LITMIR.BIZ

       AUTHOR NOTE

      There are times in your life when you think you’re going to have one experience and you have a completely different one. This is what happened to me when I toured castles in Wales.

      Now, I knew I’d be excited and awed, and that my imagination would run wild. They are castles, after all. What I didn’t plan on was the unerring sense of story, of the people who lived during that time. I didn’t have to close my eyes and pretend, and I didn’t have to squint to force my eyes to see. They were all simply there.

      Robert, an English knight, was there. Hunched and grieving under a tree. His broad back and bared arms were a testament to the times and to his training—and to a man used to war. But his grief came from something else…from loss, from hope forsaken.

      I could do nothing for him. But I knew he couldn’t stay where he was and I knew there had to be someone for him.

      And there is someone…in Scotland…in 1296…on the cusp of the greatest conflict. But Gaira of Clan Colquhoun laughs at conflict—in fact she curses at it all the time. And when she meets Robert she curses at him, too.