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GREER WAS PRACTICING dodges and strikes in the privacy of her bedchamber when a brisk knock sounded at the door. A heartbeat later, Inghinn entered, carrying a stack of fresh drying cloths.

At seeing her mistress standing in the middle of the room, dirk clenched in hand, her maid’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “By all the Saints, Lady Greer … what are ye doing?”

Greer favored her with a sheepish smile yet didn’t resheathe the dagger. There was little point, for Inghinn would see it sooner or later. “Practicing defending myself with a dirk.”

Inghinn’s lips parted, her gaze drifting to where the wickedly sharp blade glinted in the light of the lanterns burning in the chamber. “What would yer father say?”

“Well … hopefully, he’ll never learn about this.” Greer shot her maid a worried look. “Ye won’t tell him … or Ma … will ye?”

Inghinn shook her head. Nonetheless, her expression was still stunned. “Where did ye get that weapon?”

“I commissioned it, from Brodie Mackay.”

“The blacksmith ?”

“Aye.”

Her maid murmured something under her breath. “I knew ye two were up to something earlier.”

Greer flashed her a contrite smile. She hadn’t seen Inghinn all afternoon but knew she’d be curious about what Brodie had wanted with her. “Sorry I didn’t say anything. I asked Brodie to make me a dirk soon after our arrival here … but I thought he’d forgotten.”

Inghinn’s gaze shifted from the blade to meet her eye. “It’s not like ye to keep secrets from me,” she said softly, her tone slightly hurt.

“It wasn’t a secret … not exactly,” Greer replied with a sigh. “And ye know I’ve always wanted a dirk of my own.”

Her maid’s eyebrows rose once more. “Aye, but I thought that was just fanciful dreaming.”

“Well, I’m tired of ‘fanciful dreaming’.” Greer shifted her attention away from Inghinn then, focusing on practicing the side-steps and cuts that Brodie had taught her. “By the time we return to Druminnor, I want to have mastered a new skill.”

She also wanted to impress her tutor the next time they met. He’d promised to give her another lesson the following morning, just after dawn. They were both early risers anyway.

“Ye are quite taken with Dun Ugadale’s blacksmith, aren’t ye?”

Greer stiffened before glancing her maid’s way. Inghinn was watching her closely now, her mouth curved into a half-smile.

“Brodie has been kind enough to indulge me,” Greer replied, even as her cheeks grew warm. “But that’s all there is to it.”

Her maid gave a soft snort. “I have eyes in my head, Lady Greer … and I’ve seen the way ye look at each other.”

Greer’s cheeks burned hotter still. She should have realized that Inghinn would see through her. “Aye, well, it matters not,” she murmured, looking away. “We both know it can come to nothing.”

Silence fell then, and Greer focused on practicing a few more feints. However, when her maid didn’t say anything else, Greer eventually glanced her way. Inghinn watched her with a veiled expression now, yet her gaze was shadowed.

Sheathing her dirk, Greer turned to her. “I know that look, Inghinn … out with it then.”

Inghinn sighed. “Ye will be careful, won’t ye?”

“Of course.” Greer’s brow furrowed. “ Promise ye won’t say a word to my parents.” Worry wreathed up then that her maid might feel obligated to speak to her father about Greer’s behavior upon their return to Druminnor. He’d be furious if he found out about her affection for Brodie.

“I would never betray yer confidence,” Inghinn replied firmly. “I just worry that in yer eagerness to live differently this summer, ye might do something” —she halted then, wincing— “imprudent.”

The two women stared at each other for a long moment.

Greer’s first instinct was to reassure her that she would never disgrace her family. However, the look in Inghinn’s eyes stopped her.

She wasn’t just warning her—there was something else there. Something that spoke of personal experience.

Greer really looked at Inghinn then. Her maid was barely a decade her elder, with a mane of wavy brown hair and green eyes filled with wry intelligence, yet Greer sometimes viewed her as she did her mother: old.

But she wasn’t.

“Why have ye never taken a husband, Inghinn?” Greer asked softly. “Plenty of maids do.”

Inghinn’s features tightened. “I don’t need a man,” she replied with uncharacteristic stiffness. “I have dedicated my life to serving yer family … and I’m happy with my lot.”

“But there was a man once … wasn’t there?”

Her maid swallowed, hard, giving Greer her answer.

