The Scot spun her around to face him. “I have to go. They’ll come looking for him.”
She nodded wordlessly, still stunned by how fast it had happened.
“You will be all right?” he asked. “I will do what I can to make it seem as if we had no help.”
“I will be fine.” She paused, wanting to say something but not knowing what. “Please, you had best go quickly.”
But she didn’t want him to go. She wished…she wished she had a chance to know this man who’d captured her heart.
Perhaps he’d heard her hesitation—and guessed the reason for it. He turned to do as she bid, but then he, too, hesitated. Before she realized what he was going to do, he cupped her chin in his big hand, tipped her head back, and touched his lips to hers. She had the fleeting sense of warmth and surprising softness before it was gone.
“Thank you, lass. One day I hope we shall meet again, so I can repay you in full.”
She watched with her heart in her throat as he disappeared into the darkness. She brought her hand to her mouth as if she could keep the moment there forever.
It had been a kiss of gratitude. The barest brushing of mouths, with no intent of passion. Even brotherly—on his part, at least. But in that one instant, she felt a spark of something big and powerful and magical. Something extraordinary. Something wonderful.
She might have stood like that until morning, but a sound from the pit prison below roused her from her dreamlike state.
Rosalin raced out of the keep and back up the stairs to her chamber, knowing that she might live with the repercussions of this night forever, but she would never regret it.
One
Hannibal ad portas(Hannibal is at the gates)
Cranshaws, Scottish Marches, February1312
The English would pay.
Robbie Boyd, King Robert the Bruce’s authority in the Borders, stared at the blackened shell of the barn and vowed retribution.
His mouth fell in a grim line, the bitter taste of memory as acrid as the smoke burning his throat. He would never be able to see a razed barn without thinking of the one that had served as his father’s funeral pyre. It had been the then seventeen-year-old Robbie’s first lesson in English treachery and injustice. In the fifteen years since, he’d had many more.
But it would end. By all that was holy, he would make sure of it. No matter what it took, he would see Scotland freed of its English “overlords.” No more sons would see their father’s burned body hanging from the rafters, no more brothers would see their sister raped and brother executed, and no more farmers would see their farm razed and cattle stolen.
He didn’t care if he had to fight for another godforsaken fifteen years, he wouldn’t rest until every last English occupier fled from Scotland and the Lion—the symbol of Scotland’s kingship—roared free.
Freedom was the only thing he cared about. Nothing else had mattered from the first day he’d lifted his sword to fight alongside his boyhood friend, William Wallace.
Recalling the manner of his friend’s death, Robbie’s jaw hardened with the steely determination born of hatred. He turned from the smoldering timbers—the latest example of English “justice”—to face the villagers who’d cautiously begun to approach the manor house.
“Who did this?” he asked, the evenness of his tone not completely masking the ominous warning underneath.
But he already knew the answer. Only one man would be bold enough to defy him. Only one man had refused to renew the truce. Only one man had sent Robbie’s missive requesting a parley back in embers.
A few of the villagers looked around before the village reeve, a farmer by the name of Murdock, cautiously stepped forward. The trepidation among the villagers wasn’t unusual. As one of the most feared men in the Borders—hell, in all of Christendom—Robbie was used to it. Though his notoriety served its purpose in striking fear in the enemy, it wasn’t without complications. It had sure as hell made keeping his identity secret as one of the members of Bruce’s Highland Guard a challenge. Eventually he knew someone was going to recognize him, even with his features hidden. He’d become too well known.
“Clifford’s men, my lord,” Murdock explained. “They took everything. The cattle, the grain—even the seed—before setting the barn afire.”
Clifford.God’s bones, I knew it!Robbie’s gauntleted fists clenched at his side, rage surging through him in a powerful rush.
It wasn’t often that he lost his temper. As his size and reputation alone caused hardened warriors to shake in their boots, it served no purpose.
But there were two things guaranteed to test his control: one was the English knight who stood behind him, Alex “Dragon” Seton, his unlikely partner in the Highland Guard, and the other was the English knight who’d imprisoned him six years ago and seemed to be thwarting him ever since, Sir Robert Clifford, King Edward’s new Keeper of Scotland—in other words, Scotland’s latest bloody overlord.
Devil take the English whoreson, Clifford would pay—for this and for old scores as yet unsettled. It was a reckoning long overdue. For six years, the bastard had eluded him, and now Clifford’s defiance—his refusal to know when he’d been beaten—was threatening to ruin everything.
“Take care of it, Raider,” the king had said.
