“Anyone else?”

She looked up, her eyes intense and blue as sky. Her fiery red hair was mussed, still needing a good brushing, same as it had on the shore. Her skin appeared windblown with rosy cheeks. Pockmarks riddled the right side of her chin. But the fear in her shocking blue eyes made his breath stop.

He took a long drink of water, then cleared his throat. “Forgive me. My name is Kennan…Sir Kennan Cameron.”

“Saint Columba’s bones.” Her gaze grew more intense with her unseemly oath. “Ye’re a knight?”

“I am, though my rank did nothing to prevent me from being in this predicament at the moment.” He took another drink of water, letting the sweetness flow over his tongue. “And you? What is your name?”

“Divana…Campbell.”

That figured. Not only had he washed ashore onto some godforsaken island, he’d happened upon a bloody Campbell. “What is this place?”

“Hyskeir.”

He closed his eyes and pictured his map of western Scotland. “A speck…west of Rùm?”

“Aye.”

“I thought this place was too barren to support humanity.”

“It is.”

“But you’re here.”

“Only me.”

“How the blazes did you end up all the way out on a wee Hebridean isle alone?”

“’Tis a long story. One I care not to relay.” Divana pushed the pot toward him. “Now eat afore the clams turn cold.”

Kennan took an opened shell and tore off the meat with his teeth. The single bite increased his hunger and he devoured five more.

The lass stared as if she’d never seen a man before. Or a barbarian. He didn’t need a mirror to know he posed a grisly sight.

Wiping the juice dribbling down his chin with the back of his hand, he examined her as well. The light from a tallow candle in a seashell flickered across her face. Even her unkempt hair looked like polished copper. The lass had a spark in her eyes—the look of a fighter. If she had been surviving alone on a wee isle, he didn’t doubt her spirit.

“You wouldn’t have a flagon of whisky sitting about?” he asked.

She snorted, loudly. “Whisky? Are ye daft?”

“Mayhap I am.” Taking another clam, he again glanced about the crude shelter. Made of stone, it was cave-like with a thatched roof, the crossbeam so low, he’d needed to stoop when he stepped inside. Along the far wall was a pallet with eider duck feathers strewn everywhere.

Nothing about this woman or her circumstances made sense. “Do you have a boat?”

She reached for a clam and pointed it from wall to wall. “If I did, I would not be living here, now would I?”

“Nay?” Kennan licked his lips. “Then why are you?”

She scraped off the meat, licked her lips, and rocked back, her face taking on a shadow that spoke of fear, horror, and something else.

Sadness.

Aye, that was it. This woman carried a heavy burden. “Ye ask too many questions.”

“That’s what a person does when he wants to come to know someone better.” Kennan tugged his shirt down from the beam above. Finding it dry, he pulled it over his head, making the wound across his belly sear and the ache in his shoulder practically blind him. Trying not to show any sign of discomfort, he ran his hands through his salt-encrusted hair. Dear God, he must look a fright. Perhaps if he made an attempt to appear more presentable, the lass might be willing to explain what the devil had happened to her. He tied the shirt’s laces, though his neckcloth had fallen off sometime between the battle on the ship and the fight with the sharks.