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Mel.
    Darcy appeared behind the man, and some of the tension left her shoulders. “I found her near the northern hill by Berringer’s marker,” he said in a light tone that thawed the coldest layer of frost from the bearded man’s eyes. He’d also made himself seem shorter by slouching. “Since she’d stuck a Gunn with his own dirk, I assumed she was on our side. Seems she’s lost and could use an audience with the laird. What say you, Aodhan, shall we escort the poor thing to Steafan and beg the laird’s hospitality?”
    “She English?” Aodhan asked, as if she weren’t there.
    “No,” Darcy said with surety.
    “Who does she belong to?” Those cold eyes snapped to Darcy with greater attention than the question seemed to warrant. She had the impulse to say she didn’t “belong” to anybody, but she held her tongue, remembering where, and when, she was.
    “No Keith or Gunn. That much I’ve determined,” Darcy answered cautiously. “Beyond that, I dinna ken.”
    Aodhan appraised her like he might a horse for sale. His shrewd eyes softened with appreciation, and his lips twitched with the kind of smile a turkey might see before ending up Thanksgiving dinner. He opened his mouth to say something, but Darcy blurted, “I’ll take responsibility for her.”
    Aodhan gave him a measuring look that bordered on annoyance. Finally, he grunted and moved away to shout orders at the other men.
    Darcy huffed a put-out sigh, then turned to her with his mouth pressed in a hard line. “I suppose ye’d better stick close to me.”
    That was fine with her, though she could have done without the attitude. “Did you find it?” she asked as she followed him to the wagon, already forgetting about the strange little confrontation with Aodhan.
    He shook his head and picked up the wagon’s jutting handles, lifting its front feet off the ground so the entire rickety thing groaned back on its two wheels.
    “Did you find it?” she asked again, her voice sharp with desperation. She needed to hear him say it. She wouldn’t let her hope come crashing down around her for anything less than verbal confirmation that the box hadn’t come with her into the past.
    He walked forward, pulling the wagon and falling in with the departing men. “No,” he said, the muscles in his jaw tense.
    She stared after him, her legs locked in shock. Men wafting the pungent scents of blood, whisky, and body odor closed around her to follow Darcy out of the clearing. Another hand found her butt and gave two solid tweaks. It jolted her into a jog. She caught up to Darcy, ignoring the snickering behind her.
    “What do you mean, ‘no’? You looked where you found me and you didn’t find it? Are you sure? Did you poke around in the mud?”
    “I looked where I found ye,” he said tightly. “I looked as well as a man can, and yet I am empty handed. I regret that I have no box to give ye.” With a pained expression, he met her desperate gaze. “I am sorry.”
    She closed her eyes against a crush of disappointment. If the box hadn’t come through with her, then she had nothing tangible with which to buoy her hope.
    “I have to go back and look for it,” she said, turning to trek back to the field.
    “’Tis no’ there,” he said firmly, putting down the cart to snatch her arm before she’d taken two strides. She met his eyes and the sympathy in them knocked the wind out of her. He was telling the truth. She knew from his sincere expression that no amount of searching back at the boulder would reveal the rosewood box. “Ye must come with me, Melanie. I need to bring ye to the laird as I would any stranger on Keith land, but then I’ll see you fed and rested. I vow I will do all in my power to return ye to your people on the morrow.”
    In the wake of Kyle’s betrayal, her first instinct was to bristle at the promise, but with a stab to her heart, she remembered Kyle had never made her any promises. In fact, no man had ever made her a