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straightened her clothes, put a hand to her hair and drew a steadying breath, Tierney could wait no longer.
    “Was it your da?” she asked quietly but pointedly.
    “Na, na.”
    “Pauly? Sam?”
    “Nae, not me brothers.”
    Tierney was confused. No other possibility came to mind. Was Anne physically impaired so that she stumbled, fell, went unconscious perhaps? It was a wild solution but one Tierney grasped at; it would be preferable to a revelation that pinpointed another human being as the reason for such barbarism. But it was a vain and futile hope.
    “Then who . . . or what, Annie? For heaven’s sake—what has happened to ye?”
    Annie seemed to be gazing blindly into the fire. After a long moment, she said quietly, “Lucian.”
    “Lucian MacDermott,” Tierney whispered. And suddenly it made great sense.
    Lucian, the scion of the MacDermott clan, spoiled, known for his cruelty to man and beast even as a child, was home again. Sent off to Edinburgh to receive his education and home only occasionally over the past half-dozen years, Lucian, as a young man, had already earned an unsavory reputation, and tales of his arrogance and thoughtless unconcern abounded. If he were cruel abroad, how much more so on MacDermott land where he felt himself to be a young king.
    Tierney well knew the power and authority held by landowners; for centuries her people had known the harsh treatmentof the titled and wealthy, and the subservience expected of them as servant to master, lackey to overlord, subject to ruler.
    What had Anne done to bring on herself such dire retribution? Or—and Tierney went still momentarily, thinking of the possibility—what had she not done?
    “Aye,” Anne was repeating, starting off another round of trembling so that she pulled the shawl closer about her. “Lucian.”

    With Lucian home and several guests with him, the MacDermott house was understaffed; Anne, as usual, was called into service. It had not been in the great house, however, that she had again encountered Lucian, the first time in several years; always before she had been busy elsewhere when he came home, briefly, at holidays.
    She had been crossing the yard, a basket on her arm, her bonnet flung back and her dark hair smoky in the late-day sun, when Lucian and two other young men had come from the house, intent on reaching the stables, and dressed for riding.
    “Well, would you look at that!” Coming face-to-face with the lovely young woman, Lucian had stopped, thumbs in vest pockets, with his young companions alongside of him, uncertain.
    The three quite successfully blocked her path. Anne found herself flushing; Lucian’s stare was bold. The eyes of the two strangers were fixed on her rather blankly.
    “Don’t tell me. Let me guess—it’s Fanny.” Lucian put a finger below Anne’s chin and tipped her face up.
    Anne stood quietly under the scrutiny, waiting for the awkward moment to pass so that she could move on.
    “Fanny—all grown up. And everything.” With the “everything,” Lucian’s eyes swept brazenly over Anne’s sweet figure. “Fanny. Am I right? Eh? Eh?”
    He was demanding an answer. Feeling that to do so might settle the embarrassing confrontation, Anne said, with dignity, “I’m Anne.”
    “Annie Fanny! But not a mannie. Agreed, men?” Again Lucian’s eyes swept Anne’s body, and his laugh was rude and loud, spraying spittle into the face that had first flushed pink and was now paling before their very eyes.
    One young man joined the laughter, braying rather like an ass in the process; the other put a hand on Lucian’s arm and said quietly, “Let’s go. Leave her be, and let’s go.”
    “You yearn for horse flesh when there’s female flesh around? And such flesh!”
    Unused to rudeness, a stranger to lasciviousness, totally unaccustomed to such a blatantly disgraceful reference to the human form, her own in particular, was Anne’s undoing. Eyes glittering with suppressed fury, “I thought ye