"And you are not concerned about what he will do to her when he realizes?" Sir Reuben asked.

Emily had to bite her lip to stop from screaming at the selfish woman when Sybil simply shrugged delicately.

"I have no desire to end up at war with one of the Highland clans over this."

"Don't be foolish. The laird is hardly going to travel this distance to take his anger out on you."

"So, I am foolish?" Sir Reuben asked in a dangerous tone.

"Only if you let old-womanish fears guide you in this decision," Sybil replied, showing how little her lord intimidated her.

"Aren't you the one who recommended I send the bare contingent of knights to assist my overlord in his last request for warriors?"

"We could hardly leave our own estates inadequately guarded."

"But his anger over my stinginess has led to this request."

"I was right though, wasn't I? He did not sanction you."

"You do not consider the loss of a daughter a sanction?"

"They must marry sometime and it is not as if we do not have a gaggle of them."

"But only one of whom you consider utterly dispensable."

"The others could still make advantageous matches."

"Even Emily?"

Her stepmother's scoffing laughter was all the answer her father got to that small taunt.

"I will send word to the king that he can expect my daughter to travel north to Laird Sinclair's holding within the month along with her dowry."

"Not Jolenta?" Sybil asked, her voice quavering.

Sir Reuben sighed with disgust. "Not Jolenta."

He meant to send Abigail. Horrified, Emily shouted, "No!"

Both Sir Reuben and Sybil started and turned their heads toward her like two buzzards caught picking over a carcass.

She flew down the stairs. "You mustn't send Abigail to such a cursed fate!"

Sybil's mouth pursed with distaste. "Were you eavesdropping again?"

"Yes. And I'm glad I was." She turned to her father, her heart in her throat. "You can't think to send Abigail so far away to a husband who might believe her affliction is a sign from God that she is unclean."

"Perhaps it is such a sign," Sybil inserted, but Emily ignored her.

"Please, Father. Do not do this."

"Your stepmother has pointed out that it may well be Abigail's only chance at marriage. Would you deny it to her?"

"Yes, if it means sending her to a barbaric Scotsman who will be furious when he realizes how you have tricked him." As her father's face hardened, Emily forced herself to reign in her temper. She did not wish to lose the battle before she'd begun because her demeanor offended her father.

She lowered her eyes, though it was hard to do. "Please, Father. Do not be offended, but I believe Sybil is wrong. I do not think a proud leader of a Scottish clan would take such deception in stride and be content to spend his fury on his hapless wife."

The fact that either of her parents thought that an acceptable alternative was more than she could bear.

"You believe the clan leader would declare war?"

"Yes."

"What does she know?" Sybil scoffed. "She knows nothing of the world."

"I have heard the tales of these fierce people, Father."

"Tales told to frighten foolish children," Sybil said.

"So my daughter is foolish as well?" Sir Reuben asked, proving he had not forgotten his wife's earlier insult.

Sybil's hands fisted at her sides as if she realized she'd made an error in speaking so plainly now that they both knew the conversation had been overheard. Her father's pride might accept such intransigence from his wife in private, but he would not tolerate others—even a lowly daughter—seeing him in a light that could make him appear weak.

Emily was determined to use that to her advantage. "Father, you are one of the wisest of the king's barons. Everyone knows that."

"Too wise to risk war with a barbaric people simply to placate an overmanaging wife?"

Emily knew better than to answer, so she remained silent while Sybil gasped in outrage.

"Who would you have me send in her place?"

"Jolenta?" she asked.

"No!" Sybil cried and then she grasped her husband's sleeve. "Consider, my dearest lord, the betrothed of Baron de Coucy's heir died of a fever not a month past. The baron will be looking for a new bride to contract very soon. His mother has already made it clear she finds Jolenta pleasing."

The younger girl had spent the last two years at Court, an honor Emily had never been extended.

"I thought you said she was too young to wed."

