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Girlish giggles carried to her on that same insistent wind, and she opened her eyes, sweeping her mouth upward.

Elana and Cora were thoroughly enjoying today’s outing. Grinning, exposing the front tooth she’d lost but two days ago, Cora waved at Branwen as she skipped beside her new papa, pointing at one thing or another.

Keane nodded with an appropriate amount of interest and genuine affection.

Branwen waved back, smiling in return.

She adored Marjorie’s daughters, and Marjorie, too. She was the older sister Branwen, and her sister, Bethea, had never had. Sweet-tempered, patient, but with a will of iron, she’d made a brilliant duchess. But more importantly, she’d taken to Keane’s wards with genuine caring and friendship.

Branwen and her sister adored her.

At the thought of Bethea, Branwen’s chest tightened, and her breath caught as if someone had pulled her stays far too tight. Loneliness and no small amount of worry vied for supremacy in the tangled knots where her stomach ought to be.

At this very moment, her dear sister and her new husband, Camden Kennedy, were cloistered at Glen Tormallan Lodge—Keane’s hunting lodge outside Culloden—hiding from spies that had meant them harm.

All because in March, Branwen had injured her feet during an unfortunate dance with a cloddish lord, and Bethea had tried to help her. Branwen had craved the excitement of Edinburgh’s social life until that fateful night when her sister had been abducted after overhearing a plot to depose the king.

Thankfully, the spies had been apprehended, and Bethea and Camden were safe.

Now, however, Branwen found she far preferred the many historical sites in and around Edinburgh, as well as Leith’s fascinating seaport, to social gatherings. And she missed the Highlands’ craggy beauty more than she’d imagined possible.

Stepping over a rock, which likely had fallen from the abbey’s missing ceiling, Branwen mused to herself. She supposed as the daughter of a ship’s captain, perhaps a bit of mariner’s blood ran in her veins.

Until recently, she’d not thought a great deal about her father’s livelihood. After all, she’d been a wee lass of five when her parents had been lost at sea during a tempest.

Raised at Trentwick Castle, high in the Scottish Highlands, she’d never realized how much the ocean appealed to her. But the sound of the waves greeting the shore, the briskness of the playful breeze, and the strident calls of the sea birds touched something deep within her.

Stirred something. Awoken a hunger Branwen hadn’t known she possessed.

With a final glance at the abbey, she retraced her steps to the entrance and gazed in the direction of Leith’s docks. As much as she’d enjoyed poking around the church’s ruins, her real interest lay at the port, where the masts of ship after ship stood in the distance like faithful, nautical sentinels.

A yearning to board one of those vessels and sail into the sunset, headed for foreign lands, engulfed her. At the inexplicable longing, her breath and heart stalled for a heartbeat.

Such a wish was a fanciful dream. Keane held no interest in ever leaving Scotland. Marjorie, either, for that matter. She even abhorred travel by coach.

A small frown puckered Branwen’s brow.

Her guardian and his wife were as content to remain in Scotland their entire lives as mice in a well-stocked larder.

Pursing her mouth, she hunched further into her heavy cloak, wishing she’d worn a heavier woolen gown and shawl.

She hadn’t considered that after walking here, spending an hour or so poking around the ruins, and then walking into Leith before returning to Edinburgh, she might become chilled. That had been foolish of her, but she wasn’t about to complain or express her discomfort.

Keane had agreed—after considerable cajoling—that they might stroll the docks and admire the many ships in port, accompanied by Keane’s friend, Bryston McPherson. Bryston had recently returned from his mission in England. In point of fact, he’d been appointed to deliver one of the traitors responsible for Bethea’s abduction to His Majesty’s dungeons.

He was to meet them at eleven of the clock, the only reason Keane had agreed to Branwen’s request to explore the abbey and wharf.

A seafaring man himself, but also an agent for the crown, at six feet, four inches tall, and comparable in size to an oak tree, Bryston would act as their unofficial bodyguard and tour guide.

Oh, Branwen wasn’t fooled as to why Keane had asked Bryston to accompany them.

Scarred and tattooed, his Viking heritage on display for all to see, the Highland warrior fairly exuded power, strength, and intimidation. In truth, he’d frightened the stuffing out of her the first time she’d come upon him in the great hall eight years ago—before he’d acquired the scar that ran the length of his cheek now.

She’d been a gangly twelve-year-old in braids, and he a strapping nineteen-year-old, wilder than even the untamed Scots she’d become accustomed to. Then he’d winked and given her a crooked smile—an almost boyish grin—and her fear had dissipated as swiftly as fog upon a loch in the summer sun.

Bryston possessed stormy eyes—deterrents to unwanted conversation—a marble-like jaw, a mouth generally pulled into an unyielding, grim line, and a warrior’s sculpted form, which made men and women tremble.

The former in fear and the latter in feminine awareness.