Glenna sat by the fire with Mairi, belly full, bathed, a maid combing her long clean hair dry, and listening to Lyall’s mother talk about her son.

Beitris Ramsey was a thin and delicate woman, who had greeted her kindly, but seemed cautious and curious like a bird on a window sill, which made the meeting more than awkward at first. As the women ate together and attended Glenna, Lady Beitris soon relaxed.

Her first impression was striking and unique, made so perhaps by what she chose to mask. Dressed beautifully, in a gown of deep blue and gold brocade with velvet braided trim, she moved around the room with grace and elegance, a quiet step and straight, high back. Her belled sleeves long and elegant, yet she wore a tight silken glove on one hand. To cover the burnt, puckered skin? That she was scarred was made apparent by her manner of dress. But Mairi had warned her, and Glenna understood it was to protect Lady Beitris as much as to prepare Glenna.

Half her face was covered with a dark veil connected to a circular cap that tied tightly under her chin and again at her neckline with a wide collar. The visible half of her face was lovely with her soft white skin, wide eyes the exact blue color of Lyall’s, and a full mouth that showed little age and was as pink as late summer’s campion bloom. Her red curly hair hung down her back in a bright, thick braid encased in a slip of icy blue silk and wrapped with gold and copper braided ribbands. As she sat near Glenna, the braid draped over her shoulder, hanging past the chair on which she sat, and there were small gold pendants in the shapes of crosses, stars, suns and birds decorating the twists of ribbands.

“What he shows the world is a mask to protect who he is inside,” Lady Beitris said, a woman who certainly understood the art of masking things. “The idea he is a coward?” She shook her head. “That is not my son.”

“Not the brother who saved me,” Mairi said, and when Glenna asked a question, the women told her the whole story of the day Dunkeldon burned.

“He was ten years old,” Mairi finished, “when he carried me on his back and took mother’s hand and we traveled alone to Rossi. He was ten years when he faced the wolves who attacked me. He saved me,” Mairi said quietly.

“And lost Atholl,” her mother added.

“Atholl was his beloved hound,” Mairi explained. “They were always together, my brother and that big hound. It slept at Lyall’s feet, followed his shadow, obeyed his every command.”

“We had been walking for two days by then, and we were resting against some tree at the edge of the great woods,” Lady Beitris told her. “My burns were so painful, I could not go on, and Lyall was trying to cool my skin with a cool rag. I was crying. My skin felt as if it was still on fire.” Lady Beitris looked down, the memory obviously still painful in a different way. “Mairi wandered off into the woods.”

“I was chasing butterflies, or something equally foolish.”

“Atholl followed her,” Lyall’s mother continued. “We had not noticed she was gone, until we heard the wolves. My heart was in my throat. All we had lost and then Mairi, too? ‘Twas too much for me.”

"I had no idea what danger I was in until I looked up. Before me was a line of them, snarling, and so close I could smell their fur.” Mairi shuddered. “They pounced, but Lyall beat them off and carried me back to mother. But Atholl…” She paused. “He could not save us both.“

“Lyall never said a word but he never spoke his name again. He merely grew more quiet and inward. At some point Donnald tried to give him another hound from one of the litters here at Rossi, but Lyall refused. He never wanted another pet.”

And, Glenna thought, he never again named another animal.

“’Tis a sign of a great heart, and his greatest curse, that my son does not forget those he loved.”

* * *

Lyall could not forget her. He tried. His stepfather’s words haunted him, echoed about his mind in an eternal headache, and defied who he thought he was, while keeping alive some part of him that still had the essence of a conscience. He ate little, under the assessing eyes of Ramsey and the worried glances of his mother, but went back to pace the parapets again, walked the halls of Rossi, and finally sat down and played chess with an old knight he found sitting in front of the huge hearth near the keep’s back entrance, long after the castle was quiet and abed.

“You have lost thrice now. If an old man did not know better, I would think you were throwing the game, lad.” Sir Magnus had been with Ramsey for more decades than Lyall knew and had trained Lyall in service when he was first at Rossi. “Get yourself to bed.”

Lyall rubbed a hand over his face in frustration, then rested his hands on his knees and stared at the fire. “I cannot sleep.”

“What is this sleeping excuse from one as young and strong as you? I am old, which is a fine excuse to be awake at this hour--too many aches to sleep through the night, too many broken bones.”

And I have a broken heart. Until he had just thought the words, he had avoided the core of his troubles and what was truly bothering him. Now it was there for him to chew on.

“Based on the confounded look you wear, I will venture a guess that a fine ankle and a pair of breasts are involved,” he laughed wearily. “ ‘Tis only women that inspire in a man such utter despair and complete confusion.”

Lyall gave a wry laugh. “A fortunate guess.”

“In my six hard fought decades, I have seen too many men felled to their knees by a fair maid. Few men are immune. Kings and princes, earls and freeman, even the baron himself.

