“Because I knew I’d have the best chance to win you if I stood up in the church and told the world that I had reason not to let you be joined to Barclay.”

“What reason?” she asked, barely audible. A person could stop a wedding if they could prove that one party was already married to someone else, or that the two in question were too closely related, or that the marriage had been forced—none of which applied in the case of Juliana and Grant.

“I would have said that Juliana was my lass, had always been mine. That I wasn’t stepping aside for any other.”

He had more in his eyes than he ever said in words—raw pain behind the gray, the loneliness of a man who thought he’d be alone forever.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Juliana asked, voice still soft but thick with emotion. “Why didn’t you tell me when I was waiting to marry him, when I knew I couldn’t have you?”

Elliot dropped her hand and flashed his lantern around again. “Because what would you have seen if I’d come crawling to you when I came home from India? A broken man, one afraid of the dark and equally afraid of the light. I was nothing.” His voice was fierce. “You’ve seen what I still do. You wouldn’t have wanted a husband like me—or ye’d have married me out of pity, and I couldn’t have stood that. I wanted to have something to give ye. A house, a husband who could walk upright most days…”

Juliana stood still, unable to move. Her breath came sharply, cut off by the tight lacing of her corset. One thought stood out among the rest—she hadn’t known how Elliot had felt about her. All these years, when she’d thought of him, craved to be with him, knowing he was wandering the wide world, out of her reach—he’d been thinking of her.

“You ought to have told me,” she whispered.

Elliot didn’t change expression, but she saw the windows to his soul shutter to her again. “You know now.”

He turned away, moving off into the darkness.

Juliana hurried after him, her heart pounding. She moved back and forth between elation and anger, bewilderment and wild happiness. Elliot, handsome Elliot, the lad she’d loved from afar, had wanted her all this time. She’d watched him swarm up the tree to retrieve the kite, secretly admiring how athletically his limbs moved, while pretending no interest at all. The firmness of his cheek under her lips when she’d given him the rewarding kiss had been imprinted on her thoughts for weeks afterward. The kiss he’d stolen when they’d danced at her debut ball had lingered for years.

Her feet splashed in water, breaking her spinning thoughts. “Where are we now?” she asked, dragging up her damp skirts.

Elliot flashed his lantern around. “If I am right, a cave in the side of the hill between the McGregors and the Rossmorans.” He took her hand again, his fingers warm.

“Why is it wet?”

“The tunnel runs along the river. The river might even cut into it.”

Elliot led her along at a slower pace, lifting his lantern high and studying the ground before he allowed Juliana to move forward with him. The floor of the cavern sloped downward, the gleam of water trickling across the bottom.

He moved confidently, and Juliana realized she should worry that Elliot wouldn’t know the way back. But she didn’t worry. He’d studied the plans, he’d previously explored the tunnels, and people in India had hired him for this very sort of thing—to explore, to discover things, to find the way for others.

This Elliot exuded capable, quiet competence. The broken, wild-eyed man who’d looked at her a few moments ago and confessed he’d gone to Edinburgh to break up her wedding had gone.

Elliot led her across the smooth stone floor to the higher end of the slope, the sound of water to their left. The draft Juliana had felt before strengthened, the breath of air refreshing after the dank warmth of the tunnels.

Elliot walked her unerringly to a hole to the outside world. The opening, at Elliot’s head height, was covered with thick brush, bushes having grown right over it. Elliot blew out the candle in his lantern, handed the lantern to Juliana, and reached through the hole to break away branches.

He easily tore off many of the thinner pieces of the brush, but the trunks of two bushes had spread themselves across the hole. Climbing out this way would be possible but a scratchy, tight fit.

Elliot took both lanterns back from Juliana, blew out the candle in hers as well, and tossed the lanterns through the hole to the earth outside. He boosted himself a little way out of the hole then half climbed, half lifted himself over the remainder of the bushes. The spindly branches caught on his kilt and lifted it high over his hips as he worked his way through.

“Elliot,” Juliana said in a small voice. “You know you are wearing nothing under that.”

