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Lyndsay wore a dress of white. A smile was upon her face, and she held a cluster of flowers tightly in her hands. The sun was warm, and there were many people in attendance at her wedding. Despite her earlier trepidation, the nerves had left her body, and she was eager to begin this new step of her life. She couldn’t remember exactly how she had escaped the clutches of that Scottish monster, and it didn’t matter now. What mattered was that she was standing before the man who was going to become her husband, the man who was going to protect her. She may not have been in love with Baron Adams, but she knew she would be safe. After what she had been through, that counted for a lot.

She prepared to say her vows and promise herself to this man. It wasn’t the way she had wanted her life to unfold, but at least she was alive, which was more than she could say for those closest to her. She had an obligation to live, and this was the only way she knew how.

Her betrothed raised his hands and pinched her veil, lifting it to leave her vision unobscured. Lyndsay glanced around to look at everyone who was in attendance at the wedding. She gasped in horror and dropped the flowers, each one of them falling to the ground. The first man she saw was her husband. His skin was ghostly white, and a dagger had been plunged into his neck. When he opened his mouth to speak, dark blood gurgled out and trickled down his chin. She twisted around to look behind her and saw Liza standing there, wearing a smile, but blood bloomed from her stomach and left a puddle underneath her.

Her father was the worst. The baron stood there without a head, his body stiff and unnatural and unspeaking. Every other guest was in a similar macabre state. The scale of horror was something she had never experienced before, and her heart thrummed with unease. She stepped back and shook her head, trying to express her disquiet and to say that this was wrong, all wrong, but her husband was insistent.

“This is where you belong. This is your life. You are to be my wife. You are safe now,” he said, his words gurgling and bubbling as blood fell from his lips after every word, forming a black river that cascaded down the front of his fine tunic.

Lyndsay shook her head and went to scream, and that was when she awoke.

Lyndsay’s eyes shot open, and she clasped her chest, waking with a start. Cold beads of sweat trickled down the side of her face, and her chest heaved. Her heart beat rapidly inside as she tried to forget her nightmare. The gory, grisly images of the dead were etched upon her mind, and she groaned as she understood how difficult it was going to be to forget about them. She had gone from one nightmare to the other as she looked at the sleeping giant next to her. She recoiled from him, hating that she had spent the night pressed against his body. Yet there had been something calming about him as well, for his body was as warm as a fire, and it had helped her through the cold night.

The blanket had shifted during the night and was now halfway down his chest, revealing his broad shoulders and wide chest. Thick hair rippled across the swollen muscles. This was a man who had spent his entire life fighting, and he had the physique to show for it. She had never met anyone this tall or this powerful. In fact, she never would have believed such a man existed if she hadn’t seen him with her own eyes, and she hated the deep appreciation she had for his body. There was some feminine twitch inside her that betrayed all the anger and anguish she felt about what he had done.

And yet, she knew that he was not entirely a monster. Talking until they fell asleep had been the only way she could think to stop him from taking her virtue, and it had worked. It had surprised her to learn about his tragic past, and about his real father. Her heart went out to the child he had been when she learned what had happened to his parents. Having experienced such a loss herself, she knew it was something to be pitied, and yet she found it difficult considering what he had done as an adult. How many lives had he ended in his grim quest for vengeance, and how many innocent people would suffer?

Not that her father was entirely innocent. The moment Douglas had mentioned that the baron had tried to exchange her life for his safety, her heart had sunk. She should have expected it, really, but it still hurt to think that he was willing to sacrifice her life for his.

But it wasn’t as though Douglas had her well-being at heart either. She wasn’t yet sure why he had kept her alive when everyone else had been slain, and she preferred it if she never found out. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and a gentle rumbling snore rolled out of his lips as he continued to sleep. This was her best chance to leave, and perhaps her final one. His hand was still lazily wrapped around her waist, so she carefully extricated herself from his grip and placed his hand back on the bed. She gently pushed herself to the end of the bed and wriggled off the end, deciding that this was safer than trying to climb over him. Thankfully, although Douglas had stripped off his clothes, he hadn’t forced Lyndsay to take hers off.

Her feet met the floorboards, and she made sure to tread as lightly as possible. Since she was so slender and willowy, she did not cause much noise. The door was within her reach, and she hoped that she would catch the rest of the Highlanders off guard as much as Douglas. The singing had gone on late into the night, so she could imagine that they were sleeping off their victory, which gave her a chance to slip away and find somewhere safe to hide.

She tiptoed across the room, and just as she reached the door, she heard a low growl from behind her.

“Where dae ye think ye are gaeing, lass?” Douglas asked.

She froze for a moment and then turned back, her shoulders slumping. He had one eye cracked open.

“Would you believe me if I said I was going to fetch some breakfast for us?” she asked.

Douglas smiled and lifted a hand, beckoning her back to bed with a curl of his fingers. So far, he had not been violent toward her, but she remembered how he had broken the desk so easily. His anger could come as quickly as a flash of lightning, and since she didn’t want to be the recipient of his blows, she obeyed, crawling back to bed, lying beside him once again.

“I thought ye would hae more sense than tae try and escape. If any of the other men haed run intae ye, they might nae hae been as kind,” Douglas said.

“Are you suggesting that I should thank you for keeping me here?” she asked, almost laughing at the absurd suggestion.

“Ye are alive, aye?” he said.

The disbelieving smile fell from her face. “Sometimes being alive isn’t the only thing that matters. It’s what you do with your life that counts, and I don’t believe I can do much while I’m your prisoner. Will you at least tell me what you’re going to do with me? I think I have a right to know and to prepare myself.” She added the last part in case the worst was going to come and find her.

She searched Douglas’s eyes for meaning but found it difficult. He was a strange man indeed. His manner had taken her by complete surprise. When he had first caught her in the field, she assumed that she would be killed as all the others had been. When he came to bed with her and stripped away his clothes, she imagined she would have been taken by force, and instead, they had spoken deep into the night. He was her captor, and she was certainly afraid of him, but that wasn’t all there was in her heart, and this confusing, conflicting mixture of emotions was difficult to understand.

“I dinnae know,” he admitted after a time, exhaling deeply as he said this.

Lyndsay looked confused. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“We were nae supposed tae take prisoners. We were only supposed tae let a few stragglers escape tae spread the word.”

“Then why did you save me?”

Douglas shrugged and could offer nothing else in reply.

“Well, then leave me here and begone. I will be sure to spread news of your terror and your violence. I’ll make sure the whole of England is terrified of you before I’m through, and I won’t have to lie at all.”

“Oh aye, more likely that after all I’ve told ye, ye will run off tae this baron ye are supposed tae marry and form an army tae come and attack us.”