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“Any sign of the enemy?”

Her pulse quickened. It was not the most intimate of the positions they’d found themselves in this past day. Even so. . . “You mean my father’s men?”

When Galien smiled, Reina’s heart soared. Every time.

“Aye, lass.” He looked to the trees again, just as he had when his eyes flickered open. “I see you’ve held them off while I rested.”

“Indeed.” She pointed to the spot from which they came. “Two men did burst through the thicket, just there. But with one look from me, they retreated immediately.”

“What look did you give them, my fearless warrior?”

“This one.” She attempted to use the expression her father gave his sergeant-at-arms when the man inevitably displeased him.

“Ahh, fierce indeed. I can see why they fled.”

Suddenly, he reached his hand to her face. At its touch, Reina felt as if a thousand butterflies had escaped from her chest. Galien used his thumb and forefinger to turn her pretend scowl upwards. “I’ve no doubt,” he said, his deep voice lower than usual, “you could frighten away the enemy. But you are more beautiful when you smile.”

Reina expected he would take his hand immediately away. Instead, he cupped her cheek. The touch, so soft, unlike the palm of his sword-wielding hand, was entirely unexpected. Reina did not, could not, move. Neither could she breathe.

Galien’s gaze held hers. Then, as quickly as his hand shot up, he lowered it. Closing her eyes to the bereft coolness he left behind, Reina tried to make sense of it all. When she opened them, he was still watching her.

“Nothing would give me more pleasure than to kiss you, Lady Reina.”

She thought of him in that river and sighed. “Why do you not?”

He sat up suddenly. Reina shifted her position after being so long against that log. Even sitting beside her, Galien was so much larger than she.

“I would not stop at a kiss, Reina.” His eyes roamed down to her breasts. “I would slip my hand beneath that shift.” He looked back up. “I would make love to you. Which clearly,” he sighed, “would not do.”

Clearly.

And yet. . .

“We know not what lies ahead for me,” she ventured, having thought much about it as he slept.

“If I am wrong, if you are not the babe of Dennochbrook, you will return and claim you were forced. Kidnapped.”

“And put an even bigger target on your back? Nay, I will not.”

“Aye lass, you will.” He stood.

Reina did the same. “And if I am the babe of Dennochbrook?” she ventured, the question one she refused to allow herself to consider. And yet, avoiding it would not aid her cause. “If my father was complicit in slaughtering a village of people?” It simply could not be possible. Every time she considered the possibility, Reina dismissed it straightaway.

“I would think the circumstances of that raid might determine how you proceed. I know not your father’s role in it, only that those who sacked the village were English.”

This part, at least, Reina was confident about. “My father would never kill innocents. Of that, I am certain.”

Galien seemed less so. “’Tis nearly sunset. You should rest while I prepare to leave, to cover any traces we were here.”

She could not sleep now. But neither did she wish to carry on this conversation without making him understand. “Galien, please believe me. I know you are on opposite sides in this, but I know my father. Or the Earl of Anbarth, at least. He is no monster.”

The man that had so tenderly cupped her cheek turned into the one that fought for his country’s freedom. “Was your father at Berwick?”

She refused to answer.

“Was he?” Galien stepped toward her. “Do you know what happened there, Reina?”

She knew after the raid on Carlisle by the Scottish earl, her king had ordered his vassals to Coldstream, where they marched to Berwick. She also knew the battle must have been brutal, as she’d tended to more men afterward than ever before.