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“In the morn,” she repeated. Freya’s lips parted, as if to add something. But then she stopped. He’d avoided staring at her lips for too long, often, when she spoke. Otherwise the memory consumed him. Though it had hardly helped. Listening to her words, to her passion for the people she’d left behind, to a cause that would fail . . . everything Freya did, or said, seemed to inflame his blood. To consume him in the worst possible way. “I am sorry for it,” she blurted.

“‘It’? Whatever do you mean? You’ve naught to be sorry for, Freya.”

“That night,” she said.

His jaw dropped. “What do you apologize for? You did nothing wrong.”

“For such a display—”

“Stop,” Rory said, more harshly than he’d intended. “You will not apologize to me for allowing your body its natural reaction. It was made for pleasure for a reason, Freya.”

“I was angry,” she said, “the next day. When you did not speak to me. I allowed my anger to stew, nearly confronted you more than once. Until the night in front of the stables.”

He remembered it well. They’d arrived at an inn just after the sun had set, similar to today. It had been the only conversation he and Freya had alone since Pucker’s Mark. Yet he could think of nothing he’d said that may have dispelled her anger.

“We spoke of the journey, if I recall. How many more sunsets we would see before arriving”—he waved to Shenworth Castle—“here.”

“We did,” she said. “We spoke of nothing of great consequence.”

“Indeed.” He thought back and agreed. “Then why . . . ?”

Rory remembered the stableboy suddenly. He’d limped out to them, tears in his eyes. The boy had perhaps seen thirteen summers. Rory had asked for the cause of his distress. When the boy explained he’d fallen from a horse earlier that day, Rory told him that he himself had fallen many, many times. But the boy stopped him, begged his pardon, and explained, after a hesitant glance at Freya, that he worried a girl he admired would scoff at his injury. What if his leg did not heal? If he was left with a limp for all time?

“The boy?” He tried to remember the precise words he’d offered him.

“Aye,” Freya said. “You told him to make her smile, that girls loved being made to smile.”

“Do they not?” he asked, using the precise expression that typically elicited such an expression. But as always with Freya, he failed to charm her.

“They do,” she admitted. “But then you also told him if he held his chin high, and made her smile, and she still rebuffed him, the boy should consider himself lucky to have avoided the attentions of such a girl.”

“I can see why you were no longer angry with me after I gave such sound advice to the boy.” The corners of Freya’s lips turned up ever so slightly at his jest.

“I was no longer as angry with you, having realized why you are so quick to offer a smile to those around you. Why you enter a room as if welcoming every person, especially every woman, to court you as a friend.”

“You will enlighten me with said knowledge, aye?”

“’Tis not necessary, Rory. You know as well as I why you do so. And why you would prefer to talk of pleasure over pain. And why you refused to even look at me these past days.” She shrugged. “Though even with such answers, I could still wonder if I’d done something wrong. ’Tis a difficult thing, to scrutinize one’s own actions for the kind of scrutiny we offer to others.”

“An enlightening observation, Freya. One worthy of you.”

Her eyes widened. “A compliment from the man who wishes naught to do with me?”

As they spoke, the castle below them began to light as torches dotted one, and then another, spot on its walls. ’Twas a beautiful sight. No more so than her, though.

He should be thankful they had arrived. She saw him, saw through him, and Rory did not care for it.

“You’ve done nothing wrong, Freya. The opposite, in fact. Except perhaps resisting me the night I rescued you.”

She did laugh then. Finally. “Rescued. I will forever think of it differently.”

“What word would you use then? Had I not come, would you still be at Edyington or here, sitting atop this ridge above your grandmother’s castle on a night made for . . .” He nearly said “lovers.” Thankfully, Rory caught himself.

“For?”

He’d not venture there. “For bringing you to safety.”

She wanted to say more. Rory did as well. It was why he’d sent Isaac ahead. Since he couldn’t speak aloud the true thoughts swirling in his head, Rory offered instead, “Whatever happens here, Freya, whatever your grandmother says to you, know you can send for me. Consider me, the Brotherhood, allies to you. Always.”