His taut thighs and strong buttocks worked to lift Elliot out of the hole before his entire body disappeared. Juliana stepped worriedly to the opening just as Elliot looked back inside at her, his smile full of sin.

“I’m a Scotsman,” he said.

Still flashing the wicked grin, he cleared more branches from the hole and reached for her.

Juliana clung to him as she kicked and wriggled her way out, Mahindar’s shirt now torn and stained with dirt.

The hole opened onto the sheer side of a hill. Elliot leaned against the almost vertical slope and helped Juliana find footholds, tussocks of grass that wouldn’t slip under her feet.

They’d emerged to a treeless heath that was filled with rocks and bushes like those which had grown over the hole. The slope on which they stood ran steeply down to the rushing river below—one misstep could plunge her into it.

Elliot was not about to let her go. He held Juliana with immovable strength as he guided her along their makeshift path, until they came to a true path that had been cut into the side of the hill. The sound of sheep bleating in the distance indicated what this path was likely for.

Elliot settled Juliana against a large boulder that might once have been a standing stone, her feet on firm ground, then he climbed back up the hill. Juliana watched him cover the hole, replacing the branches and smoothing the earth.

He retrieved the lanterns he’d tossed out and made his way back down to her, walking sure-footedly along the ridge to the path, never a misstep. He might have been walking on a wide, paved road for all Elliot noticed.

He returned to Juliana’s boulder and leaned on it next to her. “This valley would have been a good place for the McGregors to come to evade the McPhersons,” he said. “The McGregors could have crossed the river and hidden in the meadows beyond without anyone realizing.”

“But then they’d have abandoned the castle to the rival clan,” Juliana said, following his gaze across river. “Do you think any of McGregor’s wild ancestors would have done that?”

“No, but they’d have sent away the women and the wee ones. The families could have lived off the land in that valley a long time, in the warm months.”

Juliana took in the beauty of the scene, the river rushing below them—the same one that had frightened Nandita so when they’d clattered over the bridge. Mr. McGregor and Hamish both claimed that the river teemed with fish, and in the folds of the valley, the McGregor women and children of old would have found berries and other sustenance. In peaceful times, they’d have explored the valley that rolled between the hills, and would have known exactly where to hide when battle came.

“I’ll wager there are bushes plump with berries down there now,” Juliana said, her mouth starting to water. “How about it, Elliot? Shall we bring back a bucketful and teach Mahindar how to make raspberry fool?”

“We don’t have a bucket.”

Juliana lifted the white shirt and made a bowl of it. “I used to do this with my pinafore when I was a girl at my father’s manor house. I’d bring home plenty of bright red berries, half of which I ate on the way. Drove my governess wild.”

Elliot didn’t look at her, but a faint smile crossed his face. “The Juliana I knew always had her pinafore neat and clean. Never a hair out of place, following all the rules.”

“That was the Juliana I showed to company. When I was alone in the woods, I was a bit more lackadaisical. No one to see me, you see.”

“I wasn’t company. I was the unruly brother of your friend.”

“Perhaps, but when Ainsley paid a call, or I called on her, things had to be done properly. She laughed at my insistence on etiquette, but she played along.”

“The fact that you convinced Ainsley to do anything by the rules is a bloody miracle,” Elliot said, with the fondness of an older brother for a harum-scarum sister.

“I remember she rather enjoyed raiding the pantry when we were at school. I thought her audacious, but she never minded sharing the spoils. But she turned out all right, didn’t she? Happily married now, with a child of her own and another on the way.”

“I want children.”

Elliot’s blunt statement made her stop. The sun was descending behind the hills to their right, casting shadows over the river below. Elliot looked down the hill at the roiling water, bracing himself on the boulder. The sun slanted from the jagged mountain to sharpen his face and outline his body in a faint glow.

When he looked at Juliana again, the liquid light brushed the fine net of scars that ran from his temple into his hair. “Many children,” he said.

“I see.” Juliana’s heart thumped. “Is that why you rushed to Edinburgh to stop my wedding and steal the bride?”

“No, to take you away from that twit, Barclay. Lucky for him, he’d eloped, so I didn’t have to kill him.”