“Ever what?” Ella’s gaze slid across the leaping flames to the other side, and her breath caught. There he was. Cain. Large and commanding. He spoke with Joshua while they watched clansmen jump across the fires to predict how high the crops would grow. His light-colored hair was loose, falling nearly to his shoulders, and he’d taken off his tunic. With his arms crossed and his biceps mounded, the dark lines of the horse tattoo looked wild and tribal. The muscles were evident in his stomach, the ridges running all the way to under his kilt, which sat low on his narrow hips.

Just the sight of him made her heart beat a rapid tempo. The feel of his hands on her and his lips sliding against her own, the taste of him on her tongue, was all branded into her memory. Wed him and kill him. The reminder came unbidden. It had never strayed far from her thoughts over the last week.

“Run off from a festival to fornicate,” Hannah said, sliding her arm to encircle Ella’s.

Ella’s mind refocused. “Once again…I am a maiden, Hannah, and I have never run off with anyone to do anything.” Truth was that Ella made only an appearance at the festivals, with her father ordering her to retire as soon as the formal ceremonies were over. Not that there was anyone she’d have considered running off with anyway. The warriors at Dunrobin were highly aware that Alec Sutherland would have ordered any man who took an interest in her flogged or killed. She was to remain as pure as fresh milk for whomever he would marry her off to.

Hannah glanced down. “I meant no offense. Ye seem so…worldly wise, like ye are not afraid to do anything.” She lifted her face to meet Ella’s gaze. “Ye even stand up to Cain.”

If he’d beaten her or forced himself upon her, she’d have no trouble with Kenneth’s plan, but Cain had done none of the things expected of a brutal Sinclair monster. Ella blinked and looked back over the flames, but Cain was gone. “Most of the time, I am figuring out things as I go along,” she murmured, and glanced along the edge where the firelight met the growing shadows. Young and old smiled, toasted, and tipped back tankards of honey ale and whisky, but all the brothers were absent.

“If ye have a horse, go collect it to be blessed,” one of the elderly men called from the center of the three fires.

“I have two horses to be blessed,” Ella said, glancing toward the stables where the foal had been born. “Luna might be too young to come out.”