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Surely he jested with her.

“Lady Reina, I know Dennochbrook because my father’s land borders it on the southwest. It was a tiny village in Scotland,” he clarified. “All who live in the vicinity know the story well.”

Still surprised at herself for revealing so much to a man, a stranger, a captive of her father’s no less, she could no sooner help walking back toward the cell than risk her parents’ wrath at what she’d done to get down here. But the need to learn her true identity, her origins, was worth such risk. Who was she, truly? It was a question that had plagued her for years.

It had been easy enough to get the guard to drink an ale she’d known he would welcome. After his surprise at seeing her so late in the eve when most of the keep’s inhabitants were asleep, he had taken her offer without question. Oftimes, she hated how easily she listened to even those who would deceive her. But this night, the fact worked to her advantage because everyone knew Anbarth’s daughter was too trusting by far.

She’d not known what to expect when she found the cell, but certainly this man was not it. When she first shined the lantern on him, Reina could hardly see at all. The smell of the place distracted her, and though she’d been down to the dungeons before, it was an entirely different matter when it was occupied. Reina had nearly turned around more than once.

And then he stepped forward.

His hair fell below his very broad shoulders. His face, unbearded but with the faintest of shadows, was so bruised it was almost difficult to discern that he was quite a good-looking man. Well, not so difficult, as she’d done so easily enough. But angry marks across his cheek were matched only by those on his knuckles as he gripped the iron bars. There was not a patch of skin that was not unbloodied or unbruised remaining. He’d fought hard, clearly.

But what struck her most was his size. Easily the largest man she’d ever met, when the prisoner stood tall, Reina had to look way up to speak to him. She had nearly turned and run at the sheer power he exuded, all behind iron bars.

Joan’s words came back to her then, and now, as she contemplated the unthinkable. Do not get too close to him. He is an enemy to your father and to England. Do not forget that. Nay, she would not let him go, even if she could accomplish such a feat. Especially since he was very likely lying about knowing her true identity.

“The story?” she asked anyway.

Though she’d been accused many times of being so artless as to be simple, Reina simply could not help it. ’Twas who she was, even if she hated that part of herself with a white-hot passion.

The prisoner whistled. “Could it truly be?”

“Clearly you say this for the purpose of obtaining your freedom. Which, as it were, is not something I can provide.”

He did not appear deterred. “What do you know of your birth?”

Each time he spoke, the man’s deep voice nearly startled her into spinning on her heels and running up the stone stairwell from which she came. “I know very little,” she admitted. “When, as a young girl, I once overheard a conversation between my father and our steward that made me question how different I looked from my parents, I asked them about it. My mother admitted that she had not birthed me. Instead, they had cared for me when the midwife at Anbarth’s village brought me to them. My mother had been traveling through when she gave birth to me, and died in childbirth. None knew where she came from or why she travelled so advanced in her pregnancy. Unable to have their own children, they welcomed me as their own.”

Though his face was dirty and bruised, she could see the whites of the man’s eyes clearly between the bars. They seemed guileless to her, as if he truly was interested in her tale and not as a possible means of escape.

“And that was all I could learn. None I asked had more information. It was around that time I befriended Joan, the village healer. She’s lived here all her life and knew the same story as I. Then, two years ago, a Scots clan chief came here to meet my father. My father seemed more cordial than I’d have expected—he hates Scotsmen.” The prisoner did not even flinch. “They are dangerous, he says. Which is why I’ve never been north. And why he does not allow me in the hall if one can be found within.”

“Sounds like a wonderful man, your father,” the prisoner said dryly.

“He is,” she defended him. “’Tis not easy being a border lord.”

“Is it not?”

He was jesting with her. Reina ignored his tone. “That was when I first heard the word. Dennochbrook. The man had uttered it just as I was leaving the hall. The expression on my mother’s face gave me pause. And though I was quickly escorted away, I asked her later why she’d seemed so. . . mortified. Was it a place? Where? Why did the name matter? Her refusal, and later my father’s, made me more curious. I could find no reference to it in any book. My tutor claimed not to know it. Joan has even made inquiries, to no avail. You are the first person who has heard the word.” Her eyes narrowed. “A convenient fact, it seems to me.”

“What is your age?”

What a peculiar question. “Pardon me?”

“Your age,” he repeated.

Reina’s chin raised. “I am five and twenty. And unmarried because—”

“I care not about your wedded state,” he said. “Come here.”

She did not dare.

“Lady Reina. Come close and listen even more closely.”

His expression made her shudder, but, inexplicably, she did move toward him. Her nostrils flared at the stench. Not of him, precisely, but his cell. The rushes clearly had not been cleaned for some time. What a miserable place it was. What, she wondered, had he done to warrant capture? Simply because he was a companion to the outlaw Wallace? Or something more? Murder, most like. “You are scaring me,” she said.