Glenna hung down from the manor wall, her arms scraping against sharp stones as she dangled there. Looking down, she adjusted her hands, her weight pulling and making the stones cut into them, too.

Take a deep breath and let go. The ground looked far, far away. The guards walked slowly around the manor but still she had little time.

Let go…

She could feel her hands began to slip and closed her eyes, praying for courage. The sound of Munro’s wicked voice echoed in her head and she saw the vivid image of a coiled adder in a dank pit.

A moment later she hit the ground hard, her bones ringing on impact, and then she was running across the grassy field and sliding down over the next slope, tumbling out of sight and rolling over rocks and into bushes, numbed by fear. She got up running her heart beating in time with her swiftly moving feet and her breathing grew harsh.

Behind her, no shouts came from the manor for the guards to run after her, but she kept her ears sharp, expecting with her next breath to hear them shout and begin the chase.

Still, there was no sound but the pounding of her feet and heart. At the arc of another hill and where the terrain went flat, she turned and glanced back, then stumbled on a willow root and fell hard, biting her tongue. Pain shot up her ankle and she tasted blood, but she scrambled up and hobbled toward a skeletal copse of trees ahead of her.

With the cool, dark shadows of the rowans around her, she bent down, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. Soon her lungs had filled and stopped burning, and she slowly straightened, resting her hand on a tree trunk with rugged bark. Nerves raw, she looked back.

No guards streamed out from the gates. In the distance, sheep calmly grazed, the mill’s waterwheel slowly turned at the river beyond, and the valley looked quiet and peaceful and nothing like the place of evil she knew it to be.

She took a long deep breath. It was over, yet her heart still beat like the drums of Morris dancers and in her mind she could still taste the dank scent of the pit; she could still feel the presence of that snake almost as if it were there with her now; she could still feel Munro’s voice. The shaking overtook her, uncontrollable; it started with her hands. She stared down at them as if they belonged to someone else.

You escaped… The words echoed in her head like a monk’s chant. You are free…you are free….

Laughter boiled up and out of her. Relief. She stumbled deeper into the woods. Away. Farther away, and her frantic, odd laughter was the only sound around her. She sagged back against another tree as if her bones had turned to eel jelly.

Eyes closed, she leaned her head back, and her laughter suddenly changed and she was crying, hard, shuddering, wracking sobs. She wrapped her arms around herself, sliding down the tree into a puddle, and just sat like that, crying in the woods as she rubbed her ankle and rocked and hiccupped and silly tears spilled shamefully down her face like water from the mill wheel.

It lasted a long time—her misery, her fear, her relief. Rampant emotions she couldn't control

Soon her crying slowed and she sat there, aware she was completely alone. She closed her eyes. Fergus.... And she started crying again, giant sobs that wracked her body.

Looking up, the huge crown of the tall trees made her feel small and lost. She took long, deep breaths to calm herself.

He was a strong hound. Perhaps....

Haunting her was the image of him wounded yet trying to get up to protect her. She could see his sad eyes as she told him to stay. Was he alive still? She had to know.

“Foolish hound…stealing chickens,” she muttered miserably, rubbing her ankle. And Skye was most likely still tied to a tree, she thought. Sitting there crying was doing no good. They both needed her and she needed them.

With a sense of determination she stood and dusted the leaves off her trouse, and she began to walk, hobble really, since she accepted that she could not run, at least run well. She had been walking a while before she realized that her ankle no longer sent shooting pains up her leg and the dull ache was waning.

The shed was far up into the forest on the opposite side of the valley and below a tall ridgeline of granite that stood to the south. Keeping to the woods kept her hidden, but how long before they discovered she was gone? Could she still run if she were forced to? She had no pain and she could walk.

Be thankful, Glenna, for that, she thought. She trudged on, looking up at the sky through the trees to judge the daylight, aware there was still more than half the day left. She could make it before nightfall. One step in front of another over leaves and mulch as the sun slowly moved across the broad blue sky.

