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“Where are you taking me?” she demanded, attempting to push away from him. Did she not realize a fall from here would break her neck? Tristan shifted, attempting to put more distance between them. Inadvertently, he inhaled deeply, and her scent was intriguing enough that he leaned closer to smell her hair again.

“Did you just smell my hair?”

“How did you get down there?” he asked.

Without warning, she reached down into the pocket of her odd braies, something he’d never seen a woman wear before today, and pulled out a black rectangle. She looked at it and used a most unladylike epithet.

“Dead. Of course,” she muttered.

When he halted, his men did the same.

“Go,” he said. “I will be along.”

Though they looked reluctant to follow his orders, the others rode ahead. He watched them ride around the east tower and toward the gatehouse. Reaching down, he snatched the item from her hands before she could protest.

“Hey, what are you—”

“What . . . is this? And why did you say that it had died as if it were an animal?”

It was hard to the touch, shiny on one side and smooth on the other, and completely unlike anything Tristan had ever seen.

“I really need to get this in a bowl of rice.”

He had no idea how to respond to that.

“What . . . are you serious? You’re telling me you don’t have cell phones here? It doesn’t seem that remote. Edinburgh—”

“Edinburgh,” he repeated, pronouncing it the correct way. She was certainly a foreigner, but from where?

“Whatever. We aren’t that far away, and—”

“We are more than two days’ ride from Edinburgh,” he said, still looking at the black box. It was smooth and shiny, like the side of a black rock. But with indentations on its edges.

“Two days’ ride? You mean drive? How is that possible? It took less than an hour to get to Leannan Falls, and we must be near there, right?”

She’d turned to look at him, her eyes wide again. He looked down to where her shirt clung to her very prominent breasts. What matter of costume was it that she should reveal so much?

“Ahem.”

He looked up.

“OK, what the hell is going on? Did you kidnap me from Leannan or something? If so, you are the worst kidnapper in the world. And what’s with the outfit?” Her voice increased in pitch as she spoke.

“Kidnapping? Do you take me for a reiver?”

“A . . . what?”

Tristan’s headache was returning with a vengeance. Had he not been so tired and hungry and out of sorts, he might have had a bit more patience.

Handing the odd object back to her, he said, “You will stay at Saxford until I can determine how you were able to breach our defenses. And you will explain your odd attire and—”

“‘Odd attire’?” She gasped. “You show up looking like some guy from Medieval Times and call my ‘attire’ odd? I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m sick to death of it. The last thing I remember is jumping into that waterfall. I need to find my sisters, especially Caroline so I can wring her pretty little neck for making us do something so stupid. But I most certainly can’t stay here.” She nodded to the castle. “I have a flight to catch tomorrow. So”—her eyes narrowed—“will you please tell me where I am and who you are so I can get back to the inn immediately?”

Remarkable. He hadn’t understood everything, but there was no mistaking her tone, somewhere between derision and fear. Though he knew plenty of men who’d have tossed her back onto that beach by now, Tristan was not the sort to shy away from a challenge. And she was most certainly going to be just that.

He spurred their mount forward and responded, though surely she must know more than she pretended to. Unless she really had hit her head and did not realize it.

“You are at Saxford Castle—”