dangerous to me, as the sea is where the currents run dark and hard. He made my mother afraid, and she feared naught.”

Catriona’s voice faltered a few times as she told him of raids on the other islands by the undead, and the spell barrier the Moon Wake used to surround and protect their village from such an attack. By then her uncle had fallen out with the rest of his tribe over his use of dark, forbidden magics, and had left the island vowing never to return.

“His leaving gave no ease to my mother. Soon after Daimh stopped coming to Everbay she made me promise to run away if he ever did. I was to go to the cave under the falls, and wait there for her. She put food and water and blankets there for me. Then she said if she didnae come, I had to leave the island alone.” She took in a deep breath. “One night she woke me, and bid me run. As I did I looked back, and saw the barrier fall. My uncle had returned, and with him hundreds of the undead. I hid at the edge of the glen and watched as they killed everyone.” Her voice broke on the last words.

Gavin held her for a long time without speaking. Then, in a soft voice, he said, “You drew what happened that night on the walls of the cave.”

Catriona nodded tightly. “I thought if Daimh found me, then the cave would tell the story. Only he didnae come, and neither did my mother. I waited so long for her, Gavin. I waited until I had naught left to eat, and even then.”

Staring at the flames in the hearth, she told him how starvation had finally driven her from the cave. How she’d watched from the forest as strange druids arrived to bury the dead, and place a new barrier around her village.

“The last to go was an old man with the softest eyes. He looked kind, like my father, but my uncle was with him. Daimh pretended to be sad, and wept over the graves. He spoke of loving my parents, and despairing that they had been murdered so cruelly. That was when I understood why my mother had told me to run. My uncle would kill me to hide what he had done. So, I left Everbay.” She smiled wanly. “A man named Ennis found me, half-dead in a ditch. He and his wife Senga took me in, and became my new family.”

Caring as they were, living with the very protective mortal couple had still been a painful adjustment, Catriona admitted, and she began making visits to the island in secret. As she grew older she finally entrusted them with the truth of her past.

“They would have me with them always, but they ken that I am no’ like them.” She sighed. “I’ve tried to be content there, for coming here is dangerous. If Daimh ever learns I live, I do not know what he will do. Maybe bring the undead back to the island to finish what they started.”

Gavin clamped down on the rage billowing inside him. “No’ as long as I draw breath, my sweet Cat.”

She brushed his mouth with her fingertips. “I ken you will protect me.” She closed her eyes. “’Tis the work of the warrior in you.”

Gavin thought of everything he still kept secret from her. He wanted to tell her about his time in the service, and what he’d learned while fighting in the Middle East until his disease had forced his discharge from The Black Watch. But how could he explain to her that he was not just a warrior from the highlands, but the twenty-first century?

The soft purr of her breath told him he didn’t have to say anything more now, for Catriona had fallen into a deep sleep. Gently he lifted her and carried her over to his bed, where he stretched out beside her. She turned to cuddle against him, and he pulled his tartan over them. Finally able to relax, he wrapped an arm around her and closed his eyes.