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“A gang of reivers,” he replied.

“How many?”

“At least ten.”

She didn’t ask if they were English or Scottish because it didn’t matter. A reiver’s allegiance was to clan and family first. Ten of them riding together could only mean one thing—a raid. Besides, had not she felt their intent?

He navigated off the main road and onto a path marked more by overgrowth than evidence of other travelers. “I’d hoped to be at Camburg by nightfall, but we’ll be lucky not to have to make camp again now.”

“Will my men be there before us?”

“More than likely, aye.”

They rode at a more reasonable pace, Marion’s backside beginning to ache from the brutal pace they’d set the day before.

“That could have been . . . interesting,” Court said.

Marion had just been wondering what would have happened had her ability not given them advanced warning.

“You said you’ve had this—gift—for many years?”

“Aye, though never like that before. The cold . . .” She shivered thinking about it.

“Is it the stone, then?” he asked. “Does it make the sensations stronger?”

Marion thought back to what the priestess had told her—precious little, and nothing of her ability. “I’m not sure,” she said. “There’s much I still do not know. Just that when I’m close to you . . . to it . . . I feel at peace. After the mark appeared, I felt unsettled, as if something were missing.”

“I felt the same.”

A noise startled her, but when she saw the movement in a bush just ahead, Marion realized it was an animal of some kind.

“Are you scared?” His voice was like the blanket he’d pulled over her last eve. Comforting and warm. The voice of her enemy, but he felt less like one with each passing moment.

“Nay,” she said honestly. Oddly, she had never felt truly scared of him, with the exception of the moment he’d held his sword to her throat. But even then . . . Marion should have been terrified—freezing—but she’d had no premonition of coming danger. Was it the stone that prevented her from sensing a threat from Court? Or could it be that he did not pose a threat at all?

Impossible.

So long as he held the stone and intended an attack on Scotland, he posed a very real danger, indeed.

“Where do you intend to attack?”

“You know I cannot tell you that.”

“When?” she tried again.

“Marion . . .”

“Then why?”

“That you already know. I’ve been ordered—”

“To do so. But that does not answer my question.”

As they rode through an open field, the marshland giving way to rockier and slightly steeper terrain, Marion decided she would learn everything she could about her English knight in order to convince him to relinquish the stone before his planned attack.

“Do you always follow orders?”

“Of course,” he said, without hesitating.