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Trevor offered a polite smile but declined to reply to the comment.

“And where would I find this village? I had heard it was around here…” Trevor pointed at the map.

The innkeeper studied it and shook his head, evidently unimpressed with the efforts made to draw the map. He thrust a thick finger onto the map and slid it through a forest, pointing the way.

“They’re there,” he said.

“Thank you very much,” Trevor said. “I’m glad to have found such a helpful man. Sadly there are a number of Scots who aren’t willing to help an Englishman in need.”

“Aye, well, such is the way of the world. But there’s always room in my heart for a wee bit of help here and there,” the innkeeper said, swiping the coin from the table as he spoke.

Trevor nodded and knew that it wasn’t his nationality or his plight that had caused the man to help him, but rather the coin he offered. All in all, it was a bargain as this knowledge would save him traipsing through the Highlands in search of one single woman.

After his meal the light was beginning to fade outside so Trevor went to his room and stripped off his clothes, slipping into the bed. The mattress was harder than the one he was used to back in London, and the air was colder. For a while, he watched shadows dance upon the wall as a candle flickered, allowing his mind to wander. He had been warned that the Highlands were a strange and unforgiving land and that he would be far better served to leave this matter in the past, where it belonged, so that he might stay in London. But something about this situation stirred a sense of adventure in Trevor’s mind, and when the opportunity to travel to the Highlands had presented itself, he found himself unable to resist. It had been too long since he had tested himself. London was becoming too comfortable, so comfortable it was beginning to itch.

His mind turned to thoughts of Lyndsay. So, if the innkeeper was correct, then she had married a Scot, which lined up with the rumors that had come his way. He shook his head at the thought of an English lady taking up with a savage Highlander and wondered what ailment had plagued her mind for her to lose her senses like this. He could never imagine living up here in the wildlands with wild people, shedding his sense of civility. She must have been desperate indeed to fall in love with a Highlander.

At the thought of love, Trevor’s mind turned to the past and to the hole that had been left in his life. He never had quite managed to settle the conflict between the fighting spirit in his heart and the outer shell of a gentleman. There was a war in him, and the fighter always threatened to break free. Over the years, he had thought about the butcher’s son many times, and occasionally his heart was pained by the fact that he had almost taken the man’s life. At the time, he hadn’t been much affected by the impact, but when he realized how people were looking at him and what they were saying about him, well, it began to sink in that he had almost done something terrible. Other people seemed to think that life was far more precious than he did. To him, it had always been something worthless, a mere quirk of fate that had summoned his consciousness from the darkness in which all souls reside, a darkness that he would fade back into when his time came. Others saw life as a gift, and the greatest sin anyone could commit was to kill the flame of another’s spirit.

Trevor hadn’t been able to fight since then—not in the way he liked, anyway. He had embraced the life of a solicitor and gave the impression of a well-to-do man with a steady income and prospects that many would consider to be good. The women who took a liking to him were attracted to the life he could offer, but he knew they would turn and flee the moment they caught a glimpse of his true nature. Sometimes he longed to bare his teeth and show them his savage side, to make them see the kind of man he was. It would be a brave woman who could stare at him without flinching, that was for sure, and he wasn’t convinced there was such a woman in the world. It meant his life was destined to be a lonely one, but for the moment, he had accepted his fate.

It was something he could cope with most of the time, but there were nights like these when he hated sleeping in a cold bed.

When the morning arrived, Trevor bid farewell to the innkeeper and made his way to the village, hoping that Lyndsay Smythe would be there waiting for him, else he would have to travel deeper into the Highlands. The deeper he went, the more danger waited for him, for he was English, and he was different, and these people liked neither thing.