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realized the woman intended to chatter until he either killed her or gave in to her.
    His ears fair buzzed with her words, and though her voice was quite dulcet and beguiling, it would be even more so if heard sparingly.
    His head throbbed from the ale he had consumed. The bright sunlight made his eyes burn and his stomach sour. He’d planned on spending the rest of this wretched day in blissful stupor, lying abed.
    Now he was off to Lochlan’s castle, where he would have to face his mother and brother. See their own grief over the death he had caused.
    To this day, he found it hard to look his mother in the eye. Though she had never said a single word against him, he knew, as she did, where the blame for Kieran’s death lay.
    Squarely on his shoulders.
    His gut tightened. It seemed like only yesterday that he and Kieran had played at battle. That the two of them had dreamed and bragged of the men they would someday be.
    “Are you all right?” Nora’s question intruded on his thoughts.
    “I am fine.”
    “You don’t look fine. You look sad and upset. Is my company truly so distasteful to you?”
    It was on his tongue to tell her aye, but the lie lodged in his throat. There was no need to be deliberately cruel to her. She couldn’t help it if she wasn’t entirely sane. Mayhap there was some cruelty in her past that had caused her delusions.
    Having lost his dreams so painfully, he would never rip them away from another.
    “Nay, my lady. I don’t find you distasteful.”
    “Just irritating.”
    “Your words, not mine.”
    She smiled at him then. It was a warm, soft smile that made her amber eyes glow. “So you find me charming?”
    He felt a strange urge to whimper at her insistence. “Are you incapable of silence?”
    “Are you incapable of speech?”
    “Aye. Completely and utterly.”
    “Well, then you speak incredibly well for a mute. I once knew a mute. He lived in the local village and used to make the most divine shoes. They were so soft that you felt as if your feet were cushioned by pillows.”
    Ewan did whimper as she continued with her tale of the cobbler and the village where he lived.
    This must be his penance.
    Surely the devil had sent this woman to him on this day to be his torment. There was no other explanation possible.
    She was his anchor. His millstone.
    It would have been kinder to have him hanged, drawn and quartered.
    For hours they traveled at a leisurely pace that was far more frustrating than productive. And all the while she prattled on endlessly about everything imaginable until he feared his ears would bleed from the stress.
    As night approached, Ewan looked about for a place to sleep. Someplace where he could put a wide distance between the two of them before he yielded to the urge to throttle her.
    He found them a small clearing beside a stream that could provide them with fresh water.
    “We’re stopping here?” she asked as he reined his horse in. “To sleep until morning?”
    “Aye,” he said gruffly, “unless it’s your wont to ride through the night.” Which he was more than willing to do. Anything to get her away from him as soon as possible so that he could return to his home and be at peace again.
    She bit her bottom lip as she looked about with pinched features. “Is there not someplace we could find a bed?”
    “Do you see a bed?”
    She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is there no village nearby?”
    “Aye, a few hours away, and the way you travel, more like half a day away.”
    Nora stiffened. “The way I travel? What do you mean by that?”
    Ewan let out a tired breath. Was the woman blind not to know the answer to that? Or was she merely trying to aggravate him more?
    “How many times did we have to stop for you to attend your needs, my lady? Better still, how many times did I have to circle back to your side because you were off daydreaming instead of keeping up with me? I swear a—”
    “Do not swear at me. ’Tis rude.”
    Ewan snapped his mouth shut