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She was everything.

And this man would suffocate her. Trap her inside a castle, keep her doing what she’d never enjoyed: being a proper lady.

Philip leaned down and murmured to Anna, something sweet and intimate, David could tell, and she smiled broadly with a nod.

If there was a hell on earth, David was in it.

Then the priest started talking, and David resisted an urge to rush to the altar, push Philip away, and stand there, being blessed and married instead.

He remembered his sister’s wedding roughly three years ago. It hadn’t been in a church but in front of one, like most weddings here. This one was inside, probably, because they’d just heard Mass for John the Baptist and might as well just stay here and get the marriage done.

Rogene’s wedding had been full of tension because Angus was about to marry Euphemia of Ross, and Rogene had stopped it. And still, clan Mackenzie stood by her and Angus no matter what. Raghnall, Angus’s younger brother, who’d become David’s friend and whom David missed. Catrìona, who about month later got married by the same church to James, a police detective from the twenty-first century.

Homesickness enveloped him like a heavy blanket. But he wasn’t missing the twenty-first century. He was missing Eilean Donan. His clan. The people who would always have his back.

Had he been an idiot to keep struggling to find a way through time all these years? Should he accept that this was his life and that this was where he belonged?

If he found a stone right now, would he be able to force himself to go through it, to leave everyone he loved behind?

* * *

Sir Philip leaned to Anna and whispered to her, “I hope to be a good husband to ye. I will be nothing but kind to ye and treat ye with the respect ye deserve, Lady Anna. Ye dinna need to worry.”

She found herself smiling back because that was what a bride did to a groom who said nice things.

“I thank ye, Lord,” she said to him.

What he said was what any lass wanted to hear on the day of her wedding to a man she’d never met before.

But as the priest mumbled the words of blessing and said things about God and marriage, she found herself looking back at the crowd in the church. About one hundred people—fifty from the Bruce and MacDonald side and roughly the same from the side of Sir Philip. Laoghaire stood next to Uncle Aulay, her eyes hard and unforgiving. Colum was solemn and thoughtful, focused more on Robert the Bruce standing in front of him than on the wedding.

Her father…he was at her wedding. As a lass of twelve, she’d never even hoped for that. And look at her, she had achieved all she’d ever wanted. Her father being at her wedding. Him acknowledging her. A good man, an important man marrying her. Her wedding meaning something beyond just the ties of two clans and noble homes—this wedding would save lives and bring her country closer to the independence for which thousands of people had fought.

And yet, her eyes kept being drawn to David. The priest’s mumbling quieted, and all she could hear was her heart beating quickly. David, so handsome, with his sharp angles and his eyes as dark as a midnight forest, glaring.

His were the only eyes she’d ever want to hold her in their dark depths. His was the only body she’d ever want next to hers at night. His was the only scent she wanted to fall asleep to.

But it wouldn’t be David’s.

It would be this man’s. And as noble and kind and handsome as he seemed, he wasn’t the one she loved.

She would be imprisoning herself for the rest of her life, putting herself, and maybe her child, into that oubliette. As a woman, and as a bastard, she was a pawn in the game of great men. Her father appreciated her doing his bidding, but he wouldn’t give her the love she needed because no one could. She’d spent her whole life trying to please others so that she could secure her future. She’d stopped being her true self long ago, that day when the sea had almost taken her and brought her father back to her.

And now she would be a wife to someone who wanted her to be a noble lady, like her father did. And yet, the only time she felt truly free was with David. He understood her. He knew women were more than just proper noble ladies who made clothes and ran a household and raised children.

“Lady Anna?” asked a voice.

She shuddered and looked up. The priest was looking at her with a cocked eyebrow and lips pursed as though he’d swallowed a spoonful of vinegar. Sir Philip was frowning at her.

“Aye?” she asked.

“Do ye take Philip Mowbray as yer husband?” the priest insisted.

She looked at Sir Philip, whose frown deepened with every moment that passed. She looked at her father, whose jaw protruded under his short-cropped beard. And she looked at David, who was breathing fast and looked ready to jump into action at her command.

This was it. Just like back in the wave, one simple decision would define her life. To yield to the force of others or to take her destiny into her own hands. Was it not what her father did, too, as well as William Wallace? Fight against a much stronger force for the right to live their own lives?

And so would she. She hadn’t done it before, but she would now.