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“Sir Walter sought the assistance of my family.”

“The Brotherhood?”

That seemed to surprise him. All knew of it, but fewer spoke of the alliance between Clan Kerr of Scotland and the Waryn family aloud. Doing so gave them credence, which gave them power. Too much power would attract unwanted attention from the king.

“You will remember my mother was a Scot. My father lost his life for his sympathies for their cause. And I would not give the king the satisfaction of striking any word from my vocabulary for his benefit.”

“A dangerous sentiment, Lady Freya.”

“These are dangerous times, Sir Rory.”

He took a step toward her bed. “Precisely why you must come with me. I risked my life to be here. One of your guards lost his for it.”

“You killed a guard to be here?”

“Aye,” he said, as if doing so were a part of his daily routine. Indeed, likely it was. If this man was not a warrior, she did not know what one looked like. He was taller and broader than most, and she knew firsthand he was also lean, and swift. Well trained as well, obviously. Few would find it easy to breach enemy walls and find themselves in the lord or lady’s chamber.

“That pleases me,” she said, earning a smile from Sir Rory. One that caught her breath. Was this the same man that had been prepared to wrap her in the coverlet and haul her from this chamber? She thought for a moment he might do just that.

“I am most curious what else might please you, Lady Freya. But can we have that discussion on the road?”

Of course a man with his visage would be highly skilled in the art of flirtation as well. She sighed. So very . . . typical. And disappointing.

Freya had been fending off such men her whole life. Those who looked at her and forgot she could actually string a sentence together. Who proposed marriage on sight, prepared to make a decision about the future of the two of them and their people based on the silliest of notions. That she was beautiful. Freya had been told so many, many times. She supposed it was true. But the fact held little of her regard as it served only to detract from finding a husband worthy of the title. A man like her father. Honorable, loyal . . . the kind of father all girls wished to have though few of her station ever did, from what Freya had been told.

Most barons’ daughters were simply political pawns.

“I am not leaving here with you,” she said. And quickly added, “But I can get you from Edyington Castle safely. If you do so now, while most are sleeping.”

He crossed his arms. “I am not leaving this chamber without you.”

She sat up and crossed her own. “And I am not leaving this chamber.”

“You will leave it walking beside me or carried on my shoulder, but you will be leaving with me. We made a promise to your men. I was chosen for the mission for a purpose, and that was not to return empty-handed, my lady.” He actually smiled. “So which will it be?”

Freya tried to imagine the lengths he’d needed to go to get inside the walls. Surely ’twould not be easy to leave as unnoticed accompanied by an unwilling companion. She smiled right back at him. “You will find it easy to slip past the guards, through the keep, and outside the walls with me slung over your shoulder?”

“I did not claim it would be easy, just that it would be done,” he said.

An unwanted rush of heat pooled in her core at his words. His boast was more than a claim—of that, Freya had no doubt.

“So please, if you will dress, and hurry about it so that we might commence this damned rescue.”

She was about to comment on the silliness of his words when a noise outside her chamber could clearly be heard by them both. The shuffle was followed by a knock at the door. Frantic, she looked at him, unsure how to proceed. Though she had no wish to follow him, neither did she want the man who’d risked himself to “rescue” her to come to harm.

In response, he moved into the shadows, standing next to the door where it hinged. Freya watched as he slipped his sword from its sheath and held it in front of him. Never in all her years had she seen such a sight before.

Freya was certain she’d never be as terrified for her life as she had been the day the king’s men swarmed into their hall after the siege. Her father and his own men had laid down their weapons, as agreed upon. So when the first of them was prodded into the center of the hall, she’d thought little of it. It was only when her brother appeared and bade her be taken back to her bedchamber that Freya began to suspect the worst had not yet come to pass. She’d exchanged nothing more than a brief glance with her father before she was not so gently taken from the scene.

A scene that had become a massacre not long afterward. Freya had never expected that glance to be the last she’d ever exchange with her father in this life.

But just now, as a guard asked her to open the door, the same fear she felt that day began to rear its head. Freya just wasn’t certain if the fear was that Sir Rory would be discovered, or if she feared what he would do to the guard what she would witness, when the door was opened.

Chapter Seven

“Some believe to have heard a noise coming from your chamber, my lady.”

From his vantage point, Rory could see only the lady’s back and side, the mantle she’d tossed around her shoulders covering all that he’d been privy to earlier. It had been . . . more than he expected, for certain.