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Adam hadn’t meant to reveal himself. And he hadn’t meant to blurt the question out like that. He usually had a more conversational manner. A smoother tongue. He could tease information out of people without asking direct questions.

But this woman—with her impressive disguises and her changeable beauty and those eyes that looked deep into his soul—drained all the subtlety out of him.

“Adam?” she choked out.

The word jarred him. For one terrible instant, he thought she recognized him as a Rivenloch. Then he remembered he’d slipped and told her his real first name. But—damn his memory—he couldn’t recall what last name he’d given her.

“M’lady,” he said with a tip of his cap. He immediately regretted calling her that. In light of her penchant for disguises, it seemed more likely she was not a true lady, but an outlaw.

“Ye followed me,” she accused.

He wondered if her Irish accent was as fake as his Highland one.

“I did,” he said.

“Ye meant to rob me then,” she decided, releasing a disappointed sigh. “So ye’re just a common thief after all.”

“Now hold on. I’m not a—”

“I should have known.”

“Known what? I’m tellin’ ye I’m not a—”

“No better than the men ye chased off.”

“What the…?”

Why was she putting the screws to him? He’d just saved her from those thieves.

“Ye saw me leave the silversmith shop,” she said, “and ye figured ye’d rob me o’ my fortune.” She blew out a disgusted breath. “At least the other two outlaws didn’t feign to be sent by the king for my protection.”

This was getting out of hand. He seized her forearm, hoping to silence her long enough to make her listen.

Her sharp intake of breath made him instantly regret grabbing her. But he needed to make his point.

“I don’t want your silver,” he said. “Or your pearls.”

He thought that would placate her.

Instead, her eyes went round. “Then what do ye want?”

Unbidden, a dangerous idea flashed across his brain. An idea involving his hungry mouth and those cherry-plump lips of hers.

But he was no rake. After a prolonged moment, he released her.

“I want only to keep ye safe,” he said.

“I don’t need ye to keep me safe.” Her voice came out on a rough whisper, and she absently rubbed her arm where he’d gripped it. “I can take care o’ myself.”

He rolled his eyes. She sounded like his sister. But Feiyan actually could take care of herself. She was a master of martial arts. “Ye mean the way ye took care o’ those thieves?”

She bristled. “I’ll have ye know they were almost convinced to come with me to the priory. To mend their ways. To seek redemption. If ye hadn’t interfered—”

“If I hadn’t interfered, m’lady,” he said, losing patience with her thankless stubbornness, “ye might well be lyin’ by the side o’ the road with a dagger through your heart.”

She blushed at that. She couldn’t deny the truth. Perhaps she finally realized the weight of the situation.

After an awkward silence, she mumbled, “I don’t mean to seem ungrateful. O’ course I appreciate your efforts.”

He straightened. Now she was showing the proper gratitude.

Until she added, “’Tis only that I would have preferred ye use more brain and less brawn.”

His jaw dropped. More brain? Did she not understand he was outnumbered two to one? Did she not know the intellect it had required to perfectly time his attack? The strategy it took to subdue them both?

Before he could sputter out a reply, she shouldered her satchel. That incriminating wool hood was peeping out of it again. Which reminded him…

“Ye still haven’t told me who ye—”

“Ye’ll have to forgive me,” she said with a disarming smile, “but I really should be goin’. ’Tis nigh dark, and I’ve a wee bit farther to travel.” She turned and, with a dismissive wave of her hand, headed down the road. “Farewell.”

He watched her with narrowed eyes. She was a clever one. She’d managed to avoid his question. Again.

But Adam wasn’t about to give up.

Besides, those thieves were probably lying in wait ahead.

They were desperate men. They would resort to desperate measures, no matter how confident their intended victim was in the power of redemption.

Their brief altercation with Adam wasn’t enough to dissuade them from making another attempt at a lucrative haul.

It was a matter of common chivalry to follow her.

Eve was trembling. Hopefully not so much that the man who was still—unbelievably, stubbornly—following her could tell.

She wasn’t trembling from the fact he was following her. She couldn’t realistically expect him to turn around and go back into the woods when Scone Priory was so near.

She wasn’t trembling from her encounter with the thieves. She’d faced down outlaws before.

She wasn’t even trembling from the fact that Adam—or whoever he was—was prying into her identity. It happened so often when she was disguised as Lady Aillenn, she’d gotten very good at evading questions.

She was trembling because her arm was still warm where he’d enclosed it in his fist.

Her heart was still racing from the way he’d gazed into her eyes.

