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she’s heading this way?”
    “Just that.” Bran sounded convinced. “I’d gone looking for you and nearly collided with her in one of the corridors. Poor lassie would’ve dashed right through me if I hadn’t leapt aside fast enough. She was making for the parapet stair.”
    “Then you must be mistaken.” Hardwick’s relief knew no bounds. “She left the armory in her aunt’s company. They were on their way to the library. She wouldn’t be careening through the passageways.”
    Bran shrugged. “Be that as it may, that’s where I saw her.”
    “You saw someone else.” Hardwick willed it so. “Honoria perhaps. She’s the housekeeper and by far the youngest female here excepting—”
    “Ach, but you insult me!” Bran clapped a hand to his chest. “Think you a man of my wenching experience canna tell a housekeeper from an American?”
    Hardwick scowled at the truth of his friend’s words.
    He scowled even more when the lout vanished, leaving his merlon perch empty and Hardwick alone on the wall-walk, just when the parapet door flew open and she burst out onto the battlements.
    Not Honoria at all, but his nemesis.
    And looking so delectable he was tempted to close the short space between them with two swift strides and seize her to him, clamping her face between his hands and then kissing her long, hard, and deep, until nothing mattered but the feel of her soft, red lips yielding to his own.
    He wanted, needed, the bliss of her silken tongue twirling and sliding against his in hot, ancient rhythm.
    The Dark One and his bargain be damned.
    Instead, he simply stared at her, his frown so black he could feel it to his toes.
    She stood perfectly still, poised just outside the door, her cheeks flushed pink and her breath coming hard. Hardwick’s own breath snagged in his throat and he quickly jerked his shield into place. Not to hide a rise in his plaid, but to disguise his attempt to prevent one.
    Furious at the need, he slid a hand behind the targe and squeezed.
    Hard.
    Hard, long, and tight enough to bring tears to a lesser man, but Hardwick only gritted his teeth and winced. Once, in another life, he’d have thrown back his head and laughed at his word choices.
    Now they only fueled his frustration.
    Long and hard was definitely what he’d love to give her. And, mercy on him, he knew she’d be wonderfully tight.
    Hot, sleek, and slippery wet.
    Need speared him again, a sharp and painful hunger pulsing somewhere deep inside him.
    She hadn’t yet noticed him, so he continued to stare at her, her appearance shattering his last hope that Bran might have erred. And, even worse, driving home how urgently he needed to rid himself of her.
    Her scent alone damned him. Light, clean, and fresh as a spring breeze, it swirled around him, firing his blood and threatening to set him like granite if he didn’t have such a firm grip on himself.
    As it was, every other inch of him went tight with desire. His senses snapped to dangerous alert and he squeezed himself harder, struggling against her effect on him yet unable to look away.
    Something had clearly upset her and—saints help him—that air of flushed, wild-eyed vulnerability drew him as strongly as her lush curves and creamy smooth skin. Her breasts, covered now in a silky-looking top of softest blue, rose and fell in agitation, and her bright golden hair whipped crazily in the gusting wind.
    Cilla started forward, swiping at the tossing strands as she made straight for the walling. Notched, medieval-looking walling that surely was medieval.
    Just as she was certain that the great bearded Highlander who’d suddenly appeared in front of her in one of the portrait-hung halls had been, well, medieval .
    If not that, he definitely wasn’t of this time.
    Nor of this world.
    In fact, he’d looked downright savage. In a magnificent, old-time Highland-y sort of way, that is.
    Magnificent or not, she wanted nothing to do with him. Shivering, she pulled her sweater