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to their bedrooms, Elena became almost more of a weight than Anne could carry. She rested a moment at their bedroom door while one of the guards opened it.
    “We will be here all night, my lady,” one of the guards said. Anne walked past him and nodded. When she turned to close the door, she noticed that he did not avert his eyes, as the other guards had been trained to do. She recognized those alert brown eyes that had tried to speak to her before.
    Anne wondered what his eyes would say if they could truly convey messages. The emotion she read was simple enough. Concern. But the eyes themselves, what would they have said?
    She knew what hers would have said in this moment.
    Save me .

 
    Chapter Four
     
    Aedan woke with forward motion on his mind. But the pain that consumed his head stopped any ideas of moving. Somehow, he felt that he must run and yet could not run, equally, like a bad dream. Yet he recognized the foul stench of the dungeon too well for it to be a dream. Certainly, the gods would spare him the smell if he were truly still asleep.
    He felt for the source of the pain but found a bandage where he expected bloody flesh. Who had bandaged him?
    Anne.
    Fear cut through him, slicing his capacity to move, to think. She had been here, in this room. Standing in dim shadow when the pain struck him. Now, she was gone, he was bandaged, and the captive he’d struggled so hard to find had escaped.
    And he’d taken Anne.
    Aedan tried to regain that forward motion that had gripped him when he’d woken. A lady like that shouldn’t get caught up in his mess. He’d already ruined one lady’s life, and that was too much.
    He stumbled across the room and sagged against the door. The pain in his head pulsed like a battle cadence. Instead of stopping him, it pushed him toward his target. He had to find her, to find William and keep him from hurting her. Or worse.
    A sliver of wood cut into his hand as he dragged himself upward, and with his other hand, he wrenched the handle open. The door swung away from him, undoing the last shred of his balance and Aedan collapsed to the floor again. The cold of the stone seeped through the bandage and chilled the skin on either side of his scar, but the dead space in between reminded him of the moment he’d seen that sword slashing through the air toward his face. He couldn’t let that happen to Anne. Who knew what these lawless men would do to her?
    Aedan clenched his fists and used his knuckles to push himself up again. Once his knee made contact with the ground, he was quick on his feet and taking the stairs two at a time.
    At the top of the stairs, he turned back toward the hall and ran for the nearest doors. He shoved one open and two dull-eyed soldiers met him with bent spears.
    He waved them away and they raised their spears to attention, looking around the empty hall. The lights had nearly all been extinguished. Two plump lords lay in their plates, across one of the giant tables from each other, a dog atop the table between them, licking at the leg of meat one had discarded in his slumber. The dais was empty, as were the chairs near the giant fire.
    The two guards that should have been at attention at the other two doors were asleep as well, two leaning back against the wall and two resting against each other.
    “Where is the Sheriff?” Aedan’s breath came in quick bursts as blood pumped through him with fierce speed.
    “What happened to your head, sir?”
    The soldier mistook him for a knight and Aedan would have corrected him, but for the time. He must get to Anne. Save the lady he put in harm’s way. He never should have let her tend to the man, whether or not she knew him.
    “The captive. William Campbell. He escaped. Took the lady Anne with him. We must wake the Sheriff.”
    The two guards exchanged a nonchalant look. Morons.
    “You haven’t heard.” One of the men set his spear butt on the ground and leaned against it. “The lady’s mother caught him about