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spoon.”
    “Aye, so it is!” Bran looked more than pleased with the description. “But”—he raised a sage finger—“you have sampled the charms of all the lovelies who drop in and out of my keep. It seems to me you’d have had less trouble turning a blind eye to them than to this maid.”
    Hardwick humphed.
    Much as he loved his friend, he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer.
    Besides, the lout’s piercing stare showed that he already knew.
    “She’s an American.” Bran spoke the word as if it were dipped in gold.
    “I don’t care if she comes from the moon.” Hardwick glared at him. “I do not even want to see a fetching piece of womanhood. No’ now!”
    His temper rising, he strode to another section of the wall, deliberately choosing a place at least four square-toothed notches away from his friend.
    “My wenching days are behind me.” He cleared his throat. “I cannot return to them—even if I wished to do so.”
    “I wasn’t speaking of wenching.” Behind him, Bran made a sound as if he’d slapped his thigh. “Come you, dinna be so thrawn. Stubbornness is for soured old men!”
    Hardwick slid him an annoyed look. “And you say we are no’ old?”
    Bran gave a great belly-shaking laugh. “Centuries old isn’t what I meant, and well you know it! We are as hardy as the rutting stags on the hill.”
    “Speak for yourself. I am done with that kind of hardiness.”
    “Even so . . .” Bran stopped laughing. “There are just times I get these feelings, and this is one o’ them. Think you I would leave my cozy hearth fire and a plump bed warmer for naught? I say you, that lassie—”
    “Is none of my concern.” Hardwick blocked his ears to whatever else his friend had to say about her.
    Scowling, he braced his hands on the cold stone of the merlon and stared down at the shimmering expanse of the Kyle of Tongue far below. Even on such a chill, mist-plagued afternoon, the strait’s tossing surface glimmered and shone with silvery blue light, and its wide, sandy banks glistened in every shade of gold.
    Soft, gleaming tones that made him think of her hair.
    He flinched.
    The neck opening of his tunic had gone unpleasantly tight, but he refused to slip a finger beneath it. Instead he pressed his hands even harder against the damp grit of the merlon and kept his gaze pinned on the swirl of the Kyle’s fast-moving current.
    Such a day of strong-running seas and wind should have invigorated him.
    Instead, he found his heart freezing in his chest and his gut twisting. Of his usual sharp wit and high spirits, nary a jot remained, and his mood had gone more foul than he could ever remember.
    Even as a ghost—and cursed as he was—he’d never passed a day without laughing.
    Now . . .
    He skulked about, trying to ignore the presence of the one lass who might have really appealed to him. And, equally galling, he’d been reduced to an over-the-shoulder-glancing fool, hearing cackles in every ripple of the wind.
    He frowned.
    His jaw set so tight he wondered he didn’t crack a tooth.
    “I’ve done a lot of thinking about Americans.” Bran appeared at his elbow. “The women, I mean. There’s something about them.” He paused, drawing a deep breath, as if readying himself to pronounce some great gem of wisdom. “Ach, see you, after much consideration, I’m thinking that when they come here—”
    “They should turn around and take themselves right back where they came from!” Hardwick flashed a dark look at his friend. “Leastways those so brazen they’d jiggle their bared breasts under a man’s nose.”
    “So-o-o!” Bran hopped onto a merlon with surprising ease for a man of his size. “That is the way of it! She’s for seducing you!”
    He pulled on his beard, an expression of feigned puzzlement on his face. “How odd that when I saw her heading this way, she looked more upset than out to flaunt her charms.”
    Hardwick’s entire body tensed. “What do you mean