Page 64 of Highlander’s Captive

“Yes. It was for love. I thought he was perfect, I thought I wouldn’t find anyone better than him. But as great as he was, I felt suffocated. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take a step. I felt like I was back in that barn again. So we divorced. I divorced him. There’s something fundamentally wrong with me, Craig. If I ever get back home, searching for people in the mountains will be my life.”

“Amy, ’twas a horrid thing yer father did. It seems to me, ye lost yerself somewhere back in that barn and ye havna found yerself yet. It seems to me, ye’re looking for yerself each time ye search for and rescue someone. Ye must find yerself first.”

A shiver ran through her at his words, echoing in every part of her.

Ye lost yerself somewhere in that barn…

She gazed at him. How was it possible that a stranger from hundreds of years ago understood her better than she did herself? Better than anyone in her time?

She reached out and cupped his bristled jaw. And just as she was about to kiss him, a wall of rain hit them.

Amy squealed and laughed. Craig smiled, a carefree, lighthearted smile. He pulled her to himself, rolled her under him and kissed her, briefly but deeply, making her toes curl.

“I will protect ye from the rain,” he said.

But his hair was soaking wet, and raindrops fell right into Amy’s eyes.

“Protect me from the rain in the castle, please.” She laughed.

“Aye.” He kissed her briefly again and helped her up.

And as they packed the picnic back into the basket, Amy forgot that she was from the twenty-first century and he was from the fourteenth. She just felt like a woman having a date with a handsome man under the rain.

Chapter 21

Craig didn’t think he stopped looking at Amy for a single moment, the rain a welcome distraction from the violent beat of his heart.

The woman who’d just opened up to him couldn’t be a betrayer. She couldn’t be a liar, and she couldn’t be a murderer. The realization was like lifting a heavy rock from his chest. She couldn’t have just come up with that story—he had seen her genuine pain and desperation when she’d told him about that barn.

The man had left the lass alone for three days, without food and water—left her to die. He doubted Amy could be loyal to a man like John MacDougall, and he doubted that she was looking forward to her marriage with the Earl of Ross.

She’d been divorced—which meant, she was experienced. He didn’t mind her not being a virgin; he didn’t care about things like that. She’d probably married by old Celtic tradition, which was forbidden by the church. It allowed separation and divorce, while the newer Catholic church did not. But it also meant that her husband had been a kind person. Because a woman could not initiate the separation. So Amy must have convinced her husband to let her go.

But she would be married by the church to the Earl of Ross, and there would be no escape.

Mayhap, her marriage to Craig was a welcome disruption.

Mayhap, he could trust her, after all.

Mayhap, if he got to know her better, there was more for them than just the year of handfasting.

Because, Craig suspected, he was falling in love with her.

Craig and Amy were both soaking wet when they arrived at the castle. The courtyard was now a muddy swamp. The aroma of dinner—stew and fresh bread—hung in the air, but Craig wasn’t hungry for food. It was already dark, only torches illuminating the buildings. Craig saw Owen and a couple of others come out of the great hall…

With… No, that couldn’t be…

Craig squinted to see through the wall of rain.

“Are those women?” Amy said.

“Either that, or my men suddenly grew breasts and long hair.”

Holding a lass’s hand, Owen ran into the Comyn Tower.

“Owen, Owen,” Craig mumbled and shook his head. “Who else to blame?”

“When the cat's away, the mice will play,” Amy said. “I guess he threw a party and invited some girls. Will you go to stop them?”