“Ah, now I see what you mean. If he cannot produce Rosie to support his claim, he cannot prove it. That settles it,” Jack said. “We must set off for the border at once and, married or not, Rosie must come with us. We have to get her away from here, sir. Tonight.”

“But what of her reputation if she goes with you while you remain unwed?” Mr. Delacourt’s face was ashen with shock.

“You need not fear for her, Cousin Henry.” Martha surprised everyone, including herself with her next words. “She will be safe. I guarantee it…because I will go with them as well, as her chaperone.”

For Martha, the first two days of their journey had passed in a bleak blur of misty northern landscape. By the time they had gathered together what they needed for the journey, the midnight hour had been upon them. On leaving Delacourt Grange, they had travelled through the darkness and long into the next day until Derbyshire was a distant memory. Crossing the vast shire county of Yorkshire had taken several days, during which they had avoided the main turnpike roads and followed the canal-side tracks that led them past endless forests and dark, brooding hills. In determined silence, they had pressed onward through Durham. Now, as darkness was coming around again, they were on the soil of the ancient borderland where both Jack and Martha had been born. A light drizzle had welcomed them into Northumberland, and this had now become a steady downpour. The horses were bone tired and so were the four travellers. Jack had insisted on this strange, zigzag route across the country so that he could pass close to his estate at St. Anton.

“Since I am a wanted man, I cannot very well march up to the door of my ancestral home and announce my presence,” he said, with a trace of sadness lingering in his voice. “But I would like to know that things are going well on the estate in my absence.”

Mr. Delacourt had provided funds for the journey as well as horses, and almost a week after they left Delacourt Grange, they clattered wearily into the courtyard of a coaching inn in the medieval coastal town of Bamburgh. Fraser had chosen this humble place, pointing out that they could not afford to draw attention to themselves by spending time at one of the more prestigious inns along the main road into Scotland. Despite the humble exterior of the hostelry, Martha thought she had never seen anything quite as beautiful as the golden glow of the lighted sconces that beckoned a welcome in the doorway. Jack, with the natural authority of one born to a title, took charge and went inside to bespeak rooms and food. Fraser helped Rosie and then Martha to dismount.

“Ye look exhausted, lass.” His voice was low so that only Martha could hear.

She gave a quiet laugh and shook her head. “Don’t concern yourself about me. It is an odd circumstance, but I have become accustomed of late to managing with very little sleep.”

He groaned in response. “Stop it, lass. Ye’ll have me dragging ye off to a barn and taking ye quick and rough to get rid of the ache I have for you in my loins.”

Her own breathing quickened instantly in response. “You’ll not hear me complaining, Scotsman,” she murmured, breaking off the exchange abruptly as Jack came back to them.

“The horses need rest, so I have taken rooms here for two nights. I know you want to be over the border as soon as we can, Fraser. But it will do us no good to wear our mounts into the ground before we even reach Hadrian’s Wall. It means we will have to kick our heels here tomorrow, but I intend to take Rosie to view St. Anton Court, the house she will one day call her home.” He took Rosie’s arm and they went inside.

Martha was about to follow them, but Fraser forestalled her with a light grip on her elbow. “How far are we from your own home, lass?”

“A mile or two, no more.” Her voice was quiet.

“What is your wish for the morrow?”

She thought for a moment. “I would like to go there,” she said, raising her eyes to his face. “But with only you for company, if you please.”

“It shall be as you desire.” She wished, not for the first time, that she could read his expression when he looked at her in that way.

The food was good, but Martha was so drowsy that she could not have said, ten minutes after the meal was cleared, what it was she had eaten. Within minutes of tumbling into the bed she and Rosie shared, she had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next day dawned bright and cold. The crisp Northumbrian air blowing in off the sea and over the moors carried with it a scent of salt and heather that reminded Martha of her childhood and brought back bittersweet memories.

“Will you mind very much if I go with Jack to see his home at St. Anton?” Rosie asked her as they ate fresh bannocks for breakfast. “It is a long walk, but he said there is a spot on the hillside where we can look down on the house undisturbed. That will mean leaving you with Fraser for much of the day, and I know how much you dislike him.”

“I will endeavour to tolerate his presence,” Martha said calmly.

It was the strangest feeling, she thought later as, wrapping her cloak around her, she led Fraser across the village green. As if she was straddling both the past and the future. Northumberland was her past. Ahead of her, just across Hadrian’s Wall, lay Scotland and the future. She looked up at Fraser. Did he feature in anything other than her immediate future? There were too many uncertainties associated with the Jacobite cause to even consider the question. As if aware of her eyes upon him, he turned his head.

“Why do you look at me that way sometimes?” The words had left her lips before she had time to consider them.

“What way would that be, lass?”

“As if you don’t know how to feel about me.”

He didn’t answer, but a slight frown creased his brow. They walked on in silence, following a route past Bamburgh Castle. This vast monument to the county’s troubled past sprawled high on a rocky perch above the dramatic coastline. Their path took them along the top of fractured volcanic cliffs that swooped down to wide, curving beaches. Over to the southeast, the Farne Islands rose out of a dour sea, while to the west, the Cheviot Hills marched north to mark the end of the Pennines. The big skies and wide, empty spaces were pure Northumberland. Beyond lay an even wilder scene. This was the approach to Scotland. Martha shivered slightly. Tomorrow she would ride into a land that she had always believed was peopled by a race of barbaric demons. She risked a glance up at the man next to her. Had knowing Fraser changed her mind about the Scots?

“Do you miss this land at all?” Fraser asked, interrupting her thoughts, as they took a path that swung inward toward the flat plain of fields.

“No. My memories are those the reivers made for me. This is no longer my home. Derbyshire became the place I live, but I never allowed myself to call it home. I always knew that, when Rosie and Harry were grown and no longer needed me, I would have to move on and seek a new way for myself. I have never had a place to call home.”

His face was unreadable as he looked down at her. “Did ye never think to marry and make a home of your own?”

The incredulous look she gave him was her answer, and she was glad that he accepted it without further comment. Walking on in silence, they came at last to what remained of Martha’s childhood home. In the ten years or more since she had last been here, no attempt had been made to repair or rebuild the farmhouse. It was still a black, burned-out skeleton, a sad monument to what had once been a happy family dwelling.

“My brother and I used to watch for my father coming down this path each evening,” she said, looking up at the remnants of the house. “When we saw him approach, we’d run out to him, and he’d throw us up or swing us around and then pretend that he’d hurt his back.” A little smile touched her lips at the memory. “And my mother would sit just about there—by the fire—with her sewing, and she’d sing to us before bedtime each evening. They slit her from her stomach to her throat…”