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any doubt that they could
never
come true.
    For him to stand there and talk like everything had been decided without a word from her…it was too much. Once again, a man she could not trust sought to take her choices. How would she fight him? Law and tradition stood firmly on Caelis’s side.
    Shona felt the waters closing over her head as air became more and more difficult to draw into her lungs.
    “You have to love Marjory, too.” Eadan had no trouble making demands of his own. It was not the first time she’d seen similarities between father and son. “She’s your daughter like I’m your son. My dreams said so.”
    “Naturally.”
    Her son accepted Caelis’s easy agreement with a firm nod of approval, but Shona could not be so trusting. Even if he told the truth, she desperately did not want to link her life to this man’s after the way he’d hurt her so deeply six years ago.
    Then, incredibly, Shona’s overly shy daughter, who would hide in her mother’s skirts at the first sign of a stranger, released her brother’s hand and moved over toCaelis. Marjory put her hands out to the big warrior as if to be picked up.
    Though his focus was so intent on Eadan that Shona could not believe Caelis had seen the gesture, he turned and took the wee girl into his big arms without hesitation or pause.
    The world grew black around the edges, but Shona would not give into the blessed solace of unconsciousness. She inhaled more deeply, clutching at Audrey, pleading silently with the other woman for help.
    Audrey, true friend that she was, strengthened her hold and asked Lady Abigail if they could not have a goblet of watered wine.
    Abigail’s attention shifted from the spectacle of Shona’s children clinging to the man they’d met only that day. When her eyes landed on Shona, they widened and concern filled her gaze. “Of course.”
    Caelis turned then, as if somehow attuned to Shona’s distress. He stood with Marjory in his arms.
    Shona lifted her hand in a staying motion and spoke through barely moving lips. “Do not come near.”
    The hand not holding her daughter fisted at his side, his expression hardening. “Shona…”
    “Nay.” It was Thomas speaking, surprisingly enough. He shifted so his body was a physical barrier between Shona and Caelis. “You have wrought this with your actions. I do not know how our Shona came to be in the predicament she is, but you’ve done her grave damages in the past, breaking sacred law and dishonoring your own nature. The boy standing by your side is testament to it.”
    Incredibly, Caelis made no effort to deny it. In fact, he nodded, his jaw hewn from rock, torment she neither understood nor wanted to see swimming in his gentian gaze.
    Thomas’s own visage was harsher than Shona had ever seen it. “She has told you to stay away. You will stay away.”
    “Are you her protector then?” Caelis asked in a dangerous voice.
    “I am her
friend
.”
    Audrey added, “A truer one than you have been. Thomas and I were there the few times the baron’s temper overcame his sense. My brother taught the boy you seek to claim for your own to sit his first horse. Like me, he helped nurse both Eadan and Marjory through the fevers of babyhood when neither the baron, nor his son, nor even the snooty servants they employed were willing to lift a finger in aid.”
    Caelis dropped his head, then lifted it to meet Thomas’s stare. “I am in your debt.”
    “Aye, you are, but more important, you are in Shona’s.”
    Caelis nodded, his gaze slipping back to her. The yearning she saw there had to be a trick of the light.
    He was the one who had told her love meant nothing between the two of them. That the marriage he’d promised those nights they had shared their passion would not come to pass.
    Not content with that, Caelis had made an official declaration of lack of intent, telling both her mother and father that he would no longer be courting her.
    They had accepted his rejection without