Page 70 of Highland Ruse

“Was your mother like that?” Delilah asked.

Claire’s fingers tightened and for a moment, Delilah wondered if it’d been wrong to ask such a question.

“Would ye like to hear about her?” The afternoon sun lit Claire’s hair like glowing gold. If anyone were the angel, it was she.

“Very much so,” Delilah answered.

And the girl talked then—talked and talked and talked, as all little girls do, detailing the way her mother looked, and smelled, and even sang. Every bit of the dead woman was told in an unending speech only a child who truly loved her mother could give.

The two of them walked around and through the orphanage together, hand in sweaty hand, and chatted until the sky began to darken. The onset of evening found them in large, comfortable chairs in front of the fire, where it was warm and snug.

Claire gave a mighty yawn, revealing a missing bottom tooth, where the white flecks of another coming into its place were visible.

“Are you getting sleepy?” Delilah asked.

Claire nodded. “May I sit with ye?” Even as she asked the question, she was already climbing into Delilah’s lap.

Delilah had cradled her own young siblings before and now marveled at the ability of all children to comfortably snuggle themselves into a willing lap. Claire’s legs lay over Delilah’s, and her head rested just under Delilah’s chin.

Claire grasped Delilah’s arm and pulled it over her shoulders, like one would do with a blanket on a cold night. Delilah smiled and held the girl in her embrace for a long while, even when the child’s silky golden hair tickled at her chin.

“My ma protected me when the MacKenzies came,” Claire whispered, so quietly, Delilah had almost not heard it. “She stepped in front of me so the men wouldna see me. She was verra brave.” Her voice caught, and so did something in Delilah’s chest.

Claire’s hand blindly found Delilah’s and folded around it. “When she died, she told me she loved me, and she…” A slight tremble of the girl’s body told Delilah she was crying. “She told me she’d send an angel to protect me because she knew she was going to die.”

Her crying was not so silent then. It came in hiccupping sobs that bled hot and wet against Delilah’s chest and deep into her soul. She held the child while she wept, and could no sooner stop the tears from silently tracing down her own cheeks than she could stop the shell of her heart from breaking.

• • •

The sky was black with night and still Delilah was missing.

Kaid paced his solar, waiting for Leasa to arrive. Surely she had to know something about her mistress.

If he hadn’t been so busy during the day, he’d have kept an eye on Delilah himself. The last damn thing he needed was for her to run off. He needed her for his plan to work.

But it was more than that.

After spending so many weeks with her, seeing her every day, speaking with her every day—the idea of her no longer in his life was incomprehensible and left him feeling…

He grasped at the fragile emotion and pulled it closer to his heart to identify it.

Empty.

Life without Delilah seemed somehow empty.

He stared out into the darkness once more. Would she truly have left? Perhaps that was why she’d given him such a quiet kiss the night before, a final goodbye.

And it was at such damnable timing.

MacKenzie’s letter lay on the desk, his acceptance scrawled in a bold script. He would return Kaid’s father’s sword and allow peace to reign between the two clans.

Not that Kaid trusted that peace.

But if Delilah had left and he had no bride to offer, surely it would be an immediate invitation to war.

A knock sounded at the door, and his heart lurched.

“Enter,” he said even as he strode toward the door to pull it open.