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Later on that night, after she had filled her belly with fish, Brenda found Douglas again.

“When you’re ready to go and see Erik, I will escort you and introduce you, if you are happy with me accompanying you,” she said.

A smile flickered across Douglas’s face. “I’m sure that would be wonderful. Erik may nae recognize me after all this time,” he said.

“I’m sure that’s not the case. Erik does not forget things easily,” Brenda said.

The smile faded, and that dark look came over Douglas’s face again, haunting him. It was gone quickly, though.

“I think I should be well enough tae leave taemorrow. I hae spent enough time here, I think. It’s time tae get back tae my old life. But are ye sure ye can leave yer home after ye hae spent sae long telling me how ye couldnae bear tae leave?” he teased.

Brenda giggled. “It’s not as if I’m going forever. Besides, I have to stay just in case any other men wash up on the shore and need to be rescued,” she said, her eyelids fluttering.

Douglas smiled. “Any man who finds himself in such a position would be blessed to wake and see such a beautiful face.”

Brenda blushed at the compliment. She wasn’t usually referred to as beautiful. Lena was; she was petite, elegant, and glowed like a drop of water that had been caught in the sun. She was quietly spoken and demure, while Brenda was brash and rough and never stood on ceremony. She made no apologies for who she was, but sometimes it was difficult to understand that men didn’t respond to her in the same way they did with Lena. She sometimes envied the way they would follow her around with their puppy dog eyes. In Brenda’s case, they just mocked her, likely because they knew that she could defeat them in a duel as well. Douglas, though, responded differently. He was so tall and powerful that she wondered if she could even defeat him. Her young mind was dizzy with possibilities, and she found herself wondering if he was going to want to settle down with a wife now that he was home.

Would she be the kind of woman he wanted to marry? She felt a certain hint of attraction, but she couldn’t be quite sure yet. There was so much that was uncertain, and she wasn’t prepared to make a fool of herself at this early juncture. She would know more when they traveled across the sea toward Erik’s settlement.

“I will go and pack some supplies,” she said, and then bid him farewell until the morning.

Douglas breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was falling into place better than he could have planned. It seemed as though his luck was changing, and he was certainly due a change after all the sorrow that had befallen him.

Shortly after Brenda left, there was a knock on his door, and Colby appeared.

“I see that your charm is working,” Colby said dryly.

“I can be charming when I want tae be. I hae just haed nay cause in the last two years.”

“It’s all well and good being charming, but have you made any progress?”

“Aye. We’re leaving taemorrow.”

“Good. Then I shall come with you. You need supervision, after all.”

Douglas rolled his eyes, and everything inside him went tense. It had been easy to pretend that he was a free man since he had washed up on this shore, but in many ways, he was still a prisoner.

“Ye know ye dinnae need tae dae that. Hae I nae proven myself tae ye enough already?”

“Not enough for Gorm’s liking. We’re not prepared to take the risk that you’re just going to approach Erik and tell him our plans.”

Douglas walked up to Colby and slammed his hand against the wall, ignoring the pain that reverberated through his arm. “There is only one thing that I want tae give tae Erik,” Douglas hissed, “and that’s a dagger through the heart. Come with me if ye like; I dinnae care. But I hae given ye my word, and that means something.”

He took his hand away and shook away the pain. He lowered his voice to a calmer tone and felt the rage settling back to swim in the pit of his stomach. “Besides, she is nae gaeing tae like this.”

“I don’t care what she likes. I’m going with you, and that’s all that matters. We’ve come so close now, we can’t afford to let anything get in the way of our plans,” Colby said.

“Aye, I suppose ye cannae. Well, I will see ye in the morning then.”

“Indeed you shall.”

Colby took his leave of Douglas then, and the Highlander sat and held his head in his hands. There had been moments of doubt over the past couple of years, of course there had been. He had made a deal with the devil to betray his own countryman, to betray the oath he made when he pledged his sword to protect Erik. But Erik had been the one to betray him first. Douglas pushed the doubts deep down so that it was buried beneath his anger. It had been inside him for so long that it was all hard and cold and as much a part of him as any of his bones. In fact, there were moments when he wondered if it was all he had left.

Then there were moments like the kind he spent with Brenda, the moments when he felt a flicker of something that had not been in his heart for the longest time. He shook the thoughts away, though. There wasn’t the potential for anything there. Even if she were drawn to him now, those feelings would subside once she learned the truth of him and how he was about to betray her family. Nobody could love a traitor.

Brenda had barely slept through the night because she was so excited about going on her first real adventure. She hoped that when she returned, people’s opinions of her would be swayed. How could they not be, especially when she would have the approval of her cousin? Erik the second’s opinion was valued perhaps even more than her father’s. There would come a time when Emmel would have no choice but to let her speak at the meetings, and then she would prove to everyone that she could be a leader. It was in her blood and her bones, and she wasn’t going to let anyone stop her from claiming her rightful place. But perhaps her father was right in that she should be more patient. Even though she was certain of her destiny, other people weren’t, and they needed to be shown.

When dawn came, she was ready. She feasted on a hearty breakfast to give her strength and then bid farewell to her family as she went to fetch Douglas. She was looking forward to the trip as it was going to give her a chance to get to know Douglas even better. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he saw his homeland again for the first time. It was just a short boat ride away and then a horse ride. She walked merrily, but her pace slowed when she realized that Douglas wasn’t alone. There was another there, this Colby, who claimed that he was an ally of Douglas’s.

“Are you here to send him off as well?” Brenda asked as she approached.

Colby flashed a disarming smile, but there was something she found off-putting about the way he smiled. It took her a while to decide what it was, but eventually, she realized that most people smiled with their whole face, whereas Colby never smiled with his eyes. It made her uneasy. She gnawed on her lower lip and dug her heels into the ground, for she had assumed that she and Douglas were going to travel alone.

“Actually, I’m coming with him. After he got washed up on the shore, I want to make sure that nothing else happens to him, and I would love to see the Highlands for myself. I’ve heard so much of them from Douglas,” he said.

Brenda flashed a glance at Douglas, who merely offered a shrug.

So far, this plan wasn’t going as she had expected, and she hoped that there weren’t going to be any more hiccups.