Ye shouldn’t have hit him so hard, Lillias.”

Josette applied the cold cloth to Will’s pale face as he lay beneath the castle roof. He’d already been hurt and weak from the interrogation, and the flat part of a shovel to the side of his head hadn’t helped. Josette knew he’d allowed himself to be laid out only because he hadn’t expected the blow to come from a tiny young woman.

“Never trust a Mackenzie,” Lillias McIver declared in sullen tones. “He wouldn’t have come because of your tender persuading, Mrs. Oswald.”

“You might have given me a few more minutes to talk him round.” Josette dabbed at the stitched-up gash on the side of Will’s head, buried deep in his red hair. “If you’ve gone and killed him, he won’t be of much help, will he?”

Josette spoke lightly, but her heart hammered. If Will died …

That could not happen. Josette would grieve if he left life behind, and she knew she’d grieve hard.

Under her hand, Will groaned. Josette lifted the cloth in worry.

Will’s eyes moved behind his lids but he didn’t open them. Emitting another soft grunt, he slipped back into sleep. True sleep, to Josette’s relief.

He was a big man, his height making him appear lanky, but his body was solid with muscle. Josette had cut his tattered shirt from him, his skin warm despite the chill of the castle, his torso firm under her touch.

Will Mackenzie had always been larger than life, dominating any room he entered. He moved easily, that fluidity enabling him to appear and disappear before one could notice him. Unreachable, Josette said silently. Every time she thought she’d hold him, he’d slip away and be gone, leaving her bereft.

Her own fault, Josette knew. She understood the instant she’d first seen Will that this was a man who’d never stop moving. A woman would break her heart on him—dash herself to pieces if she didn’t take care.

But Josette, with the confidence of the young, had believed she could weather him. She’d been wrong.

“Ye should rest, Mum,” sixteen-year-old Glenna said as she slipped into the chamber. While Glenna had been born in France, she’d taken to London cant and thoroughly adopted it. “I can sit with him if ye’d like.”

Lillias’s hazel eyes widened. “Ee, I’d not let a daughter of mine anywhere near a Mackenzie. He’ll gut us all.”

“No, he will not,” Josette said, her patience with Lillias wearing thin. “He’s not a vicious man. He took care of Glenna when she was a babe.”

“Well, she’s not a babe now.” Lillias, who was only in her early twenties herself, declared. “He’s been a prisoner a while, and who knows what hungers he’ll try to sate? We should bind him at the least.”

“We’ll do nothing of the sort.” Josette rose. “We need him, Lillias. On our side, not against us.”

Lillias’s rather pretty faced screwed into sour lines. “Ha. A Mackenzie does what he pleases when he pleases. He’ll hear you out and then leave ye stranded, taking everything you have when he goes. We can’t trust the likes of the Mackenzies—not those Mackenzies anyway.”

Josette kept her temper with effort. “We’ll leave him to sleep. ’Tis what he needs most, without our chatter. Lillias, you come with me. You’re as tired as I am and it’s making you out of sorts. Glenna, you too. I need your help downstairs” She turned to her daughter, never failing to marvel at how lovely she was. “Yes?”

“Of course,” Glenna replied in French, which spilled fluently from her tongue. “As long as I don’t have to do what this old witch says.”

Lillias didn’t know French, but she had a good idea Glenna was insulting her. Josette gave her daughter an admonishing look and led the reluctant Lillias away.

Josette didn’t give voice to the thought, even inside her own head, that Lillias might be right. Will would take what he wished and leave, as he always did. But it was worth the risk, Josette reminded herself with another glance at Glenna. Definitely worth it.

Will spun in and out of sleep. He tried to rise, but he groaned and dropped to the pallet, pain exploding in his head. Dried bracken crackled beneath his back, and the scent of peat smoke invaded his senses.

It was the peat that made him believe he was in Scotland, not hell.