"A barbaric Scotsman, but not the son of a powerful baron."

"Then who would you have me send in accord with the king's order?"

"Abigail…"

"No, please, Father…"

"I do not fancy a war over the disposal of one of my daughters."

Emily winced at her father's comment. Silence had fallen between her parents and she feared its outcome if she said nothing. Yet terror at her own thoughts and what they would mean for the sister she would leave behind as well as for herself filled her.

She took a deep breath and then forced herself to say, "Send me."

"You? You think, my lord, that the Scotsman will not go to war over you sending such an undisciplined girl? She's sure to offend him her first week as his wife."

"You said it yourself, they are barbarians. He would hardly appreciate a true English lady."

Old pain seared Emily's heart. Her father had no higher opinion of her than her stepmother. She had known that particular truth since her own mother's death, when he had berated a small girl crying over her mother's grave with the knowledge that she was not the son he had craved. If she had been, her mother would not have died trying to give birth to another.

Emily knew the cruel words for the lie they were… now. But until she had seen Sybil grow large with child twice more after giving her father the heir he sought, she had believed them. And felt unworthy because of them.

But she no longer believed that to be born female made her unworthy. Six years of correspondence with a powerful abbess had healed her of that affliction. She reminded herself of that fact as she raised her gaze to meet her father's.

It was as if he had been waiting for her to do so. "Think you that you will fare better than Abigail in the wilds of Scotland?"

"Yes."

"I think perhaps you are right." He turned to his wife. "It is decided. I will send Emily in answer to my overlord's demand."

"And Abigail?" Emily asked.

"She will remain here, under my protection."


The large black wolf sniffed the air, his powerful body coiled to spring into instant motion if needed.

Away from his own territory, even in the presence of his companions, the situation was fraught with danger. He had not brought an attack force and the clan he had come to spy on had a full contingent of wolf warriors. Some of them were even as mighty as his own.

That meant treading carefully.

He made his way silently through the forest, knowing his two companions followed, though he could not hear them. The presence of all three went undetected by man or beast and that was as it should be.

His father had started teaching him to mask his scent from the night of his first change, and he had perfected the art. Other werewolves and even wild animals could come close enough to touch him in the dark and never know he was there. He bad chosen two warriors just as skilled to accompany him.

Though he stopped often to sniff the wind, it was not his ultrasensitive nose that caught the first signal that his brother Ulf had been right. Rather, his ears picked up a sound no human could have heard at such a distance. From the clan's holding beyond the trees and across the expanse of heather-filled grass, he heard the unmistakable sound of the lass's laugh.

The femwolf, Susannah, was here.

Her soft human voice spoke, though even his superior hearing was not up to deciphering the words. She did not sound as if she were in distress, but that did not alter the facts or how he must respond to them.

Clan law… ancient clan law, known by most Celts and every Chrechte warrior who had joined them two centuries before… had been broken. A Balmoral woman had been taken to mate without the consent of the clan chief.

Lachlan, laird of the Balmoral and pack leader to the Chrechte contingent among them, would not tolerate the insult.

Ulf had been right about what had happened to the femwolf who had disappeared during the last full moon hunt. He had also been right when he said the Sinclairs must be made to pay. No Highland chief would tolerate such insolence leveled against his clan and himself as a person. It implied the Sinclairs thought he was too weak to enforce clan law, that his warriors did not protect their women.

England would be his ally before he would allow such a view of his clan to stand unchallenged. However, it was not a declaration of war that would give a message of the greatest impact to the other Highland clans, but well-planned revenge. As he had told Ulf when his brother had suggested mounting an immediate attack on the Sinclair holding.


Riding an exhausted horse and feeling less than wonderful herself, Emily surveyed her new home with both curiosity and trepidation.

The journey from her father's barony had been a long one and arduous upon reaching the Highlands. Shortly after reaching Sinclair land, an envoy of warriors had arrived to finish escorting her to their keep.