The lengths of rope Glenna had tied to the manacle chain ended only halfway down the tower, where she was dangling. She looked down. It was a sheer drop to the lake below. Too late now, her great idea to escape down the outside of the tower didn’t look so brilliant from her current vantage point. She felt as if she were hanging off of Ben Nevis. The cat, an added nuisance, was looking at her contentedly from the sling around her shoulder. The little beast had no idea what was coming.

Clinging to the rope, Glenna used her feet to push off from the tower wall, swinging outward, trying to find the courage to let go and fall into the lake. She kept touching the wall with her feet, and shoving off, touching the wall with her feet, and shoving off….

“Glenna! Glennnnn-na!”

“Montrose!” Startled, she looked up and there he was, her beautiful golden knight, half hanging out of the arch, black smoke billowing up above him. Coughing, he tested his weight on the rope, then pulled off his smoldering gambeson and tunic in one swift motion, and crawled out, barechested, then shimmied down toward her.

A breath she hadn’t known she held escaped in relief. Her knuckles grew white she held onto the rope so tightly; it swayed and shook from his motions. Tears burned her eyes.

He had come for her. He had come for her!

Then he was there, so close the warmth of his breath touched her face and ruffled her hair. She felt his strong arm wrap firmly around her. His mouth closed over hers, and she was swept up and carried away as if lost in the waters of Lethe. There in his arms, it mattered not that they were hanging off a burning tower. She felt safe, as if she could fly like the gulls that wheeled over the sea, like the eagles that circled the treetops, or the plovers skimming across fields of heather. She clung to him as if he was her breath and blood, her heart and life.

Longing and relief ran through her veins and felt so joyous and natural and pure she questioned if those emotions came from her or him…perhaps, from them both. Together, they were different than who they were alone; they were solid and strong and one. Loving him was everything, a power to which she could surrender because instead of weakening her, loving him made her stronger.

Montrose. If she fell to her death at that moment, she would have died in complete elation, because he was holding her and kissing her, because he loved her.

The cat mewed…loudly.

He pulled back. “What have you there?”

The cat stuck its mangy head out from under her arm and looked up at them from eyes the color of the island summer sea.

“I couldn’t very well leave it to burn,” Glenna told him.

“Aye. The room is well gone. I almost didn’t make it to the arch. The floor collapsed behind and under me.” He looked down, paused, then said seriously, “You know we must jump. There is no other way.”

“Aye,” she said with mixed emotions. That water looked far, far away.

“And yet, here you are with a cat hanging off of you.”

“I planned to hold onto this cat tightly when we hit the water,” she said brightly, as if fear were the farthest thing from her mind. “And here you are with me hanging off of you.”

“I plan to hold onto you tightly when we hit the water.”

"We would not be in this situation if I'd had--"

"--your bow and arrows," he finished.

"At least you can admit it." She gave a shaky half-laugh, nerves still raw. “Montrose?”

“You need to stop calling me Montrose.”

She looked at him and said, “And you need to start calling me, your highness.”

He smiled. “So you have decided you like being the daughter of the king.”

“Only if being one gets me what I want.”

“You are prolonging this, Glenna. Look up there. Smoke and flames are coming out the arch. We have to leap.”

She nodded, suddenly as serious as he was.

“We have to let go.”

“Are you afraid?” she asked in a rush.

“Frightened witless,” he said calmly, taking a firm hold of her hand. “We’ll push off from the wall three times, then on my command, we’ll let go of the ropes together.”

She nodded and kept her eyes on his, as they planted their feet on the wall side by side, and shoved off, once, twice…thrice…

“Let go, my love,” he said as simply and evenly as if they had been walking in the woods.

Hands threaded together, they fell through the air frighteningly fast, like heavy stones, and echoing out over the water, his scream was as loud as hers.

* * *

The water was cold; it slapped and stung and was endless, swimming through it was truly endless. When Lyall feet’s finally hit the silty bottom, he pulled Glenna into shallow water, while the mewing cat, slung over his shoulder, squirmed and scratched at him. They stumbled together onto grassy land, breathless, spent and soaked.

Lyall dropped the sling between them and lay there, then rolled onto his back, breathing so hard it hurt and staring up at the blue sky, the grass feeling strangely warm beneath him.

“Solid land has never been so welcome,” Glenna muttered, laying face down on the grass next to him, her head buried in her arms. “Do I still have arms and legs? I cannot feel my limbs.”

