Chapter Thirteen

Even after Elizabeth’s betrayal, Kaid still did not wish to harm her.

He caught her around the waist, intending to pull her to the ground and safely remove the dagger from her hold. She darted back with the reflexes of a cat and easily slid free of his grasp.

He swung his arm toward her in an attempt to catch her again. This time, she didn’t evade his attack, but ran into it.

Her body slammed into his with enough force to rock his balance momentarily, but he managed to keep his footing.

This was no minor defense, he realized. She intended to fight him. “Stop this, Elizabeth.”

“My name is not Elizabeth.” She ground the words out and swung a fist at his face.

She was fast.

Almost fast enough to catch him with her throw, but not quite.

He dipped back and put his arms up in a defensive block as he’d done many times when training at hand-to-hand combat with his men.

The kind of training he’d never done with a woman.

Especially not a woman he had only moments ago lain with.

Not Elizabeth.

Her words registered and tingled down his spine.

Leasa and Donnan stood off to the side, watching in horrified fascination. Leasa, Kaid noted absently, did not appear to be shocked by the admission.

Not-Elizabeth circled him with menace. “If you let me tie you up, we can end this now.”

Kaid narrowed his eyes at the challenge. “I dinna think so.”

She shrugged, then she charged at him.

He braced himself for the blow, expecting her to throw another punch. But this time it was her foot which propelled toward him and would have slammed into his head had he not ducked as quickly as he did.

“Who are ye then?” he asked. “If no’ Elizabeth.”

Not-Elizabeth went to punch him. “None of your business.”

He ducked, and she slammed her fist into him from the other side. Pain exploded in his ribs beneath her hit, surprising him.

He hadn’t expected a woman to hit with such force.

Frustration pulled tight through him.

None of his business?

Had he not spent his days thinking of her, trying to earn her trust? She’d played him for a fool, and he’d danced perfectly into her trap.

He needed to stop this madness and get her bound so he could question who the hell she was and why she’d been sent for him.

Kaid tried to edge behind her to grab her from the back, but she spun around and lashed out at him again.

Damn, but she was fast.

Like a little viper, coiled and striking.

He’d only just blocked a new hit when she stepped forward, looping her leg behind his, and her elbow shot toward his face.

His attempt to avoid being struck worked against him, and he pitched backward to the ground.

Her body settled on him, and she pinned his arms back to the ground. He smirked. No matter how strong a lass she was, he would still be stronger.

He pushed his hands forward and her arms moved back despite the resistance of her fighting it. When enough space edged between them, he flipped her onto her back and trapped her beneath his body.

A memory sped through his conscience—they had been in such a position only minutes before, locked in a passionate tangle.

She hadn’t been a virgin.

She wasn’t Elizabeth.

Who the hell was she?

The woman thrust her hips up and knocked his weight from her as if it were insignificant.

She landed atop him once more and her elbow flew at his face.

Kaid’s world went dark.

• • •

Delilah had not enjoyed defeating Kaid, and enjoyed even less the task of tying his unconscious body to Donnan.

Surprisingly Donnan had put up no argument.

Delilah spooled the rope around the two one final time before securing it with a complex knot Percy had shown her. “I didn’t want to do this,” she said in a quiet voice.

A ghost of Donnan’s usual smile showed on his face. “I dinna want to do any of this from the beginning.”

Delilah nodded and stepped back to regard her work, to ensure they could not escape.

The men were bound back-to-back, similar to how her guards had been tied up when Kaid and Donnan had abducted her.

Kaid’s head hung limp to the side, but a low groan sounded from his chest.

She wanted to turn away, to keep from witnessing the hurt of seeing them tied and helpless. They’d been so protective and gallant toward her and Leasa, even if their intent was immoral.

“My lady.” Leasa’s voice pulled at Delilah’s attention. She was grateful for the distraction.

Leasa’s expression was pinched. “I’d like you to leave me at the next village we pass.”

Hurt slapped at Delilah’s heart. “You don’t agree with what I’m doing.”

Leasa stared down at the ground. “I understand why you are doing it. I understand this protects Lady Elizabeth. But I…” Her voice wavered. “I ruin everything. All the time. It’s why they sent me with you.” She looked up, her gaze desperate and searching. “They were going to send me home, but all this happened, and they sent me with you instead.”

Surprise at the admission held Delilah’s tongue.

Leasa must have taken the silence for misunderstanding because she looked away and continued, “Because if I died, it wouldn’t matter.”

