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.
Chapter Fourteen
Delilah had wished she’d never looked at Kaid’s book. She wished she’d never heard his story.
But she had, and now she would need to press on regardless.
She reached for the book with a trembling hand and let her fingers part the pages near the back. Her gaze wandered toward the sketch there to find a woman, not being tortured or killed, but up close and drawn with such great affection it made her chest squeeze with jealousy.
The woman was drawn with the same striking quality as the previous work. The smooth strokes were beautifully poetic.
Page after page revealed the woman—different angles, different facial expressions, everything different but the woman herself.
Delilah’s fingers barely touched the page to turn to the next. The woman again. Her face turned up, her dark eyes wide and full of emotion.
Delilah’s pulse flickered.
On the cheek of the woman, below the side of her mouth was a freckle.
Just like hers.
She leaned forward to examine the drawing. Perhaps it was only a fleck of charcoal. She blew at the drawing gently, but the mark remained. She scraped the edge of her fingernail against it and still it remained.
This woman was her.
Her heart swelled. She turned page after page and found new drawings, all of her.
She stopped on one where her head tilted in contemplation and her fingers lingered over her lower lip. Her skin was flawless save for the freckle, every line smooth and perfect.
He’d drawn her beautiful. The way she’d always wished she could be.
She swallowed and turned to him.
He stared at the ground and the muscles of his jaw showed in hard lines against his cheek.
“You drew me.” Delilah held up the book, though he hadn’t bothered to look up.
He remained silent.
She knelt down beside him. “Kaid.”
His gaze rose to hers, displaying the impact of her betrayal—the injury, the offense.
“Why did you draw me?” she asked.
He studied her a moment. “Because ye’re beautiful.”
Her heartbeat staggered.
He thought her beautiful enough to draw her again and again and again, the way lovers in stories did. The way real men did not.
And yet he had.
She wanted to speak, but found the words thickening in her throat. She swallowed against it. “I’m sorry.”
He smirked. “I am too.”
A distinct heat welled in her chest and rose into her cheeks. She remembered the touch of his lips to hers, the press of his body cradled between her legs, the tenderness of his stare, as if she’d been the only woman he could ever love.
If only they were different people in a different world.
His stare went hard, reminding her they were not.
“Who are you?” he asked finally.
She shouldn’t have replied, but knew herself how hard it was to wait for answers. He’d been considerate with all her questions. She would afford him the same courtesy.
“My name is Delilah.”
Donnan chuckled behind Kaid. “I dinna think that could be more fitting.”
Kaid tossed an irritated look over his shoulder.
The barb struck her deeper than she should have allowed. Their ire would not keep her from completing her task.
She looked down at the journal still clasped in her grip.
Nor would the pretense of love.
Even the suffering of Kaid’s people could not.
“You gave us the courtesy of being captured without being bound. Can I do the same?” she asked. “Will I have your word you will not run off?”
Kaid nodded. “Aye, ye have our word.”
She should be skeptical, she knew—but then, they had trusted her and Leasa, hadn’t they?
She leveled a hard stare at him. “Then I will bestow upon you the same favor you granted Leasa and me.”
From where Leasa stood within earshot, she nodded at Delilah with gratitude. The decision was not made precipitously. If the men decided to escape, Delilah knew she was fast on her feet. She could catch Kaid at the very least. If she’d taken him down once before, she could do so again.
She leaned over Kaid and untied the rope she’d secured only minutes before.
The bulk of it slipped from his large shoulders and tumbled to his side. He shook the remainder of the coil from his torso and stood with a stretch.
They ate their dinner that night in silence. Even Donnan’s typical good humor and the light note of his whistled tunes did not grace the cool summer air. It all fell over Delilah like a thick, somber blanket.
After a gloomy supper which seemed to drag on for an extraordinary amount of time, it was finally time to sleep. Delilah had long since thought of how to handle their situation—not only to ensure the men did not escape, but that she would hear if they tried.
The only thing she could determine was to sleep side by side, and so that was what they did.
Leasa slept beside Donnan who slept beside Kaid who slept against Delilah.
And so Delilah lay nestled near the warmth of Kaid’s chest and tried to ignore the subtle male scent which triggered too many recollections of their shared pleasure. His breathing came deep and even, stirring the wispy hairs at the back of her neck and sending delicious little chills down her spine.
She squeezed her eyes shut, as if doing so could block out the sensations, the memories, the desire
even now beginning to hum through her betraying body.
Suddenly she realized she was not truly afraid of holding them for the next two weeks, she was afraid of herself.
Could she truly spend another fortnight with them and still turn them in, knowing the harshness of the punishment they’d face?
Kaid.
His name in her mind squeezed at a secret place in her heart, a girlish place of hope which had somehow been left untouched by King James.
Kaid was the man who loved her as she’d always wanted to be loved, the man who drew her in the beautiful way she’d never seen herself. No, she reminded herself—the man who loved her when he thought her to be another woman.
Regardless, he did not deserve what awaited him in a criminal’s death.
Tears, hot and unexpected, blurred her vision.
Despite everything they’d been through—the passion, the lies and the insanity of how they’d met—could she truly allow herself to be responsible for his death?
Could she, in good conscience, further expose his people to more brutal slayings?
And in the depth of her heart, she did not want to answer.
• • •
Kaid sat on the horse behind Delilah, no different than they’d been the day before.
But it was different. Very much so.
Now he was the captured, or so he let her believe.
His gaze wandered from the road ahead to her glossy brown hair in front of him.
Not that she couldn’t best him in a fight. Obviously she could, or he wouldn’t be in this position now.
Granted, he’d held back, afraid of injuring her. No man was used to fighting a woman, especially not one with her fighting skills.
Delilah.
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.
Highland Ruse: Mercenary Maidens - Book Two Page 11