Holding back a sigh, she studied the captain once more. Last night, as they lay side by side unable to sleep, they’d whispered in the dark. He, about his sister, Bridie, who’d died when she was but four years old, trampled by a horse on the road that wound to the town of Portree. She’d insisted on accompanying him when he went to buy stores, and had demanded to be set down from the cart so she might pick some flowers in a nearby field. Paused by the side of the road, Aidan had taken the chance to adjust the horse’s harness and, believing his sister still occupied, didn’t think to caution her as a rider fast approached. Excited by the blooms she’d gathered, Bridie had run across the road, failing to heed the galloping horse until it was too late. Her last words were Aidan’s name… The memory was painful, his voice broke more than once. No wonder he’d never spoken of her before. She was part of the reason he’d left Skye as soon as he was able, his father purchasing a commission for him in the Queen’s army. Sorcha had reached for his hand and twined her fingers through his; she’d felt him squeeze them ever-so-gently in return.

Was it the darkness or his sharing of such a terrible loss that prompted her to tell him about Davan? She was uncertain. All she knew was that as she told him about her son, her wee boy who never breathed, never saw his broken-hearted mother, she felt altered. The grief was still there, but it wasn’t like an archer living in her chest releasing quiver after quiver into her heart. Nor was it an anchor ready to weight her with blackness. It was simply there. A part of her that would help shape who she was becoming.

But what was that?

A survivor. A woman who’d lost her entire family, but lived to remember them. A fishwife who had been accused of witchcraft, shamed, shunned, pricked, tortured, threatened and lived to tell the tale. Death had knocked on her door, and she’d barred it against him. Partly because of this man. This magnificent man who still shed tears in memory of his little sister…

His face was so close to hers, if she leaned forward just a wee bit, she could kiss those shapely lips, feel them against her own. God, it had been so long since she’d felt a man’s mouth, a loving, desired touch. Never again did she want to experience the kind Mr Bollard or the guards bestowed. Nor the illicit kind of Kennocht, or the rather perfunctory kisses and clumsy groping of Andy.

Her body, her starved, wounded, aching body wanted to know another type; even in this wretched state, it, she, wanted something more…