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help you.”
    The words echoed through Fionna’s confused
mind. She lay still, keeping her eyes closed against the intrusion
of daylight while she tried to remember where she was and why she
was so deliciously warm, so languid and relaxed. A faint alarm at
the edges of her consciousness warned of some amorphous danger, but
she brushed the impression aside so she could remain as she was,
comfortable and secure.
    Not until the wool-covered wall against which
her cheek was resting began to move did she understand that someone
was holding her, and that what she had first taken for a wall was,
in fact, a broad, manly chest. Strong masculine arms enfolded her
with a highly improper, yet strangely welcome, familiarity.
    She opened her eyes to meet a questioning
grey gaze.
    “So, they are blue,” the man holding her
said. “I did wonder.”
    “What? Where?” She choked to a stop.
    “Is your throat sore?” The man’s low-pitched
voice was weighted with a confidence that suggested he seldom
needed to raise it. “I should think both chest and throat would
ache. You coughed up half the river shortly after we found
you.”
    “River?” she whispered, bewildered. Then,
“Liddel Water?”
    The man did not respond; he just watched her,
apparently waiting for her to say something more. His hair was
shiny black, cut short all around in the same Norman style she had
seen worn by intruders into the borderlands – the intruders her
brothers despised. He was a Norman knight, then, with a
high-bridged, aristocratic nose and eyes the color of silvery
clouds after a spring rain, fringed by thick black lashes. Unable
to bear his penetrating stare any longer, Fionna closed her own
eyes.
    “What is your name?” the man asked.
    “Fionna of Dungalash.” She responded before
pausing to think, and instantly regretted telling him even that
much. He was a stranger and possibly dangerous.... He wouldn’t hurt
her, she was sure....
    What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she
collect her scattered thoughts into a pattern that made sense?
    “I am Quentin of Alney.”
    “Norman.” It was all she could think of to
say and she was hard put to get even that much past her trembling
lips. She recognized his name, though she had never seen him
before. Sheer terror compelled her to open her eyes again and meet
his gaze as she wondered what incomprehensible working of time and
fate had brought the two of them together.
    “Yes, I am a Norman.”
    She wished his smile wasn’t so dazzling. She
wished he was wicked and ugly and smelled bad, so she needn’t care
what happened to him, for this was the man her brothers were
planning to seize and torture for information, and kill when they
were done with him, after which they’d use his death to their
advantage. She had overheard Murdoch say his name aloud, clearly
and distinctly, just before Gillemore had caught her and accused
her of eavesdropping.
    She really did dislike the thought of so
strong and handsome a man brought low, with his lifeblood drenching
Scottish soil. At the moment, Quentin of Alney was still free and
very definitely alive. Did that mean Murdoch and Gillemore had
given up their mad scheme? Or had they just postponed it for a
time, until after Fionna was silenced by death?
    “So are all the people with me Normans,”
Quentin said, “except for Cadwallon. As his name suggests, he is
half Welsh. We found you at the edge of the river, with your hands
tied behind your back. Would you care to tell me how you got
there?”
    She was about to demand he tell her why he
wanted to know, when she suddenly realized she hadn’t a stitch on.
She was lying naked in a bed, talking with a strange man who was
marked for death, though he wasn’t aware of it, and she hadn’t even
noticed her state of undress until this moment. If her brothers
learned where she was, they’d kill Quentin for taking liberties
with her. No, she realized with a hiccup of near-hysterical
laughter, they’d kill her first,