Her body was flushed with heat from the wicked thoughts that had flown through her mind when she’d asked the handsome rogue what he intended. Thoughts like what his mouth would taste like. How his strong arms would feel around her. What it would be like to have his powerful body pressed to hers.

She’d never felt like this before. Not when—posing as Lady Aillenn—elegant noblemen had flirted with her. Not when—dressed as the milkmaid Maggie Gall—she’d been wooed by stable lads and gardeners. Not even when handsome Sir Hew of Rivenloch had sworn his undying love to her.

What was wrong with her?

She’d always been able to keep her base urges in check. It had annoyed her how much the abbess had impressed upon the convent sisters the need for chastity. The abbess had advised, when earthly desires proved too much of the Devil’s allure, the nuns pray doubly hard for willpower.

But Eve had never been tempted. The men she’d met had never turned her head, warmed the cockles of her heart, or, as the abbess liked to say, kindled the fires of her womanhood. Indeed, she always thought the abbess devoted far too much attention to the issue of carnal temptation.

Now she had to wonder.

It wasn’t that Eve had disavowed pleasure. She wasn’t made of ice. There were plenty of earthly indulgences that excited her.

The soft summer breeze brushing her bare cheek.

The delicious aroma of Sister Eithne’s leek pottage.

The magical music of minstrels echoing in a great hall.

Snow sparkling in winter trees.

But this was different. This feeling was quite unsettling. It threw her off-balance. Confused her thoughts. Destroyed her good intentions, in the same way the bee had destroyed Jenefer of Rivenloch’s aim in the archery contest.

She had to be rid of this man. This giddiness was dangerous, considering the vulnerability of her identity and her very serious purpose.

Without turning, she called out, “I know ye’re followin’ me.”

“I’m not followin’ ye,” he called back.

The hell he wasn’t, she thought. Instead she said, “I beg to differ.”

“’Tis a public thoroughfare.”

She bit her lip. She couldn’t argue with him. All she could do was walk faster.

So she did.

So did he. And with his longer legs, he easily made up the distance between them. By the time the trees had begun to thin, and the full moon rose to light the path, he drew level with her. Then, without her permission, he seized her satchel and added it to his already burdened shoulder.

She gasped at his nerve. But she didn’t snatch the satchel back. It was admittedly a relief not to have to carry the heavy thing.

“So which one are ye truly?” he asked. “The Irish noblewoman? The French archer? Or the nun?”

“I don’t know what ye’re talkin’ about,” she lied.

To her annoyance, he began to guess anyway. “I doubt ye’re Lady Aillenn Bhallach. I can’t believe an Irish nobleman would let his daughter roam the Scots countryside on her own.”

“My da doesn’t know.”

He pressed on. “I can see ye’re not the young archer lad.”

He let his eyes graze her briefly from head to toe. To her dismay, even that fleeting glance was enough to heat her blood.

“That leaves the nun,” he said. “And though ye do speak o’ redemption for thieves, ye’ve told so many lies, if ye were a nun, ye’d have to spend years in contrition.”

That was true. It was how she planned to fill her days in her old age.

“Perhaps I’m none o’ them,” she said.

“Perhaps,” he said, but she could see he didn’t believe that.

“What about ye?” she asked, eager to get the attention off of her identity. “Are ye an emissary o’ the Pope? A French knight? An old lame beggar? Or a hunter o’ thieves?”

“All o’ them,” he said.

“I don’t believe ye’re godly enough to serve the Pope,” she decided.

He scoffed, pretending offense.

“A French knight?” she mused. Then she shook her head. “Nay. I saw ye laid low by a lass.”

He bridled at that. “That lass was… I was distracted.”

She felt a grin tugging at her lips. He was rather satisfying to tease. “And the beggar? Ye may be poor and old,” she considered, “but ye’re not lame.”

“I’m not old,” he said with a frown of outrage, rising to the bait.

“Well,” she said with a smile, “I suppose Adam isn’t old. If that’s who ye are.”

He neither confirmed nor denied it. Instead he gave her a small chuckle. “’Twould seem we’re birds of a feather, ye and me. Masters o’ disguise, aye?”

She supposed there was little point in denying it.

At least he still didn’t know which one was her true identity.

And she was fairly sure he’d given her a false name as well.

She didn’t necessarily believe the maxim about honor among thieves.

But there was no reason for either of them to expose the other.

Eve still had her pride. She didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.

“I’m not an outlaw,” she said.

“Neither am I.”

“Ye were posin’ as a beggar.”