He tried to remain awake long enough to assess where he was and how badly he was injured. He could breathe—no hissing or gurgling in his lungs. His heart beat fairly evenly. He was hot, feverishly hot.

The pain that wracked his body radiated from the side of his head. Had the captain hit him again?

No—the flash came to him of a flight through a tunnel after a thorough and satisfying kiss. Then the business end of a spade swinging at his head, wielded by a small but fiery woman with flame-red hair.

Josette had led him into a trap, he dimly realized. Why, he had no idea.

They hadn’t parted easily last time. Will took the blame, though Josette could be bloody-minded. He hoped in the intervening years she’d forgotten what a bastard he was.

One look into her entrancing eyes told him she hadn’t forgotten.

Despite the fact that Josette had drugged the captain and major to help Will escape, he had no way of knowing whether he was in the hands of friends or enemies. Josette knew how to play both sides of a coin. Survival, she’d say, and she’d be right.

Will wanted to leap up, find her, question her, but his healing body took over, and he succumbed once more to sleep.

When he finally floated to consciousness again, the fever had faded, and Will opened his eyes, alert and aware.

He studied the roof over his head, beams and stone. Inside a castle, he concluded, one of the many that dotted the hills of Scotland like old ghosts.

He’d hoped for a nice bed in a warm manor house, like his father’s rented home in Paris, but he ought to have known he wouldn’t be that lucky.

Will sat up, stifling a groan, pressing his hand to the bandage on his head. Mal and Alec would laugh themselves sick if they knew he’d been felled by a stripling of a Scotswoman with a garden spade. That she was a Scotswoman, Will had no doubt. She’d wielded her weapon with the ferocity of a clanswoman defending her bairns.

He swung himself out of the bed, leaning on the cold stone wall while he steadied himself and got his bearings. He wore no shirt, but had on a pair of trews made of some scratchy fabric. He’d been lying on a plaid, which he snatched up and wrapped around himself in the approximation of a kilt.

The room did not have a proper door, only a blanket tacked over the opening. Will pushed it aside and found himself in a stone corridor.

This part of the castle looked solid enough—ceiling intact, wooden floor fairly even and not rotted as far as he could tell. His room was the only one on the short hall, which ended in a stone staircase spiraling down.

Unlike his brother Mal, who could put a name to every room, hall, and corner of a castle or keep, Will had only a vague idea where he was in the building.

Castles had been built as hiding places, refuges from wild lands and violent neighbors. This one seemed to have no windows at all. Will followed the staircase down, one hand on the wall to keep himself from growing too dizzy.

At the bottom of the stairs, a flicker of firelight led him to a wide room with rounded walls. The enormous fireplace that lit the chamber looked to have been added at a later date—different stone—and it didn’t fit quite right against the curved wall. Kilmorgan Castle, Will’s family home, had been overhauled and updated with each generation, but this keep had obviously been left in the past.

Kilmorgan was no more, Will reminded himself with a rush of pain. Now it was a heap of burned rubble, courtesy of British soldiers. It was also the main reason Will had returned to Scotland. Kilmorgan’s destruction needled at him, and he desired to put it right.

The kitchen—obviously what the room was being used for—was filled with women.

Glenna stood at a table shaping pieces of dough for a gray-haired lady to roll out. The red-haired wench who’d wielded the deadly shovel turned a spit at the fireplace. The spit was large enough for a whole oxen, but only two small roasting birds rotated above the flames. Josette seemed to be in charge, moving from table to table, supervising the preparations, reaching out to help sort greens or chop an onion.

Female voices washed over him like gentle rain. Will leaned on the doorframe, unnoticed in its shadow, and listened to their chatter.

“Are you certain you’re well?” one woman was asking.

Will opened his mouth to answer, then realized she’d not been addressing him. The red-haired woman at the fireplace nodded. “I’ll mend. Those soldiers only grabbed me for a moment. I move quickly.”

