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The maid didn’t answer.

“Who has come to visit me?”

She flinched. “Ye would look as scared as I do, me Lady, if the man we used to scare the children so they go to bed were at yer door.”

“What are ye talking about? Who is out there?”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “The Wolf.”

“The Wolf?”

“The warrior, me Lady.”

“Why would he come here?”

Footsteps sounded down the hall, making Freya tense. Then a voice called out to her, a deep, resonant burr that she didn’t remember hearing but somehow knew deep down in her bones.

“I’m here to take ye home, wife.”

4

Freya’s arms tightened around the babe until he squirmed.

Nay. Nae here. Nae in Skye’s home.

The man wasn’t supposed to follow her, let alone find her. He was supposed to leave her alone, not go to her brother-in-law’s castle to seek her out.

Yet here he stood, calling her his wife.

What he said or claimed did not matter. She was not his wife and never would be. She would tell him so calmly, with dignity, the way a sensible woman of seven-and-twenty told a man that whatever had happened between them was over, done, and best forgotten. She would not throw a second lantern at him.

She turned around, met his eyes, and felt every sensible word she’d prepared fly out of her head.

It took her a moment to remember who he was, for her mind to wrap around everything happening right in front of her. She narrowed her eyes, focusing all her anger on the man she’d woken up with, the man whose name she didn’t even know, who stood there with a small smirk playing on his lips.

“Ye!”

The babe went to the maid. Freya was not entirely sure how. One moment, he was in her arms; the next, Aileen—or Ailsa—was clutching him to her chest and backing up towards the wall.

Freya crossed the chamber with her skirts clutched in her fists, until she reached him and closed the door behind them as quietly as she could.

The man from the inn was leaning with his back on the wall, and his arms were crossed over his chest, as if he’d been there all afternoon.

He’d found another plaid. Of course he had. He’d found another plaid and bathed and combed his black hair back from his face. In the daylight, upright, with all his considerable height stacked in the doorway, he was somehow both exactly the man she remembered and a great deal more of him.

It was tempting to remind herself that she had taken his plaid to cover herself before storming out of the room. Of course, not before throwing a brass lantern at his head.

“Nice throw, by the way, lass. I’ve been meaning to compliment ye since ye threw the lantern at me back at the inn.”

Freya narrowed her eyes. “Ye are lucky I didnae throw something bigger and heavier at yer head!”

The maid looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there, in that room, listening to their argument.

“I doubt ye would’ve been able to pick up something as heavy as the nightstand.”

“Try me,” Freya muttered, her hands falling to her hips.

“We did try many things last night, lass.”