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Something bloomed in Angus’s chest. She understood him. He fought not just for an ambitious nobleman, but for something bigger than himself, than Robert, and than even the King of England. He fought for Scotland and for freedom.

“So, he was here, right?” she pressed.

Angus’s throat suddenly went as dry as sand. The walls of the brewery pressed in on him, the vaulted ceiling like that of a tomb. He remembered Robert the Bruce right there, in that cold, bitter winter when everything seemed to be lost.

“Aye,” he said as memories took him. “He was.”

Angus remembered how the king had arrived in a birlinn with barely enough sailors to man it. The loch wasn’t yet frozen. He’d come from the Isle of Skye and clan Ruaidhrí, which had given him shelter from the English troops that were still on his tail. He’d arrived with his mighty shoulders lowered and his eyes sunken and shadowed. His beard had been shaggy, his dark hair dirty and smelly, his leine croich almost torn to pieces. Angus remembered Bruce’s red face, weathered from months spent outside. He hadn’t looked like a king, merely a beggar too proud to ask for alms.

“Laomann didn’t want to take him in,” Angus said. “He was afraid the Earl of Ross would find out.”

Angus knew his brother wanted to be a stronger leader, but it was hard to unlearn the coping strategies he’d developed to survive their father.

“Raghnall was gone,” Angus continued. “Had been ever since Father had cast him out of the clan. So it was me and Catrìona against Laomann. We swore to him Bruce wouldna be discovered. We hid him here, actually, because ’tis always warm here.”

“Was he recruiting men?” she asked. “Even though he was so distressed?”

Angus eyed her for a while. “No one kens this, Rogene, and ye must promise ye wilna tell a soul.”

He was probably drunk from the fumes, the way he always became if he spent too much time here, but he didn’t care. He trusted her. He looked into her big doe eyes, so pretty, surrounded by thick, curly eyelashes. And they seemed to drink in every single word.

And he wanted to tell her. And he knew he may be a little tipsy, but it wasn’t just that. He’d felt that something towards her from the moment he’d seen her. That pull. That connection that went deeper than the body.

“I promise,” she whispered.

“He’d just found out that the Earl of Ross had ambushed his wife, his daughters, and his sister. William had broken the sacred law of sanctuary and taken them from an abbey in Tain and held them prisoner in his castle at first, then sent them down to England. So his family were in enemy hands.”

She licked her fuller, lower lip and bit it in anticipation. Oh, how he wanted her to bite it from pleasure, from the sweet bliss he’d give her. How he wanted to let that raven hair spill on top of him, over his chest and stomach as he’d kiss the top of her head and inhale her magical scent that promised worlds and places he’d never known existed.

* * *

“Right,” Rogene said. “So he was upset?”

“He wasna just upset,” he said, and rose to his feet to distract himself from his blood boiling for her. “He was finished, Lady Rogene.” Angus took a big ladle and stirred the boiling liquid in a giant cauldron. “He’d written a letter to Edward I that he was surrendering and begging for him to release his women. As brave and strong a warrior as he was, he couldna risk the lives of his wife and his daughter. He gave up.”

Rogene’s skin prickled. Her mom had been right! Her mom had had this hypothesis that after his devastating defeat in 1306, Bruce had fled for his life and had no intention of coming back. Her mom couldn’t find evidence for that, but she’d gotten this idea based on the letter of Peter Ruaidhrí, a priest from the Isle of Skye, dated January 2, 1307, where he’d mentioned that hope for Scotland had died and would never shine again. That could be in reference to Bruce’s general defeat, but her mom had thought that Ruaidhrí referred to something more concrete. To Bruce giving up completely.

Unfortunately, the records of Bruce’s whereabouts around the winter of 1306–1307 were quite vague, and sources for that information were few, so it was very hard to prove.

Her mom had been right. Not only could Rogene prove that, but also defend her PhD dissertation. She could make a breakthrough in the field by supplying academic knowledge with the vast amount of information she now had about the Middle Ages.

“He did?” she said, her heart racing.

“Aye. He didna think he had it in him to resume the fight. He was devastated. All his forces, almost all his allies, were destroyed and forced to join the English side. He had very few friends left. The Cambels and us were among them. He came here to hide from the English.”

“Not to gather forces?”

Angus chuckled. “Nae.” He eyed her, clearly considering something. “He was so done, he was prepared to resign his crown to the English.”

The words slashed like a whip.

“Resign?” she said.

Her fingers tingled as though she were touching something alive. A mystery she couldn’t fathom.

History.

Time slowed down, seconds stretching into lifetimes. There was a whiff of air, the bubbling of the barley that smelled sharp and yeasty, and she thought that perhaps she heard the whisper of changing destinies.