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She found herself wondering what a man like this had to argue about.

Handsome, said the treacherous part of her mind.

Shut up, she said right back. Ye arenae being helpful. In fact, ye are making this a lot more difficult for me!

His face was all hard angles, sharp cheekbones, a nose that had clearly been broken once, a jaw like something hewn from rock beneath the beard. A thin white scar cut through one dark eyebrow. His lashes were thick and black against skin that had seen far too much sun and wind, and his lips, parted slightly in sleep, looked softer than the rest of him had any right to be.

One big, callused hand—the hand that had held her—lay open on the blanket beside his head, and she found herself staring at it far longer than she should have. His chest continued to rise, slow and warm, and her own breath tried to match it.

Her knee struck the chair, and it scraped across the floorboards with a screech. Freya clamped a hand over her mouth as the man stirred. He opened his eyes, and they were just as handsome as the rest of him, she realized annoyingly.

“Good morning.”

He had the gall to tell her good morning.

She was having anything but a good morning. Clearly, this was an absolutely terrible morning. She had woken up in a strange man’s bed, with a ring on her finger and no memory of what had happened the night before.

He hadn’t done anything to scare her, other than wake her up. All he had done was smile at her, but she panicked. She grabbed the lantern and threw it before she realized what was happening. It struck him square in the forehead.

“Ouch.”

Freya searched around for her plaid, desperately trying to find something to cover herself with. But it wasn’t anywhere. It wasn’t on the chair, on the floor, or even on the bed. The man’s plaid was.

She grabbed it and flung it around her shoulders before running.

She looked down at the ring. She hadn’t married someone, had she?

It said nothing, of course. Just caught the light and glinted at her, smug and silent, the wolf etched into its face somehow managing to look amused at her predicament.

She turned it round and round on her finger, half expecting it to loosen and fall away, to prove itself to be a trick of memory or drink.

It didn’t. It sat there solid and real, exactly the way the ache low in her belly sat there solid and real, exactly the way the memory of the stranger’s hand on the small of her back refused to fade no matter how hard she willed it to.

The moment Freya made it downstairs, a blur of unfamiliar faces greeted her. Some of them were vaguely familiar, but the night was such a blur that she couldn’t recall any of it after the third glass of ale.

“Me Lady!”

Several of them greeted her and asked how she slept. When they started complimenting her dancing, she was mortified. She couldn’t recall anything, and she certainly wouldn’t have danced in a room full of strangers. That was not like her at all.

She smiled politely. “Thank ye, but I must take me leave.”

The people called out after her, but she wasn’t going to stop. She hurried down the stairs, caught sight of herself in the dark glass of the window, and nearly stopped in her tracks.

Her hair had come down entirely, a great dark brown tangle falling past her waist, with feathers caught in it as if a hen had been slaughtered in that very bedroom last night. The stolen plaid was far too long for her, dragging at her heels. Her face was pale, her blue eyes enormous and wild.

To her horror, she looked exactly like a woman who had woken up in a stranger’s bed.

She pushed through the door, refusing to even glance over her shoulder. She rushed straight to her carriage, determined to put this place behind her and the memory loss surrounding her apparent marriage.

Freya was determined to put what she woke up to that morning behind her. With every mile the carriage put between her and the inn, she felt she could finally forget it.

Glimpses of the night before kept flashing through her mind regardless of how hard she tried: hands pulling her clothes off her, gripping her hips hard enough almost to bruise; a rough beard brushing against the side of her face, leaving redness in its wake. She brushed her fingertips over the tingling skin and tried not to think of how it had made her heart race.

She felt desire coiling low in her belly. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the thoughts. But they remained there, stubbornly refusing to leave.

The memory didn’t frighten her. It warmed her, and that unsettled her far more.

The carriage rattled on through a long afternoon of wet heather and grey hills. When the castle appeared in the distance, she was relieved.