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offers.”
    “Healing?” Anger crept into her words. “When broken, does one’s heart ever truly heal?”
    “I believe it is possible.”
    “Then you are better than I. Never will I forget, nor let go of the hate.” He sighed, a long, lonely sound, but Emma held firm. In this she would give him truth. If he turned away from her, so be it. Already he made her feel more than was wise.
    “And what has hate served you?” Sir Patrik asked.
    “The ability to live, to go on each day.”
    “And what of happiness?”
    “Happiness? Our country is ravaged by war, those we love butchered beneath the Englishman’s blade, and you dare ask me of happiness?” Emma paused. “Tell me, are you happy? Is anyone?”
    Sadness flickered in his eyes. “My questions were asked to guide you from your grief.”
    “I want not your help.”
    But Patrik caught Cristina’s tremble, and the hint of need that never quite left her eyes. She was afraid. God knew what she’d endured during her time as an orphan, or since her husband’s murder. The English knights’ attack was only the latest of the atrocities she’d survived.
    They shared a battered past, each given a second chance. He, the MacGruders who’d adopted him and raised him as their own. She, a husband to heal her soul.
    And both had lost the people they loved.
    He took in the web of darkness within the cavern, his heart aching. He was nae the person to guide the lass from her misery while his own was still so raw.
    “What are you thinking of ?”
    The gentleness of her voice lured him to reply but he’d reveal no more. He’d known the lass but hours. Well he understood the dangers of giving trust. What he’d exposed about his personal life disturbed him. Never had he shared such intimacies with a woman.
    “We both need to be finding our pallets,” Patrik said. “Dawn and the leagues we must travel will come soon enough.”
    She hesitated. “Will you be able to sleep?”
    “A question I should be asking you.”
    A faint smile touched Cristina’s mouth, and he found he liked knowing he’d put it there. As he watched her, her eyes softened.
    The moment shifted.
    The blackness surrounding the meager flicker of flame seemed to embrace them, to heighten the fact they were very alone. The golden shimmers of light caressed her face, lured him to trace her skin, to sample the lush fullness of her mouth and discover whether it would fulfill its silent promise. He could all but taste her, a potent sensuality that beckoned him for more.
    Unsettled by his musings, Patrik stepped back. “Rest, I will be nearby.” He strode off, damning his amorous thoughts.
    As Sir Patrik’s figure faded in the darkness, Emma exhaled. What had just happened between them? Nothing. Everything. She’d witnessed his desire, an emotion the warrior stirred within her as well.
    God help her, she’d wanted him to kiss her. Since her rape at twelve summers, never had she yearned for a man’s touch. But something about the Scot made the horrific memories fade, left her wanting.
    Go to sleep. Leave him be. ’Twas safe.
    Yet, he was hurting, tormented by a past he, too, had weathered. A past he believed her ignorant of. Emma stood, needing to talk to him, to help him. Not because of her mission, but because he was a man who under different circumstances she might have called friend.
    Friend? Laughable truly. She made not friends, only contacts.
    Or enemies.
    She turned from the candle toward where Sir Patrik had faded into the gloom. Gathering her courage, she walked into the darkness. Her eyes slowly adjusted. Within the faint spill of candlelight, she caught hints of shapes within the cavern.
    A soft splash echoed in the distance.
    She caught the rebel’s faint outline. He sat upon a boulder, his feet dangling in the water.
    Loneliness. It radiated from him as if a man sentenced. A feeling she knew too well. A feeling her harsh comments had inspired.
    In silence, she walked over and sat.
    He stared