Page 28 of Highland Ruse

Donnan’s anger eased from his face. “Let’s let them go. We can leave them at the next town, and we can go back to Ardvreck. There are other options—”

“There are no other options,” Kaid replied in a low growl.

The women emerged from the forest, their expressions somber. Kaid swallowed the remainder of his temper. Donnan was right about one thing: the lasses didn’t need anything else to encourage their fear.

But he’d be damned if he let them go. Not when they were his only salvation.

Not when Lady Elizabeth made him finally feel something other than hurt.

Chapter Seven

Anger was oftentimes a mask for deep hurt.

Delilah knew the fit of it well. She’d experienced such rage herself when she first left London and joined the other women in Scotland. She’d given up her life for the mistake of one night with a man who had suffered no consequences.

But Kaid’s aching went deeper than a lover scorned.

It stole his thoughts and colored every decision he made.

Including abducting her.

He sat across from her in the bouncing coach, his gaze focused on the smear of blood on the sleeve of his leine. It was a scant thing, really. Little more than the tip of her pinky and long since faded from brilliant crimson to a dull and flaking maroon, but it seemed to be enough to capture his thoughts.

Leasa stared at the empty seat beside Kaid, fixed on her own demons.

The silence of the coach was stifling.

Leasa cupped something in her lap.

The little blue bottle.

Delilah’s heartbeat quickened.

She’d been so sure when she’d handed it to Leasa. But now…

The ache in Delilah’s chest was poignant, indicative of her empathy for the unknown horror Kaid had faced, what had so obviously shattered him. Now was not the time to poison him.

Perhaps later.

She tried to catch Leasa’s eye, but the maid continued to look forward.

In an attempt to break Leasa’s plaintive gaze at nothing, Delilah shifted in her seat and gave a delicate cough.

But it was Kaid who looked up. “Are ye well, lass?”

Perhaps Delilah could have lied, easily passed off her own comfort with a dismissive wave of her hand. But she wasn’t fine. She had to speak to Leasa to keep her from poisoning the men. Kaid needed his heart to be well before they so altered the state of his health.

“I need to get out of this coach,” Delilah conceded. She longed for one of the fans from court, or perhaps even the shaded coolness of a garden. To be out of the awfulness of the fashionable corset and into something more serviceable.

“I wouldna mind a pause myself.” He rapped on the top of the coach three times, and they drew to a slow stop. Rocks ground against one another beneath the wheels in gritty pops and snaps.

Delilah waited until Kaid was climbing from the coach before she grabbed Leasa’s hand and shook her head. Leasa nodded slowly in reply, and Delilah’s anxiety eased into relief.

Leasa understood.

Delilah accepted Kaid’s ready assistance and climbed from the coach into scenery so lovely it gave her pause. Sunlight danced atop a loch in flecks of gold, and the world around it was green and alive with lush trees and hills. The sky stretched endless and high overhead, leaving her feeling small in the most humbling of ways.

She tilted her head back and took it all in, the chill of a breeze on her face, the fresh air in her chest, the liberation from the tight, stale box.