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“Ye bastart!” she cried and stabbed again, plunging her dirk deep into his lower arm.

He cried out and slowed down, disappearing from her vision.

The Bruce’s anti-cavalry troops planted themselves in a long, protective line, the pikes protruding like the needles of a giant hedgehog. There was a gap between the pikers, and she and David flew through it, galloping into the midst of her father’s warriors. She couldn’t believe they’d made it. She turned to watch what was going on behind her, but the battle was quick.

There were too few of MacDowells and English on the field to fight Bruce’s army. A hundred of the enemy against hundreds, maybe even a thousand of Bruce’s warriors. Aulay and Colum were at the front of the fight, but soon most of the enemy was racing back towards the protection of the forest.

She looked at David, who dismounted, panting hard, and approached to help her down. “Are ye all right?” she asked as she gave him her hand, making a quick scan of his body.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Are you?”

A set of stairs was brought to her horse, and holding David’s hand she descended to the ground like a proper noble lady should. It was odd, and she didn’t care for it. She wasn’t a proper lady, never had been. She’d always been somewhere between a bastard and a noble, she realized. Running away from the former and never quite making it to the latter.

With the enemy gone, hundreds of pairs of eyes were watching her in a circle. Bearded and shaggy-haired Highlanders, clean-shaven knights in polished armor. Warriors in léintean-croich and chain mail coifs.

The crowd parted. Bruce’s banner, a red lion on a golden background, flapped in the air as a man approached.

The face she’d seen in her dreams for the past seven years. The high cheekbones, the strong nose, the eyes hard and dark… The face features like her own.

He looked older now. Silver streaked his ear-length hair. A scar that she hadn’t seen before ran diagonally across the left side of his face. Wrinkles cracked his weathered skin.

And yet, he was prouder and more magnificent than she’d remembered him. Broad-shouldered and straight-backed, with chain mail covering his clearly powerful body. He held a broadsword in his hands before sheathing it.

He stood and looked her over briefly as though she were a piece of property he needed to make sure was whole. He asked someone to blow a war horn and moments later a loud, sad call sounded through the air, resonating in her like the ache of an old wound. The stones stopped and the arrows didn’t fly anymore.

“Ye grew up,” he said.

He didn’t make a move towards her. Didn’t come to give her a fatherly kiss or hug. She gave him the courtesy that etiquette required of a subject to her king.

“Aye, Yer Grace,” she said.

She should say something more. “Well met,” perhaps. Or “God bless ye.” Or “Are ye well?” But the words were stuck in her throat like stones. This was what she’d sacrificed so much for. For him. For his affection. To have a father and be a family. To be important to him. For a glint of approval in his eyes.

She’d sacrificed her future. David had offered to take her with him to the twenty-first century. She could have chosen David. She could have abandoned this man who stood like a statue staring at her without a sign that she was more to him than a virgin he could trade for a castle. And she wasn’t even a virgin anymore.

Her feet were cold, her legs weak. She held her hands together like a noble lady. They were still wet and red with Dugald’s blood.

Bruce’s eyes were now on David. “Who are ye? Ye look familiar.”

David nodded to him. “I am David, brother of Lady Rogene of clan Mackenzie. We met in Eilean Donan when ye helped to fight clan Ross.”

Bruce’s frown relaxed in recognition. “Oh, aye. I remember ye. Ye fought bravely. Ye and Lady Rogene have that odd accent…”

“He helped us save Anna from Carlisle,” said Colum, who stepped from the crowd and laid his hand on David’s shoulder. “I’m thankful to ye that ye brought her here whole and safe. We had to draw the attackers away that night. Then we looked for ye at the cave the next day, but ye were gone.”

“She had to save me,” David said hoarsely, his eyes dark as he looked at Anna as though there was no one else in the world. “She would have brought herself here safely. You’ve got a real treasure of a daughter, Your Grace,” he said. “She would have stopped at nothing to come to you.”

A glimmer of gratitude and affection flashed through Bruce’s eyes as he studied her. “Such high praise,” her father said. “I am glad ye’re here. It means the wedding can take place tomorrow as planned.”

Anna’s stomach dropped. David’s face darkened, and a grimace crossed it. Bruce’s confirmation of the wedding was the final blow to any hope of them being together. She fought tears burning her eyes.

“Why did it take ye so long to get here?” Aulay asked.

As David answered Aulay’s question, telling him about how the English and MacDowells had hunted them, and how he’d fought Goiridh, and how Anna had rescued him from the villagers of Kennifar, and of the storm that had kept them in the croft, she kept watching him, drowning in his eyes, lulled by his voice, marveling at the very presence of him.

“Oh, aye, the storm,” Aulay said. “It wrecked several docked ships and kept us all huddled in our tents for days.”

Done with Aulay’s questions for the moment, David stood watching her, still and solemn and as wounded as she.