Eventually she crossed into a clearing with hard-packed ground that made her ankle ring with dull pain. The trees grew thicker and needles covered the ground and less and less light shone through to the forest floor. She licked her lips, which were as dry as her throat and tongue. She needed water, but she moved on. There was water in the shed. She’d pulled it from the stream near where she had tied Skye.

Fergus…please be safe. Please be alive. She concentrated on walking…walking…. walking…walking…. Mouth dry. She just needed to get there. She had to get there.

A sharp, distant sound broke her focus. She glanced up to see nothing, then quickly darted behind a nearby tree and paused only a rapid heartbeat before she moved to another with a low branch, swung up, scrambling higher and up into the thicker branches, into heavier leaves, hugging the trunk before carefully settling quietly into a crook. Her heart was thudding in her ears as she tried to listen.

For a long time there was nothing. She slowly counted. Waiting. Listening.

The noise sounded again. The softest of sounds…just a barest crushing of a step. A horse? Boots?

Suddenly as quickly as it had come, the sound disappeared and there was a strange almost heavy silence, as if all the birds had flown away and there was no life in the forest but hers and whomever was out there.

Again she held her breath, ears sharpened, listening. There was nothing. She dared not move and she took short shallow, quiet breaths, afraid to give herself away.

There it was again…so close this time: the softest of footfalls.

Someone was below the tree.

She heard him breathe.

Oh Lord… She shifted ever-so-slightly to try to look through a small opening in the thick leaves.

“Hallo?” came the voice of Montrose.

Lud! Glenna’s heart jumped into her throat.

Was it really him? She sagged forward as if her bones disappeared and clung to the tree branch.

“How long are you planning to stay up there?”

“Montrose! It is you!”

His voice had come from the back side of the tree. “Montrose!” she called his name as she scrambled from the branches, sliding down the tree trunk before she hobbled to him. Nothing could have stopped her as she threw her arms around him. “You are here… Montrose, Montrose, you are here…”

He pulled her up against him. “Ouch!” He stepped back quickly, rubbing his chest. “What is that?”

Glenna pulled the silver, jewel-encrusted chalice from beneath her tunic and held it up. “A gift from Munro.”

Lyall took the cup, frowning at it as he twirled it in his hands, then held it up. “Look there. Is that hair?”

Strands of coarse brown hair were caught in the large rubies on one side. “Most likely. Before I escaped, Munro’s head came in hard contact with it.”

He smiled slightly and handed her back the chalice, one arm still protectively around her. Looking down at her, his expression became almost unreadable. He seemed to be searching her face for something important and he raised his hand tenderly to her cheek, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. “I want to beat you senseless for running away.” His expression and tone belied his words, spoken tenderly and without anger.

“Nay…you do not,” she said spritely, overcome by a sense of joy she did not want to over think. The look they exchanged then was powerful and made the racing in her heart earlier seem like nothing. Why, why him? Why did her mind go weak whenever he looked at her…whenever she thought of him….whenever he stood so close that goosebumps broke out on her skin that had nothing to do with the weather? Her hand went to her belly because it did some kind of somersault. She understood then, what she was feeling, and curiously, she did not try to pretend or tell herself she did not love him. How could she deny what her heart held so deep within it?

He moved first; his hand slid to the back of her neck and she was back in his arms, where she wanted to be. For just a sweet moment she was overcome by a powerful sense that she was truly safe. She closed her eyes and just let him hold her. He was warm and his body muscled and solid as the protection of a stone curtain wall. She took a deep breath and smelled leather and horse and pine. Montrose was here. She relaxed for the first time. His hand rubbed her back and he did not move; he did not step away. He just held her. The only thing better would have been if he kissed her.

She lifted her face upward.

Kiss me… Kiss me…

Mentally she tried to will the idea into his head.

