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think her anything more than she seemed, but her beauty made it all too easy to think that Donnell would not be able to leave her alone. Mistress Annora’s true place in Dunncraig Keep was just another question he needed to answer.
    Stepping more fully into the open doorway of Edmund’s shop, he stared up at the keep that had once been his home. He would be back there soon. He would enter the keep as a worker, but he meant to stay as the laird. For all her beauty, if Mistress Annora had any part in Donnell’s schemes she would find that her beauty did not buy her any mercy from him.

Chapter Two
    Rage swept over Annora so quickly she had no chance to shield herself from it. It clouded her mind and churned her stomach. She placed one shaking hand on her stomach and the other hand flat upon the cold stonewall of the upper hall to steady herself. It took several minutes of concentration and slow, deep breathing to push the feeling away until she simply recognized it and was no longer consumed by it. It was proving to be very slow work to rid herself of it all, however. It was times like these that she truly hated the strange ability she had to sense the feelings of others, for it did seem as though the most distasteful ones were the strongest and hit her the hardest.
    Frowning, she looked around and realized she was only a few steps away from Donnell’s bedchamber. Her first thought was that someone had sparked Donnell’s considerable temper again, but then she inwardly shook her head. She had been slapped by the harsh, bitter taste of her cousin’s rage before, more times than she cared to count. This did not have the same feel to it or the same taste. Yet, aside from Donnell and Egan, Annora did not know anyone else at Dunncraig who had ever revealed such a fierce anger.
    Finally feeling steady again, Annora crept toward Donnell’s bedchamber. The door was open yet she heard no raised voices, no sounds of fists hitting flesh, not even the softest of pained whimpers. That made no sense. Where was the consequence of such rage? If it came from Donnell or Egan, there should not be such calm, such quiet, inside the room. In truth she should be hearing, and probably feeling, some poor man’s or woman’s pain as a harsh punishment was meted out.
    Suddenly she was afraid that Donnell had seriously injured someone, perhaps even killed the object of his anger. She silently hurried closer and cautiously peered into the room. Even as she did so a small voice in her head scolded her for doing something so foolish, for she knew that she could do little to help anyone who had stirred up the rage of either her cousin or his fist, but she did not heed that warning voice and looked anyway. Annora barely stopped herself from gasping aloud in surprise and giving herself away.
    There was no broken, bleeding body on the floor. There was no sign of any confrontation at all. Not even a tipped-over stool. Donnell and the handsome wood-carver from the village stood before the massive fireplace studying the mantel and talking quietly. Annora warily allowed herself to reach out to find the source of the rage that had so affected her and abruptly stood up straight in the doorway. It was coming from the wood-carver.
    “What are ye doing here?” demanded Donnell.
    Annora blinked, feeling as if she had just been rudely awakened from a deep sleep. In a way she supposed she had been. Shock over the fact that the soft-spoken man standing so diffidently in front of Donnell was actually seething with fury had thoroughly stunned her. Her abrupt movement must have given away her presence in the doorway. Unfortunately she was now the object of Donnell’s attention and irritation, something she usually did her utmost to avoid. Rousing irritation in Donnell tended to leave one with a lot of bruises.
    “I beg your pardon, Cousin,” she said, taking a step back in the start of what she hoped would not appear to be an ignominious retreat. “I heard voices