“Ramsey?” Lyall laughed.

“Aye, he suffers still.”

Lyall doubted that piece of frippery. He shook his head. “He is a large part of my problem. The lady is willing. My stepfather threatens me to not act on it…on her.”

“I am not surprised,” was all Magnus said.

“My orders are to keep her safe.”

“Safe? Matters of the heart are seldom safe, and power, title, name and wealth provide no armor. My own dear Aileen ran me a merry and frustratingly long race from a nunnery to the Cairngorms, to Normandy, Outremer and back. Aye, ‘tis a lass who gives a man that lost look. “

“I look lost?” Lyall said, not really a question. Was he that weak. A lost lamb? He’d rather think of himself as a coward.

“Oft times you have been lost. You have not made good choices over the years. But this manner you have is different. You do not look driven by fire and vengeance.”

Magnus and his brutal honesty. Lyall gave him a square look.

“I, too, have lived with the fires of youth. Vengeance and greed have ruled my life. I do not condemn you, lad. You have followed what you wanted unflinchingly. And that is not a weak trait, Lyall Robertson.” He paused meaningfully. “Now you need to decide what you truly want--make certain it is what you want--and chose your path without regrets. If your path is truly your own heart’s desire, you will have little to regret when you are my age. The trick is to find the truth in your desire. To not chase after something for the wrong reasons.” He stood and stretched, wincing with his joints snapped aloud.

Lyall stood out of respect for him.

“I told you years ago, when you first came to Rossi, that a man must choose his battles. Do you remember?”

“Aye, but in truth I have not thought of it,” Lyall admitted with a wry laugh. “Or I would not be in this fix.”

“I somehow doubt that, lad.” He clapped Lyall on the shoulder. “You must learn which battles are worth fighting. Now I am off to bed and you should do the same.”

Lyall watched him leave, then took a candle from a stanchion to light his way through the halls and arches, and went up to the next floor, Magnus’s words alive in his head as he passed by Glenna’s chamber. He stopped and walked back to the door.

Inside, the room was still dimly lit from too many candles that been forgotten and the glow of the banked fire in the hearth. At first glance, the room appeared ransacked, but with a closer look, he realized that was not the case. The clothing rod was empty and the drape that covered it wide open. The chairs, stools, benches and tables were strewn with gowns of every color. Shoes were lined up by each gown, some with long toes, some square-toed with no backs and small heels that might bring her closer to his chin, shoes made in leathers and fabrics of every color with silver buckles and ribbands. Shifts and chemises, other underwear and thin, delicate sleep gowns ladies favored, some in a bleached stark-white spilled from a large open clothes chest lined with hand stitched sachets of flower petals Mairi always used and that made her smell like a spring garden.

He looked at the number of the thin sleep gowns. Ironic, since Glenna lay asleep on the bed wearing a thick, finely-woven wool robe and hugging a red velvet gown with fur trim to her chest like a coverlet, and on one foot was a green slipper with gold ribbands and a purple kid ankle shoe with red laces on the other.

Watching her, a smile curved his mouth and felt sweet, and something like happiness swelled within him, the first he’d felt since he’d been home. His heart was in his smile, but it was safe now, to reveal his deepest and secret feelings inside this room, because no one could see.

There was the chance he could spend every night of his lifetime watching her sleep, seeing her at peace, and by doing so, feel at peace himself—a miracle of sorts? In her he felt the wonder of miracles, the truth of life and God and man, the reason to be alive and to walk the earth. There was no other woman he had ever looked at and imagined fat with his child, imagined faces and bright eyes and small hands, with no other woman had he seen his sons and daughters until now.

What had Magnus said? Reasons…reason.

There was no wrong reason for Lyall to go after Glenna. He had never set out to make her his and prove or avenge something. But what would their being together do to her? There was the true issue. Who would be most hurt? Ramsey was certain something dire would happen. Would she look at him someday with regret?

As he left her chamber and moved down the hall toward his, he knew one certain thing: with her, he would never have a single regret.

* * *

The next morning was filled with busyness that started barely after the cock crowed. Prayers in the chapel, where Glenna knelt quietly between Lyall’s mother and sister until her knees were sore and her quiet words ran together in her head, then off to break fast with the women in the solar over bowls of stone fruit, a platter of crispy fried trout and hot pepper bread with warm honey and crunchy, oat cakes fried and dusted with cinnamon. Mairi’s boys joined them, romping like spring colts, while they asked Glenna enough questions to fill a coffer, and eventually their nurse took them off to run wild outside rather than in. The room felt the sudden quiet.

“They are a handful,” Lady Beitris said as she rose from her tapestry stand and placed a hand on her low back. “Enough stitchery.”

“Not for me,” Mairi said looking up. She bit off a thread and rummaged through a basket of spools. “I want to finish this today.”

