Ella pushed up to sit and leaned back, slowly lowering to lie flat along her horse, her head on its rump with her bare feet hanging down the sides with her skirt. “Well then,” she said. “Let us gaze at the heavens to find some strength.”

Cain kept his face turned toward her as he leaned back to match her position. The stars were bright in the black sky, like a million far-off fires or frozen fireflies. He raised his hand to point at a familiar constellation slightly to the south. “Up there. See the square that those bright stars make?” He moved his finger to trace the stars in his sight and heard her shift next to him.

“’Tis a rectangle,” she said.

“They call it a square.”

“They who?” she asked, but he continued.

“That is the body of Pegasus, the winged horse from mythology. He is one of the largest constellations in the summer sky.”

Ella didn’t say anything, and he let his arm drop. Even though Cain spent hours staring up at the stars, he’d never brought out any of the lasses who were brave enough to talk to him, preferring to find solitude in the darkness to let his mind work through strategies. He exhaled long, letting his gaze wander. “They are so familiar to me,” he whispered, “that if one star was to disappear, I would notice.”

She raised a finger as if tracing the outline, and the long line of her arm mesmerized him.

“When I was a boy,” he said. “I would lie out under them and wish to capture Pegasus.”

“What a mighty warrior you would be if you had a winged horse,” she said, a teasing note to her whisper. “Then you could swoop down on your enemies.”

He turned his gaze back to the familiar pattern. “I actually dreamed about flying away, especially after my mother died and Da turned wild. First grief took him and then…” He shrugged where he lay on the horse. “He was just wild, warring, and determined to make us into the four horsemen.”

Cain turned his face to the side, and their gazes met across the space between their horses.

“He got what he wanted,” she said. “His four horsemen, riding down from Heaven to conquer the world for God.” She shook her head. “I suppose that would make the rest of us the evil sinners to be killed off. Did George Sinclair have visions from God as to who you should all kill off?”

He frowned at her words and sat upright again. “My father was wild, a mix of vengeance and grief from which he never recovered. I am different. I want to unite with ye, not kill ye.” He leaned forward, searching her face in the shadows. “Do ye not want a united Scotland, led by the strongest and most strategic, to keep our country safe from England and France?”