The cat coughed and sneezed and spat, and sneezed again, shook itself and sent water in all directions. It looked like a drowned rat as it butted up to Glenna, and sat there with a thoroughly puzzled look that said, how could you do that to me? When she ignored it, the cat squealed plaintively and batted her with its paw.

Glenna opened one eye, stared at the cat for a moment, then said, “Vengeance is mine, puss.” The cat only meowed and ran off into the bushes. "Traitor," she muttered. "I save you and you go running off for a life of your own."

Her words were never more true. She had a life of her own, the future she was born into. Lyall watched her. She did not know he was trapped by his actions, nor that his stepfather would make him face what he had done. Bits of moss clung to her long hair and her face was smudged with dirt or ash. Water dripped from her tunic, trouse and head. She was soaked from head to foot, and she had just leapt from a tower. Lyall closed his eyes. What have I done to you?

As if she had read his thoughts, she turned to glance at him, and frowned. “Don’t look so fretful, Montrose. A little water never hurt me. ”

He shook his head and said, “We just leapt from a rope that was hung from a chain in burning tower that belongs to one of your father’s enemies—a tower I was responsible for putting you in—and landed in a lake…with a cat. I am not certain what your father would have to say about all this but I expect he will say plenty.”

“Since my father--a man I have never met, mind you--is not, nor has been, on home soil for most of my lifetime, I do not believe he has any say in what has gone on with me…and you. I am alive. He should be thanking you.”

“I do not think royal gratitude is in my future,” he said dryly. “You are his daughter.”

She scrambled to her knees and leaned over him, her hair dripping on his chest. “Aye. I am his daughter and you have my gratitude.” She leaned down and kissed him, softly, tenderly. “My eternal gratitude,” she murmured against his mouth, and his hand cupped the back of her head. “Kiss me, Montrose.”

“There is where we have a problem.” He picked a strand of lake moss from her hair. “I am not Montrose.”

“Kiss me, Sir Lyall Robertson,” she said laughing. “Kiss me now! I love to kiss. Consider it a royal command.”

He looked up into her eyes, filled with humor, with challenge and that fine line, the spark in her eye that bespoke her deepest desire, along with a touch of avarice. “You look at me the same way you eyed that plump pearl.”

“Aye,” she said nonplussed. “I have a keen eye. I can gauge your worth.”

His worth? What was his worth? He no longer had his good word and felt as if he were searching for the good in himself somewhere in the depth of her eyes. He wiped the wet hair from her cheek, moving his thumb to her mouth as he drank in her face, drawn to her because of that odd thing she seemed to see in him--something worth saving.

He came close to believing it was true….close.

“You love me,” she said, in almost a whisper, but without hesitation, and as if she were telling him a secret no one else knew.

He was not a strong man. He could not fight this. With all the lies he’d told her, now he owed her the truth. “Aye, witch, I do love you. But I believe you are the only one happy about it. You forget. I am a traitor and you are the daughter of the king.”

She gave a sharp and bitter laugh. “You are no traitor.”

“You say that after what I did.” He shook his head. “You forgive me far too easily.”

“Aye, if there were anything to forgive. I know why you did what you did. How else were you to get Dunkeldon? I have spent most of my life taking what I want.” She shrugged. “You bartered me for what you wanted. Why would I not understand?”

He looked at her for a long time. “What do you see, that I cannot believe?”

She lifted her hand to cheek. “I see the man I love,” she said simply.

“Your father could hang me, Glenna.”

She grew serious and stared at him, clearly thinking. “I will not let them hang you. I am the daughter of a king.”

“You are a woman, whose power is, in truth, only that which your father allows you, your father and the man you will wed.”

“I want no other man,” she said stubbornly. “I am yours. I give myself to you, Lyall Robertson…only you.”

But her words, the gift of herself, the truth she spoke, her devotion, her troth, all of it broke his heart because he could not have her. Still…he was a weak, weak man, who had no strength to fight the bond between them—he wanted her with a fever as hot and scorching as the fires of Hell--and he could do nothing but pull her into his arms and try to find the strength to let her go.

She lay her head down and he stroked her wet hair, tangled and spilling down over his ribs. He closed his eyes.

“I hear that sound,” she said. “Your heart beats here.” She placed her hand on his chest. ‘Tis mine, this heart of yours that beats so,” she said softly. “Say the words to me. Say them and then take me. We will be wed and there will be nothing anyone can do.”

To say the words would be fatal, for her more than him. He wanted her. He would wed her without a hesitation were she anyone but the king’s daughter, his first born daughter at that.

He could promise me to anyone. Did you know the Germans bury their wives alive?

