His arm tightened around her, and she couldn’t tell if it was out of protectiveness, or that he was holding on. “The truth finds its way out eventually.”
“Ye sound very certain.”
“I have seen enough war to know secrets rarely stay buried.”
“Bodies do,” she said before she could stop herself.
His silence chilled her more than the fog. Then he said, “Aye. Bodies do.”
She swallowed. “If the English are this close, someone told them where to look. I think Kerr—do ye know him?”
“Aye.” The single word landed hard, an affirmative without hesitation.
Isabel looked ahead at the warriors riding before them. Thought about the ones riding behind. Loyal men, she had assumed. Lachlan’s men. Men who obeyed without question, moved like extensions of his will, watched the hills with the same grim discipline he did. But what did she truly know of any of them? What did Lachlan know? Betrayal did not arrive wearing a villain’s face. It sat beside the fire. Shared its bread. Rode beside allies and waited for the right moment to draw steel.
“Ye think it could be one of your own,” she said.
“I think war makes fools of men who believe trust is the same as certainty.”
Isabel nodded solemnly, understanding how crushing it would be if one of his own men turned traitor. But she did not pity him. She suspected Lachlan would hate pity and possibly throw it off a cliff. But grief, aye. For the burden of command. For the knowledge that every man he loved might have to be measured against suspicion. For a life in which affection could not be separated from strategy.
“Ye are much quieter today than when ye were dying of fever,” she said, because the sadness in her chest had become too full.
A low sound rumbled behind her. Almost a laugh. “A man says many things when he believes death is near.”
“Ye did more than speak,” she whispered, heat filling her cheeks.
The horse took three careful steps before he answered. “Aye,” he said quietly. “I did.”
Her pulse betrayed her, quickening against the cage of her ribs. “Do ye remember?”
He leaned close to her ear, whispering, “Enough.”
Isabel swallowed, and somehow managed to reply, “That is no’ an answer.”
“’Tis the safest one, trust me lass.”
She should have let that be the end of it. She should have remembered the men ahead of them, the English below them, the blood politics surrounding them like wolves. Instead, the words tumbled out before she could pull them back, “And if ye had no’ been fevered?”
The forest seemed to hold its breath just like her.
The heat of his breath on her ear sent a shiver down her spine, and she tightened her hold on the reins in front of her.
“Then I would have known exactly what I was about.” There was amusement in his tone, mixed with something very close to desire.
Heat moved through her so swiftly she hated him for it. Or hated herself. Or hated the fact that danger had stripped away the polite distance she had tried to keep between them. She was the Bruce’s niece. He was a Highland warrior sworn to deliver her to safety. There were enemies behind them, traitors perhaps among them, and a war ahead that did not care whether a man’s voice could make a woman forget her own good sense. And here she was quivering like a ninny on a hillside.
“That would have been foolish,” she said.
“Aye.”
“And improper.”
“Aye.”
“And dangerous.”
His breath touched her neck again. “Most things worth wanting are.”