“Leasa.” Delilah breathed the other woman’s name on a hard exhale. “That can’t be true.”

Leasa’s nose had begun to redden. “I overheard the earl speaking to his wife before we departed. They said those words exactly.”

Delilah wanted to curl her arms around the maid, to console the rejection she knew too well, but she also knew she couldn’t allow her emotions to show in front of the men.

They needed to see her strong, stoic.

“If you come with me,” Delilah said, intentionally changing the subject, “you can help me take them to Killearnan, and I can help see you home after if that is what you prefer.”

Leasa’s mournful gaze drifted up to Delilah once more, now brimming with a sheen of unshed tears. “I can’t go home. My family has no money. I would just be another mouth to feed, another unwed daughter to—” She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “I want to try a new life in one of the villages here, a place where no one knows me and I can start over.”

Delilah saw far too much of herself in the woman for comfort. Her heart swelled with genuine empathy for the girl who had started her adult life much as Delilah had.

Would she be where Leasa was had Sylvi not approached her so long ago?

“I don’t want you to go.” Delilah met Leasa’s gaze, where all the fractured hurt had risen to the surface, and said the words she herself had longed so badly to hear. “You’re important to me.”

Leasa choked a sob and dropped her face into her palms. Delilah’s throat constricted. She knew the power of what she’d said and the impact of feeling needed, wanted, when no one else had ever cared.

And it was the truth. Leasa was important. She was necessary to the mission being completed.

The men be damned. Delilah wrapped her arms around the other woman. “You’re strong and you give me a sense of purpose on this mission,” she said. “I need you to be at my side, to help show these men the same courtesy in captivity we were afforded. Will you stay with me?”

Leasa nodded against her shoulder and stepped from Delilah’s embrace with a brilliant smile. “Thank you.”

Delilah returned her smile and Leasa strode toward the men.

Now that Delilah had secured the men and convinced Leasa to stay, another thought burred its way into her mind.

They were three days from Killearnan, which gave Delilah at least a fortnight before Elizabeth was expected.

They’d arrived too soon. But could she keep the men retained for the next two weeks?

Something caught her eye next to Kaid’s bag.

A leatherbound book. The cover was peeled back at the corners with only a strip of supple leather holding it closed.

She looked up and found Kaid watching her intently, his body tensing. While she’d never seen him writing in the book, she’d noticed how often his fingertips were black.

“What do you write in here?” Delilah said.

He narrowed his eyes.

Suddenly she found herself not trusting him anymore. The certainty there was something important within tugged at her.

She disregarded the warning in his gaze and stooped to lift the book. The leather was worn smooth on either side of the spine where the book had been held often.

Kaid straightened. “Leave it, Elizabeth.”

Hearing him call her the wrong name again turned the dagger in her heart.

“I’m not Elizabeth,” she reminded him harshly.

Remorse showed in the defeated anger on his face.

She turned from him then and lifted the top cover.

A drawing sketched in smooth strokes of black showed the side of a castle and people milling about in its shadow. She turned the page and saw a market scene where people bustled with baskets tucked against their hips. The next was of the edge of a loch with the sky stretching long and unending overhead.

She frowned and flipped through several more scenes. They were all drawings.

Her fingers froze on a new page. This scene portrayed the village again, but frozen in a tale of violence. Men ran with swords at the ready toward a woman whose face expressed her terror. In the far right corner, lying on the ground, was a dismembered hand.

Delilah’s pulse thumped faster in her veins.

Another image showed a woman held between two men, one with a sword, thrusting it through her stomach.

The smooth strokes from before had given way to frantic streaks of thick, heavy black. A nightmare scratched over a life once beautiful. Each picture was more graphic, more horrific than the last. And yet she could not stop. Not until she got to the one with a child.

An indistinct cry escaped her throat, and the book tumbled from her grasp. Its pages fluttered toward the ground, where it landed face down atop a crumple of pages.

Her heartbeat came too fast, her breath too shallow.

Was this what he’d seen?

Her knees lost their strength and she sank into the dirt, crushed beneath the horror of what Kaid had drawn.

If she’d had any doubt at his story, she would no more. Every awful word of what he’d said—and even what he hadn’t—all evidenced themselves in his horrific drawings.

Nausea churned in her stomach. If he had not lied about what he’d witnessed, then surely he was not lying about his purpose.

And if he was being honest about his purpose, the success of her mission would damn his people.