He closed his eyes, searching for the will to do what was right. Her mouth moved close to his but he stopped her, a finger to her soft lips, and he started to say nay, we cannot do this, but he whispered the words that would bond him to her, “I give myself to you, Glenna Canmore.”

She smiled slightly, and her turned-up mouth, so full and moist, found his, and he rolled over in the grass with her, covered her body with his own and gave in to the sweet, impossible fantasy that she could truly be his.

* * *

Ramsey rode into the small clearing, some of his men in his wake, and he took one look at the couple rolling in the grass, a tangle of legs, a tanned hand on a pale white breast, the long waves of shiny black Canmore hair next to a head of golden hair exactly like that of his old friend, and he bellowed Lyall’s name like the most foul, most blasphemous of curses.

The two broke apart as if touched by fire, showing flashes of skin and wet, twisted garments that were difficult to pull into place. But his stepson helped to right her clothing—had he only shown such gallantry before he ravished her on the grass--and then took to straightening what little he wore, unable to hide his erection in his wet, sodden hose. Her mouth was swollen and pink, her cheeks rubbed red from Lyall’s beard, and her face was that a woman flushed with passion, damp and loose and ready to swive.

He recovered himself quickly and ordered his men to stand away and waited until they left the clearing. He spurred his horse forward until he was close enough to see the sweat beading on his stepson’s brow. “In the name of Heaven are you daft? Rolling around on the ground like some lackwit itching to plough the milkmaid?” He lowered his voice and his hand went to his sword hilt instinctively. “She is the king’s daughter you witless fool! I swear by all that is holy and right, at this very moment I could easily beat you boneless.”

Ramsey stared hard at Lyall, then at Glenna. Neither of them appeared to be the least repentant, humiliated, even mildly contrite, and as he continued to look at them, he thought the top of his head was going to blow off. “You have nothing to say?”

Lyall placed his hands on her shoulders. “Glenna, this is Donnald Ramsey, Baron Montrose, and my stepfather.”

Her dark eyes bright and quick, Glenna Canmore assessed him with one solid, slightly familiar royal look. “My lord.”

Lyall leaned down and whispered something in her ear. When he straightened again, Ramsey saw that his hands still rested there.

She looked up at Lyall over her shoulder, her expression saying clearly that whatever he had said was asinine. “I do not care. I will not deny you your place in my life.” She looked Ramsey in the eye, her expression the image of her father, and said without fear or any emotion other than absolute conviction, “It is done. Lyall is my husband. We have promised to each other.”

Ramsey pinned his stepson with a look he hoped struck hard. “Is this true?”

“Aye.”

“Speaking in the present tense?” Ramsey shot back pointedly, aware a handfast had two binding conditions, vows spoken in the present tense and consummation.

Lyall gave a sharp nod.

“Such a marriage is not binding unless consummated.”

Glenna immediately looked up at Lyall, and he frowned and shook his head slightly to warn her, but when she faced Ramsey, she did so without any fear and with conviction. “We became man and wife in the forest of Dunkeldon, by the River Tay.”

Lyall stared at some distant spot over Ramsey’s shoulder, his brow furrowed slightly, but said nothing.

She pulled a small purse from her trouse and spilled a large, impressive pearl into her palm. “He gave me this. A bride gift for my innocence, which I gave to him gladly, my lord.”

Racing like Greek fire through Ramsey’s head were the eventual reactions to this news from Sutherland and Douglas and worse, the king, Himself. Completely disarmed, Ramsey understood he had failed his duty in an insurmountable way. Not only had he allowed Glenna to be captured, handed over to the enemy, locked in a tower, but wed by custom, rather than ceremony to his own stepson, certainly not the king’s choice of husband for his eldest daughter.

Perhaps with enough silver the validity of the marriage could be put to test, particularly with no witnesses. “We will see what can be done with this union after the king’s councils hear of it. Witnesses,” he said pointedly, “are of great importance at a royal ceremony.”

“’Tis binding law of the land, how we are wed” Glenna argued stubbornly.

“And I am still bound by my word to keep you safe.” He held out his hand. “Come Glenna, you will ride with me.”

She looked to Lyall, which annoyed Ramsey, having his orders questioned.

“Go,” his stepson said to her.

“You, also, Lyall,” Ramsey said coldly. “Pick one of the men with which to ride. Once I have secured Frasyr and disbursed his men, we will make for Rossi, where your mother is most likely pacing the solar floors bare.” Ramsey paused, noting the uncomfortable look on Lyall’s face, then he added pointedly, “Aye, lad. And Mairi is there. Your sister longs to speak with you.”