“Aye,” she said huskily, turning away to set down the drying cloths on a stool.

“But that ended before it even started … a long while ago now.” She glanced up, her gaze narrowing.

“I played with fire and got myself burned, Lady Greer … don’t make the same mistake. ”

“I hear Brodie has been teaching ye how to use the dirk he made ye.”

Greer cut Bonnie a surprised look. The two women were walking through the village together, both carrying baskets of bannocks for the poor. She braced herself then, for censure.

However, Bonnie’s expression wasn’t critical. Instead, she looked a little … envious.

“Aye,” Greer replied, still a trifle wary all the same. Inghinn, who was walking just behind them, already knew about her lessons, yet others didn’t.

She glanced over her shoulder to see if Captain Errol was listening in on their conversation. Fortunately, her protector walked a few yards back and was too busy scanning his surroundings to pay attention to Bonnie and Greer. “I thought the dagger should be more than just decorative.”

“Brodie has a lot to do at the moment,” Bonnie murmured, her brow furrowing just a little. “Are ye sure ye aren’t taking him away from his work?”

Guilt tugged at Greer then, and she flashed her friend a nervous smile. “Of course not … he teaches me first thing in the morning, before he starts for the day.”

She hoped she wasn’t putting Brodie behind. She’d be sure to talk to him about that.

“Well, once ye’ve mastered some skills … I’d like ye to teach me and Rose.”

“Why don’t ye ask Brodie … once he has more time? He’s a good teacher.” Greer grinned then. “Maybe he could join us one afternoon in the ladies’ solar?”

Bonnie laughed. “That’ll please Sheena.”

“Well, he can instruct her too, if she wishes?”

Bonnie snorted another laugh. “I can imagine the look on her face … it would be worth it, just for that.”

Greer choked back her own mirth. “That’s unlike ye, Bonnie,” she teased. “To deliberately vex anyone.”

“Aye, well, my mother-in-law has seemed even more adder-tongued than usual recently,” Bonnie replied, “and I don’t know whether carrying the bairn has altered my emotions, but I find I can’t tolerate her as well as before.”

Greer nodded. She’d heard an expecting woman felt and behaved differently. One of her sisters-by-marriage had wept constantly when she’d been with bairn.

Pregnancy wasn’t something Greer was looking forward to.

They veered right then, walking up the path of a ramshackle bothy on the outskirts of the village.

Errol and Inghinn halted by the gate, letting the ladies deliver their bannocks in peace.

However, the captain and the maid deliberately stopped a few yards apart, ignoring each other.

It was clear their wait would pass in stony silence.

Greer noted their stance and sighed inwardly.

Her maid was usually good-humored. However, she lost her manners around Captain Errol.

Likewise, he seemed to take exception to her.

Back at Druminnor, Greer hadn’t noticed the tension between them, for there were few occasions when the two interacted.

Yet ever since their departure for the Kintyre Peninsula, it was impossible not to mark it.

With a rueful shake of her head, Greer shifted her attention to the bothy before her. An elderly woman, Edeen, lived here. On either side of the path reared a tangle of weeds, flowers, and herbs, while fowl pecked at the grain that had been scattered in front of the entrance to the low-slung bothy.

As they approached, a frail, bent figure emerged from the doorway.

Edeen Mackay was so old that her face was a spiderweb of lines. She walked stiffly, with a carven stick for support, yet she flashed Lady Mackay a beaming gummy smile when she spotted her.

“Lady Bonnie!”

“Good morn, Edeen,” Bonnie greeted her. “A fine one it is too … shall we bring a stool outdoors for ye so ye can enjoy one of these bannocks?”

“Aye, Lady Bonnie … but only if ye and Lady Greer will join me for a short while.”

“Of course,” Greer replied. “Here … let me fetch us some stools.”

Squeezing past the elderly woman, Greer moved to the smoldering hearth.

A small iron pot of pottage bubbled gently away.

It was what Edeen consumed most days, along with a few boiled eggs, for she was too frail to walk to market, and would have surely died over the past winter if it weren’t for the likes of Bonnie and some kindly locals who’d brought her food.

Retrieving two stools first and then coming back for the third, Greer settled herself down quietly and listened while Bonnie and Edeen talked of the goings-on in the village.

However, after a short while, the crone shifted her attention to Bonnie’s companion. “How are ye liking Dun Ugadale, Lady Greer?”

