No one questioned him. He turned his horse toward a narrow trail that wound upward through a break in the craggy hillside, where the earth climbed sharply into thicker forest. The path was scarcely a path at all, more a scar between rock and root, slick from morning dew and hemmed in by bracken. As she drew nearer, she saw Lachlan had paused just outside the entrance of the trail and then came into the line behind her.
Within moments neither the warriors, nor Isabel and Elsa, could ride side by side. Branches scraped Isabel’s skirts. Wet leaves brushed her cheek. Somewhere above them, a raven gave a harsh cry and vanished into the mist.
The climb grew steeper. Where before she could still see the road traveling parallel below them, now there was nothing but foliage.
Behind her, she heard Lachlan’s horse stumble once, then recover. She turned despite herself. He sat tall, but his face had gone pale beneath the weathered bronze of his skin. His injured leg was braced awkwardly, the muscle too damaged to absorb the jarring rise of the trail. He would sooner bite through his own tongue than admit pain, she suspected, which made the evidence of it all the more alarming.
After another stretch of climbing, he called, “My lady.”
The formality of it made her wary. She turned in the saddle. “Aye?”
“Ye must ride with me.”
Her brows rose. “That sounds less like a request than an order.”
“’Tis both.”
“That is no’ how a request works.”
His mouth twitched, but the humor did not reach his eyes. “The trail narrows ahead. If your horse slips, I canna reach ye quickly enough. If mine stumbles, I canna manage the reins as well as I should.”
The admission cost him. She saw that, too. He extended his hand. Isabel looked at it. Large. Callused. Steady.
She should not have trusted that hand as readily as she did.
Still, he halted his horse, while she guided hers close. James took her reins, and Lachlan leaned down, jaw tight with pain as he helped draw her onto his horse. She sat before him awkwardly at first, but then his arm came around her waist, firm and sure, and her back met the hard warmth of his chest. Her bottom crushed to his lap.
The closeness struck her with such force that for one foolish instant she forgot the English.
She felt him everywhere. The strength of his arm. The rise and fall of his breathing. The heat of him through his plaid and her gown. His injured leg pressed along the outside of hers, held with brutal control. He was not as invincible as men whispered. Not now. Not with fever barely behind him and pain riding every mile beside him.
And yet he held her as though he could still put himself between her and the world. That should not have moved her, and yet it did. There was something about witnessing his vulnerability that drew her closer.
“Are ye settled?” he asked, his voice low behind her.
“Nay,” she said honestly.
He handed her the reins, and she couldn’t help but be slightly surprised at how much he trusted her to guide Dionysus.
A breath passed against the back of her neck. “Nor am I.”
The answer was too quiet for anyone else to hear, and perhaps that was why it rattled her so much. The trail climbed beneath them, the horse careful under Lachlan’s hand. Isabel fixed her gaze on the path ahead, on the slick lichen-covered stones and twisting roots, but every sense had turned traitor. She was aware of his fingers near her waist. His breath near her ear. The hard line of his body behind hers.
And because she was aware of him, she thought of the croft. Of the fever. Of his hand closing weakly around her wrist. Stay. Of his mouth on hers.
She had told herself it did not matter. A dying man’s delirium was not a confession of the heart. Fever made ghosts of warriors. It made saints into sinners and warriors into lads crying for their mothers. Surely it could make Lachlan MacLeod kiss a woman he did not mean to kiss.
Except he had looked at her differently afterward.
And she had remembered everything.
The trail narrowed until branches closed above them, catching the mist in silver drops. The company moved slower now, each horse picking its way along the ridge. Below, somewhere beyond the trees, the southern road lay hidden. Isabel tried to listen past the creak of leather and the soft chuff of horses, but the forest held too many sounds. Water dripping from leaves. Wind worrying through pine. A distant crack that might have been a branch or might have been a man’s boot on deadwood.
“How do you keep going,” she asked quietly, “when ye dinna know who betrayed ye?”
For a moment, she thought he would not answer, but then he said, “Ye fight the enemy in front of ye, while keep an eye on your back for another. Often times, they are the same.”
“And the traitor?”
