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Catrìona sighed. “Aye, she’s bonnie, isna she? But do ye think she suits Angus?”

Rogene’s pen slipped and fell out of her fingers, and the tail of the A jumped too high.

“I didn’t think that was the point of their marriage.” She looked at Catrìona, who met her gaze.

Catrìona winced thoughtfully as she considered her words. “Aye. I suppose nae. I ken I’ll never get marrit. Nae after I lost Taog.”

Catrìona’s voice jumped as she said the name, and Rogene frowned. She considered asking who that was and what had happened, but the pain in Catrìona’s eyes made her swallow her words.

Catrìona put the giant spindle on her lap. “But I do think that people should be at least compatible, should they nae? Or, at least, decent people. I grew up seeing my da being terrible to my ma and to us. Angus was always protecting us from him—he took our beatings. He even provoked Father sometimes so that he’d snap on him. And she…”

Rogene’s stomach churned. Angus, the protector. Angus, who looked as dependable and strong as a mountain to her. Angus, who’d made her steam inside and want to curl up on his lap and purr against him like a kitten.

Catrìona shook her head and pressed out a smile. Then she returned to her work and pulled the horizontal thread between the two rows of taut thread. “Please, tell me, what do ye think of her? I’m asking ye as a friend.”

“I…” Rogene returned to her writing. “I don’t think she’s right for him.”

There, she’d said it, impartiality be damned.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Catrìona drop the spindle, on which the thread was twisted, and catch it again in midair.

Catrìona met her gaze, her face frowning. “I didna think ye’d say that. Why?”

Because a man like him doesn’t deserve a rotten woman like her.

Because I like him.

Because hundreds of years between us be damned, I can’t stop thinking about him.

“Because she won’t make him happy,” she said finally, suppressing the dark, burning feeling of jealousy that stabbed at her like a red-hot knife.

“Aye. I dinna think she would.” Catrìona sighed and resumed weaving. “He does deserve to be happy. After all he’s done for us. He fought and protected us with no regard for himself. And he’s doing it again by marrying her…” She said “her” with the same intonation as “that awful woman.” “If there’s another way to resolve our debt and at least marry him to someone decent, nae someone who wants to either kill him or his family, that would make me very happy.”

Rogene stopped writing. Yes, there were so many things she wished were different. Like her parents being alive. Like not having grown up with an aunt and uncle who didn’t want to be bothered with her or her brother. Like her developing feelings for a man who could never be hers.

But history was cruel and unforgiving. Angus was supposed to marry a sociopath who would give birth to someone important. Someone who’d help protect the line of Scottish kings and queens for the next several hundred years.

Catrìona kept chatting about marriage, and how she didn’t see the use for herself, and Rogene kept thinking of Angus as she wrote. God, she’d already learned so much about medieval times—enough to start three more PhD dissertations.

She glanced at the chest that held all the letters and contracts with longing. Her purse was securely inside a leather pouch that the priest had given her, and she kept it on her belt. There, in the purse, was her phone. She hoped there was enough power left. Once she had photos of something useful, she’d be on her way.

Though she knew she’d never meet a man like Angus in the twenty-first century.

And even if she did, it wouldn’t change the fact that love didn’t exist for her. Marriage and love were about trust, about relying on someone. She did wish she could bring herself to trust someone and rely on them. But she couldn’t bring herself to, even though she knew this problem was messing up her life.

She dipped the pen in the jar only to discover that there was no ink left. She still had so much more she could practice. She stood up and rummaged in the chest by the writing table where she’d written the contract yesterday, but the jars there were empty and dry.

“Oh, shoot,” she said. “I think I’m out of ink.”

Catrìona glanced at her. “Ye have such strange expressions, Lady Rogene. Shoot… Why would you say that? Is that how ye Lowlanders speak in Lanarkshire?”

Rogene hid a smile. Catrìona would probably have a meltdown if she learned what “shoot” really stood for.

“Yes, sweetie,” she said, “we do speak very strangely in Lanarkshire, I’m so sorry for confusing you.”

“Ah, ’tis all right. I’d like to travel more once I become a nun, help people around Scotland. So I’d like to learn different manners of speech.”

Aw, she was a sweetheart. “Do you know where I can get more ink?”