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He looked sharply at her. “David. I told you. Don’t you remember?”
If Sìneag was only a vision, how had Anna known his name before they met?
“Aye. Ye did. I am nae always sure anymore what was real and what wasna. Where do ye come from, David?”
A cringe she barely caught crossed his face as he looked away. “I’m with clan Mackenzie. My sister is the laird’s wife.”
“Oh. Yer accent… I’ve never heard it before. Is that a Mackenzie accent?”
His square jaw worked under his short beard. For the first time, she noticed he was handsome. Very handsome, actually. Straight, chiseled features, warm brown eyes, dark-blond hair in waves to his shoulders. He was tall and muscular and broad. His arms and shoulders were huge under his tunic, and his muscles moved as he fingered a twig in his hands.
“No, it’s not a Mackenzie accent.”
“Then where is it from?”
He cocked his head at her. “Is this an interrogation? How is my accent relevant? I just saved you from a torture chamber and from a chase, risking my own life and my own…goals. How about a thank you?”
The outburst was odd and not very chivalrous, but it did the opposite of what he had intended. He didn’t intimidate her, and he didn’t make her shrink and tremble in gratitude.
She straightened her back. “If I was such a nuisance to yer goals, I imagine there is something ye are getting in return for helping my clan, are ye nae?”
He sighed and looked into the fire again. “Yes. But I didn’t sign up to bring you all the way to Stirling.”
Stirling… Where her father and her future husband waited for her. Where she was now free to go. She’d do anything for her father.
“How long until John the Baptist?” she asked.
His eyes softened. “Sixteen days.”
She was supposed to meet her betrothed one week before the wedding in a secret feast. If she didn’t show up by then, Philip would become worried and might rethink the whole deal with her father.
She nodded. “How long from here to Stirling?”
“It should be about a hundred miles,” he murmured thoughtfully, looking into space. “So, five…six days on horseback.”
When he looked at her again, warmth washed over her. She realized she wasn’t shaking anymore. A warm, calm feeling radiated through her. She nodded and unhooked her arms from her knees and tucked her legs under her.
There was enough time. Hope bloomed in her chest. Plenty of time to make it to Stirling. Still, it didn’t mean she could relax and rest. The enemy was still out there, searching for her. “We should leave right away in the morning.”
“We?” He cocked his eyebrow. “I am waiting for Colum and Iàcob to arrive by the morning. Then you can leave with them.”
“Ye’re right,” she said and threw a twig into the fire. “’Tis best for me to wait for my clansmen. I dinna ken ye at all.”
Handsome or not, she couldn’t trust him yet, not fully. If life had taught her anything in the past few days, it was that enemies could be anywhere.
“Yes, ma’am,” David said and looked into the cauldron. “Water is boiling. You still hungry? You should eat something warm.” He pulled three parsnips, dry fish, and a small sack of oats out of a travel sack. “How are you feeling?”
His care for her warmed her and brought color and heat to her cheeks. She reached out and took the oats, pouring some into the cauldron. The scent of them, even dry oats, made her stomach growl. Even though she’d eaten the moldy bread earlier, after days in the oubliette, she could eat a cow.
“I’m all right, I thank ye,” she said. “I wouldna mind more to eat, aye.”
David took out a field knife and began peeling the parsnips. Anna threw dry fish into the cauldron and the sharp scent of the sea steamed out at her. Just like back on Islay. Nostalgia stung her like a needle. She was far away from home, in the place where she’d been waiting for her life to begin.
Had it? Certainly not in the way she’d imagined.
David peeled a long strand of parsnip skin off and looked at her. “Are you really Robert the Bruce’s daughter?”
She frowned. “Aye. Of course I’m really his daughter. Didna ye ken?”