The gray-haired woman slapped a round of dough Glenna handed her to the table. “As long as they never knew what you were about.”

“They had no idea.” The younger woman looked smug. “Thought I was another light skirt. As though I’d waste me time.” She spit into the flames, which crackled.

Laughter and salty comments followed. Will was in the Highlands all right, where the women didn’t withhold their opinions. They spoke English, not Erse, likely so Josette could understand them.

When the ladies wound down, another asked the red-haired lass, “What did you learn?”

“Nothing,” she replied, despondent. “The soldiers didn’t know a blessed thing. From their talk, they’ve heard no more than we have.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Josette answered, her tone brisk. “Finding out nothing is still helpful. Means it’s not yet in the hands of King Geordie.”

Will smothered a chuckle. He was the one who’d taught the French Josette to call George the Second of Britain “King Geordie.”

The gray-haired woman cast her eyes to the ceiling. “What about our new source? Are we going to use it?”

Four of the eight ladies present nodded and the other half shook their heads.

“Ye can’t,” the red-haired woman wailed. “He’ll betray us all.”

Glenna burst out with indignation. “He will not. He’s saved Mum and me countless times.”

“Aye, but who put you in danger in the first place?” another asked.

She had a point. If not for Will, Josette would still be in France, perhaps the pampered mistress of a wealthy patron. She’d recline in her parlor in finery, telling her paramour which artists to hire and which models to have said artists paint.

Because of Will, she’d had to flee Paris, and now, apparently, London.

“He’s a fine man,” Glenna snapped back. “Better to me and Mum than my own pa ever was. He scarpered the moment Mum knew she was having me.”

“Glenna,” Josette admonished.

“’Tis true, Mum. I’ve never minded.” The flash of hurt in Glenna’s eyes said otherwise, and Will felt old rage flicker at the man who’d deserted Josette.

“Will Mackenzie’s the worst ye could turn to, I say,” the red-haired woman said. “He and any of his family. Where are they now, eh? Living well in Paris while their people starve.”

The gray-haired woman broke in. “Because they’d be shot or hanged on sight if they returned. Kilmorgan burned to the ground and all were turned out. And I’ll remind you they lost two brothers to the fighting.”

“All of us lost someone,” the red-haired woman said hotly. “They likely will only come out to swing.” She blinked and coughed. “Blessed smoke,” she muttered.

She received looks of sympathy, nods of commiseration. She was correct—everyone in the Highlands had lost someone to the war that had torn families asunder and created so many outlaws.

Another took up the argument. “If we use him, what’s to say he won’t take it and rush back to France? Won’t help us none.”

“But if any can find it, it’s Will,” Josette broke in, voice firm. She was the only non-Highlander in the room besides Glenna, but the ladies went silent as she spoke, acknowledging her authority.

“He knows everyone in Scotland,” Josette continued, “and could wile information out of the devil himself. We can either poke around until we’re in our graves or we can locate it quickly—or know for certain it’s long gone. It would be foolish not to ask him. He’s an honorable man, whatever he may seem.”

The red-haired woman stuck out her lip. “And all know ye were his lover. What’s to say ye won’t find it with him? And you and he run off to France and live in luxury?”

Glenna jumped to her feet. “Now, see here, ye two-faced—”

“Glenna!” The sharp word from her mother halted the South London foulness from Glenna’s mouth. Glenna went scarlet, but she sat down, lips tight.

Josette faced the red-haired woman. “You all asked me for help, Lillias, and I agreed, for the Mackenzies’ sakes.”

The gray-haired woman held up a floury hand. “And we accepted that help because Lord Malcolm and Lord Alec vouched for you, Mrs. Oswald.”

“We’re trusting a lot of Mackenzies,” Lillias growled.

Will chose that moment to step forward.

“Why don’t you lassies tell me what it’s all about?” he asked in easy tones. “And I’ll decide whether or not ye should trust me.”