Lady Beitris took Glenna’s arm and slid it through her own, patting her hand. “Come along with me, Lady Glenna. ‘Tis a lovely day. I will show you about Rossi.”

And that was when the day took a different turn. As the women walked the castle gardens, moving from the rows of roses and bellflowers, past the great cabbages and root vegetables, to a large, flat herb patch with clumps of marjoram, thyme, thick, sharp rosemary tuffets, and the wide frosted colored leaves of the sage plants, chatting, a wide brown leather ball flew behind Glenna and crushed a corner of the herb garden.

Lyall came running around a wall, laughing and teasing, with one of his nephews in his wake, until they came face to face with the women. He stopped, his eyes on Glenna.

“Ladies,” he bowed and said, “Make your bow to the ladies, Duncan. That’s a good lad.”

“Look at my herbs!” Lady Beitris scolded, but there was no anger in her tone.

Lyall picked up the ball and tucked it under his arm. “Fluff your grandmother’s prized weeds, Duncan.”

“Weeds!” Lyall’s mother gasped. “You are incorrigible, Lyall. These weeds are what make your winter mutton palatable.

But Lyall was still staring at Glenna, until she finally looked away from all the feeling she saw in his eyes, and she flushed when she realized Lyall’s mother caught their exchange. The pensive expression on the face of Lady Beitris was telling.

“Come along, lad. Your brothers are waiting.” Lyall nudged his nephew into a race and they disappeared behind the wall.

By afternoon Glenna had a few moments to herself, and for the first time since morn she was alone. She went down to the stables to see Skye.

“Hallo, you worthless nag,” she said, stroking Skye’s muzzle as she fed her a summer apple. When Skye was done nibbling, Glenna started to wipe her hand on her clothing by rote, but stopped. She was in a gown, the plainest of the lot and made of finely-woven, thin violet wool, with simple sleeves and shoes of calf that fit her feet like gloves. She squatted down and wiped her hand on the clean straw then straightened, looking around her, liking the familiar scents of the stables. She had missed this.

Leaning her head against Skye’s neck, she thought back to days on the island, when her life was simpler and all about horses and feed and manure. She closed her eyes as her mind drifted back over time.

“Thinking of me, love?”

Her eyes flew open and she stepped back. “Lyall!” Was he everywhere?

Handsome as the Devil himself, hair golden, eyes the color of cornflowers, grinning wide enough to show a rare dimple in his cheek, he stood there, arms resting on the stall gate, intent on watching her.

“Thinking of you?” she repeated sweetly. “The baron might have to enlarge the castle arches so you might manage to get your head through. And if you must know,” she lied, “I was thinking of how to scrape the manure off my shoe.” She pulled up the hem of her gown and showed him her shoe.

“And a fine shoe it is, as is your lovely ankle. But I was recently warned that a fine ankle is trouble.”

“What do you want, Lyall?” she asked in a flat tone, feeling mixed up and annoyed, happy to see him, yet confused, and wanting to throw her arms around his neck and cover his face in kisses.

His look changed, the joy in his expression vanished. “Want? Something I cannot have,” he said seriously and the moment died. “Good day, Lady Glenna,” he added curtly and walked away.

Her heart sank, and she cursed herself for dousing their fire.

But they were not done and the afternoon and evening continued to play cruel tricks on her. They crossed paths repeatedly, almost as if they were dice in hand of God. When Glenna took Mairi’s lads to the kitchen for a sweet, rewards for napping quietly, Lyall was standing with his arm resting atop Cook’s head as the short woman who ran the castle kitchens looked way up, waving a wooden spoon under his nose as she pretended to scold him for sticking his fingers in the plum sauce, both of them laughing, until Glenna and the boys interrupted.

Later, as she raced from her chamber to go to meet Lady Beitris in the solar, she and Lyall came out of their doors at the same time, both froze in place looking down the long hallway at the other. Later still, when she was speaking with Mairi in her chamber, Lyall came in without knocking, asking his sister a question before he looked up just as Glenna dropped her wine goblet on the carpet. And when night had fallen and the moon began to rise, when the stars overhead blinked in the darkening sky, when the castle was just beginning to quiet, they met on the dark narrow staircase, each heading in a different direction, and they stared, startled, frustrated, then turned to edge by each other.

But quarters were too close and her breasts brushed his ribs, making her breath catch. He looked down, their mouths were almost level, with her on a higher step and him on a lower. His breath was warm on her cheek, and she could smell the scent of cinnamon and allspice from the stew served earlier, and feel the intense heat coming from his body.

His hands touched hers, and something glinted in his eyes, before he pulled away as if burned and continued down the stairs without looking back, his voice quietly saying, “I cannot do this. I am done.”

And as she watched him walk away, shocked by his words, she vowed, “You might think we are done, but I am not done.”