But he merely held her. Then his hand left her back, stopped rubbing it.

He pulled some leaves from her hair and softly brushed at the hair at her brow. “You’ve lost your hat,” he said gruffly.

“Because of Munro. I had to let down my hair to save myself from his lust.”

His eyes narrowed and his expression grew harsh and black. “What did he do to you?”

“Surely not what you are thinking. He was much more interested in doing something other than hanging me when he thought I was a lad. Women hold no interest for him, other than to torture. He is so evil--the man who beat Ruari till he was almost dead. Did you know that?”

He shook his head.

“Munro would strangle cats, probably pull the wings off of butterflies, and beat children. He locked me in a dirt pit with an adder!”

“Aye,” he said, tightening his arm around her. “I saw the snake.”

She pulled back. “You were inside the manor?”

“It matters not.” His arms fell away from her and he was all business. He glanced around the woods cautiously. “We need to leave here.” And he started to turn away.

She grabbed his arm. “First we must go to Fergus. They shot him with an arrow, and they took me away from him and left him to die. We were hiding in a shepherd’s hut high in the forest. There.” Her voice grew higher pitched and faster as she spoke and she pointed toward the ridge and said in another rush of words, “Skye is there, too. She was tied to a tree in the woods behind the hut. We must go. I must go.”

“Calm yourself. We will go to the shed.”

Why had she thought he would argue with her? He did care…

“But come now,” he said. “We need to move swiftly.” He took her hand and strode toward the denser woods and she had trouble keeping up with him. He stopped turned back and caught her hobble. He looked at her foot. “What is wrong?”

“I fell. ‘Tis nothing.”

The next thing she knew she was up into his arms as if she were merely a bag of goose down. She didn’t protest, but slipped her arms around his neck and leaned her head on his shoulder until they reached the black and she asked for water and drank from the skin he had until she thought her belly would burst.

He took the empty skin. “There is water all through these woods. You did not know? You could not stop?”

“I dared not. And Fergus and Skye must need water as much as I do. If they go without, I can go without.”

“You would do them and yourself little good if you wither and drop to the ground from thirst,” he said, shaking his head in that way men had when they were exasperated with a woman and he set her on his horse and mounted, settling into the saddle.

She slipped her arms around his waist and said cheerily, “I am stronger than you would believe.”

“But more stubborn than I can even imagine."

She smiled. “Aye, we are much alike, I think.”

He laughed.

"You have a new water skin."

"Aye. Someone took mine."

And she leaned her head against his back as he spurred his horse towards the high forest.

With her directions, they reached the stream in the woods behind the shed, where Skye was munching on grass as if she hadn’t been abandoned there overnight and half the day.

Montrose dismounted and handed Glenna the reins of his horse. “You stay here,” he said quietly. “I will go get your hound.”

“But—“

“Someone could be waiting.”

She nodded.

He moved swiftly toward the trees, then stopped and turned back to her. “Do not move. You can take the horses to drink and fill the water skins.”

She nodded, watched him disappear into the trees with his sword raised, aware he gave her something to do to keep her from following him, which she was not planning to do anyway. She went to the stream, filled and rehung the water skins on his saddle and waited long moments as the horses drank noisily. Ears sharp, she listened for the sounds of swords and heard nothing but the watery noise of thirsty horses.

Her mind wandered and played its own game of magic thinking…if this, then that. If Montrose comes back carrying Fergus, he is alive. Please… Please…

She paced in a small circle, placing her foot in the same place where she had just walked—it kept her mind occupied, then she felt Skye nudge her and turned to stroke her muzzle. “I am sorry you were alone, sweet. I am sorry, so very sorry. Skye...Fergus has to be alive.”

A crunch of leaves made her spin around, her breath held tightly in her throat.

Montrose appeared out of the trees, sword sheathed, and his arms empty.

Her hand covered her mouth to stifle her cry.

He looked at her with an odd expression. “He is not there.”