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bare skin, he slipped one of his own shirts over her inert form, then angled it down so that he could examine her shoulder. It was just as he thought, a superficial cut that required little attention except a bandage to stem the flow of blood if she should move in her sleep. There were no bandages, so he used a clean neckcloth instead, then he wrapped her in a blanket and covered her with the bedclothes. Her hair was wet, too, so he toweled it as dry as he could make it, then fetched a dry towel and fashioned it into a turban to keep her head warm. Next to the fire, there was a kettle of water warming nicely for his morning shave. He poured the warmed water into a mug and forced it past her lips. She coughed and swallowed, but she did not waken.
    He felt her skin, just a brush of his hand against her cheek, and he was shocked to see that his fingers were trembling. He’d met the woman—a girl, really—for the first time yesterday, but he knew instinctively that they were fated . . .
    It took him a moment before he could complete the thought, that he’d known instinctively that their fates were intertwined. He hadn’t chosen her. She’d been chosen for him.
    Are you the one? There wasn’t a shadow of doubt in his mind now that she was the girl in the prophecy. Her name was Cameron, but names could be changed to protect the innocent.
    He turned away and began to peel out of his own wet clothes. There was a pulley in the cottage for drying laundry on rainy days. After lowering it, he gathered up both sets of garments and spread them out to dry on the slats, then raised the pulley so that their wet things fluttered just above his head.
    When he next looked at the bed, Macduff was on it, nestled close to the girl. Macduff, as near as Gavin could make out, was a cross between an English sheepdog and a wooly mammoth. He made a fine blanket. Gavin didn’t know his dog’s pedigree, because Macduff had come to him as a stray. If any two characters were fated to meet, it was Macduff and he, but which of them was the master was difficult to tell. Macduff had a mind of his own.
    “You kept her warm,” Gavin said, “didn’t you, boy, while you waited for me to reach her?”
    No response from Macduff, not even a twitch of his tail. He was exhausted as well.
    Heaving a sigh, Gavin added another two logs to the fire. This was going to be a long night. He never wore nightclothes to bed, but for the girl’s sake, he slipped into a fresh shirt and drawers, then dragged on a pair of dry trousers. After fetching a spare blanket from the icehouse bedroom and wrapping himself in it, he hung the kettle on its hook over the fire to bring the water to the boil. Only then did he pour himself a generous measure of whiskey and settle himself in the chair beside the fire to watch the girl.
    It would have been better for Miss Cameron if he’d taken her to the hotel, but the heavy fall of snow made that impossible. Besides, it was pitch-black out there, and even with Macduff to guide them, it would have taken a long, long time. And who knew whether the man who had attacked her was not waiting his moment to finish what he’d started?
    The thought prompted him to retrieve his revolver from the dresser drawer and check that it was ready for use. Having done that, he thrust it into the waistband of his trousers and took his chair again.
    Six months ago, he hadn’t known much about firearms. All that changed when he and his brother Alex had been on the run from a mob of terrorists who had tried to kill them. Now he regarded his revolver as one of his dearest friends.
    Then why hadn’t he taken it with him when he’d rushed to Miss Cameron’s aid? Panic, he supposed. His dream or vision was still fresh in his mind.
    The first order of business, he reminded himself, was to get her warm and bring her back to consciousness. He sipped his whiskey slowly as thoughts came and went. He’d always considered himself a man of reason and intelligence.