Before she could answer, a bird call cut through the trees, and every rider drew their horse to a halt.
The change in Lachlan was instant. Whatever had passed between them vanished beneath command. His arm hardened around her, and his body grew taut, shielding hers even before the threat had a shape.
Another bird call answered from farther down the ridge. Isabel had a thousand questions, but she knew the answer to the main one—the English were close.
Lachlan guided his horse deeper into the woods, descending into a cluster of trees where the others were already dismounting. Hamish caught his bridle. Finley pressed a hand against his horse’s muzzle to quiet it. Lachlan swung down with a suppressed grunt, then reached for Isabel.
She slid into his arms because there was no time to do anything else.
His hands closed around her waist. For one heartbeat, they were face-to-face, close enough that she saw the strain around his eyes, the dark urgency there. Then he pulled her down behind a fallen trunk slick with moss and age, where Elsa already crouched. The chill of the cold ground seeping through her skirts. Damp seeped into her palms. The scent of earth, dirt, and pine filled her lungs.
“Dinna move,” he breathed.
She nodded, afraid to even draw air. Hoofbeats reached them through the trees, slow at first. Then clearer.
Steel clinked. Leather creaked. A man coughed. Another voice muttered something in English about the cursed fog. Isabel’s blood turned thin and cold. The enemy was close. Not somewhere on the road below, not safely distant, but close enough that a careless movement, a startled horse, one snapped twig could undo them all.
Lachlan crouched beside her, one arm angled across her body, not touching her now as a lover might, but as a shield. His other hand rested on the hilt of his sword. Isabel looked at that hand and understood something with sudden terrible clarity.
If the English found them, Lachlan would fight.
Injured or not. Outnumbered or not. Fever-weakened or not. He would spend the last of himself buying her time. The thought was unbearable.
A rider passed beyond the screen of trees. She saw only pieces of him through the fog. A dark boot, a wet horse flank, the dull flash of metal. Another followed. Then another. One of them laughed, low and ugly.
“Tracks went this way,” a voice said.
Isabel stopped breathing. Lachlan did not move, but everything in him tightened.
Another Englishman answered, “Could be deer.”
“Could be Scots.”
“Everything is Scots in this damned country.”
The men laughed again, but one horse shifted closer. Too close.
Isabel’s fingers dug into the wet earth. Her heartbeat sounded impossibly loud to her own ears. Surely they could hear it. Surely the whole forest could hear it. Lachlan’s hand left his sword only long enough to cover hers. A command without sound.
Steady. She clung to that pressure. Did the same with Elsa who looked ready to faint.
One of the English horses snorted.
A moment later, an English rider cursed. “Leave it. Road’s below. If they climbed up there, they’ll break their own necks before we find them.”
Slowly, painfully, the hoofbeats began to move away, and still they did not move. Did not breathe.
The sounds faded into mist, swallowed by distance and dripping trees until the forest returned to itself by degrees. Isabel remained frozen, her body still convinced death stood on the other side of the fallen trunk.
Then Lachlan turned his head, meeting her gaze.
Elsa was lifted by Angus, and taken back to his horse, where it seemed he was going to be having her ride with him.
But Isabel only had eyes for Lachlan. There was mud on his sleeve, blood darkening the bandage beneath his plaid, and a hard wildness in his eyes that should have frightened her. Mayhap it did. But not enough.
Perhaps that was the danger.
Not the English, or the unsteadiness of the trail. Nor the traitor hiding somewhere in the shape of an ally, and the English on their tail. But this. The uneven pulse in her chest. The way her breath hitched. The need for his lips to be on hers.
