Page 56 of Highland Ruse

What a fitting name for a woman of such beauty and betrayal.

Leasa’s easy laugh carried over from the left where she and Donnan rode in their usual jovial exchange of conversation, as if nothing had happened.

A pale boulder nestled between two hills caught his attention. He’d played on that rock as a boy. It lay on the border of his lands.

His men would be patrolling the perimeter. They would be found.

He wasn’t sure how much Delilah knew about him—hell, he didn’t know anything about her at all—but he wasn’t about to risk losing this opportunity to get out of the situation.

He’d given her his word he wouldn’t escape, but had said nothing about letting her be captured by his lot.

“Who are ye?” he asked.

Her answer came without preamble or pause. “No one.”

It wasn’t exactly the kind of distracting conversation he’d hoped for.

“Nobody is no one.” He tried to keep the frustration from his tone. “Where do ye come from?”

“England.”

“I figured,” he answered dryly. “Where in England?”

Delilah was quiet a moment. “A house in the country.”

“Did ye have any brothers or sisters?”

She gave a mirthless chuckle. “A few.”

Kaid scanned the horizon, picking through foliage for the familiar images of his men. Nothing. “Did ye no’ get along with them?”

“I didn’t not get along with them.”

Kaid frowned. “I dinna understand.”

She shifted in her saddle. “I’m done talking about this.”

He looked at the open landscape, swollen with the rise and fall of hills velvety with lush grass. They were definitely on his land now. He could not have her notice if she knew the area. And perhaps she did.

Most likely she did.

Delilah might be deceitful, but she was undeniably extraordinary.

“I thought I knew ye as Elizabeth.” He lowered his voice to a more intimate level. “I want to know ye as Delilah.”

Though he’d spoken the words with a luring intent, he realized he meant them. He wanted to know how she came to live in Scotland, to speak Gaelic, to fight like a man.

Delilah pulled in a quiet breath, but didn’t answer for so long, he thought she might not at all. When she finally did, her voice was quiet, somber. “I’m the middle child of fifteen children, the eldest unwed daughter. I was a burden for my family, who could barely afford food, and was sent to work for a rich relative at court in London as many poor relations often do. Suffice it to say, things did not go as planned.”

She shifted in her saddle to look back at him with a pointed expression. “I am a far cry from the well-bred noblewoman you assumed me to be.”

Her gaze slid past him, and her eyes widened. “Get down.”

She jerked low and he instinctively followed. An arrow sailed over their heads, narrowly missing her before it thunked into a tree in front of them.

A warning shot.

Delilah lay low against the horse’s strong neck. Her hand slid into her pocket and she withdrew a dagger. The very one she’d pressed to his throat after they’d made love.