“Very well, thank ye, Edeen,” Greer replied.

“Ye aren’t missing yer kin?”

Greer shifted uncomfortably on her stool, aware that the woman’s rheumy gaze had suddenly turned very sharp.

“Of course,” she lied. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy my time here.”

“And how much longer do ye have with us?”

“Just over six weeks,” Greer answered. Her pulse jolted then. Hades, the days were passing far too swiftly.

“Let’s not dwell on Greer leaving,” Bonnie said as she buttered a piece of bannock, smeared it with honey, and handed it to Edeen. “I like to pretend she will remain with us for the rest of the year.”

The elderly woman took the wedge with a gnarled hand and gave a nod of thanks. “Aye, but time stands still for no one, Lady Bonnie.” She cast a pointed glance at Bonnie’s rapidly swelling belly. “Soon, ye shall have a bairn underfoot and Lady Greer will be choosing herself a husband.”

Both Greer and Bonnie stiffened at this. It wasn’t as if either of them didn’t want those things to pass, only that it was a reminder that this summer wouldn’t last.

Sensing their discomfort, Edeen flashed Greer a toothless smile before reaching forward and placing a veiny hand on her forearm, squeezing gently. “Don’t look so worried, lass … change is the way of things.”

Bonnie cleared her throat then. “Greer is learning how to fight with a dirk, Edeen,” she said, pointedly changing the subject. “What do ye think about that?”

Edeen cackled. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“It’s more learning how to ‘defend’ myself with a dirk,” Greer added with an embarrassed smile. Nonetheless, she was relieved Bonnie had steered them away from talk of the future. “And in truth, I’m a bit clumsy.”

“Ye won’t be after a little practice,” Edeen assured her. “So, who is teaching ye, lass?”

“Brodie Mackay,” Greer answered. Her cheeks warmed slightly then, as if, in mentioning the blacksmith’s name, she was admitting that the man fascinated her.

And he did. Brodie was irascible and volatile, yet each time they met, she found herself wanting to know more about the man behind the mask.

Edeen inclined her head. “Well, that’s a surprise. Who’d have thought our brooding blacksmith had the patience to teach a woman such a thing.”

Greer’s mouth quirked. “I might have bullied him into it.”

Bonnie snorted. “One doesn’t ‘bully’ Brodie into anything. If ye haven’t noticed, he’s the most pigheaded of the brothers.”

Edeen nodded. “My sight might be failing now, yet I remember him as fine-looking … not blond like his elder brothers but dark, enigmatic.” Her expression sobered then.

“Of course, he’s never been like Iver, Lennox, and Kerr …

even as bairns, it was clear they didn’t share the same mother.

And it wasn’t just looks either. Brodie was always the sulky one … forever getting into scraps.”

Bonnie frowned. “Whom with?”

“Any lad with a loose tongue who called him a ‘bastard’ … and there were a few in the village who did goad him. Luckily for Brodie, he had three big brothers ready to thrash them if he ever lost a fight.”

Greer’s heart clenched at hearing this. She didn’t like to think how it must have been for Brodie, with the inhabitants of the broch and the village beyond knowing he was the product of the laird’s indiscretion. Folk could be cruel.

As if sensing her concern, Edeen favored her with a toothless smile.

“However, as Brodie grew into a big lad … those who’d once taunted him thought twice before opening their mouths.

And now he’s a blacksmith, only a fool would tangle with him.

” Her smile turned wicked then. “The man has arm and chest muscles chiseled by the gods if I recall.”

Both Bonnie and Greer gawked at Edeen. A beat of silence followed before the crone gave a long, wheezing laugh. “Look at ye two,” she chortled. “I was young once, ye ken … and just because a woman gets decrepit, doesn’t mean she can’t appreciate a braw man.”

Greer’s cheeks glowed like two hot coals now, and she prayed that Bonnie wouldn’t glance her way. One look at her red face and she’d know that Greer had developed an infatuation with the husky blacksmith.

Edeen knew though. Once again, her milky gaze seemed to pierce right through Greer as if she suddenly had no problem seeing at all.

“Enjoy yer lessons, lass,” she murmured, a sly expression upon her wrinkled face now.

“If I were young again, I’d jump at the chance to have Brodie Mackay teach me anything. ”