Page 58 of Highland Ruse

This was not how her first assignment was supposed to go. She’d acted too hastily and had lost her chance for surprise.

She should have kept with the original plan to delay their arrival and then kidnap him when they were within a day of Elizabeth’s arrival.

But there had been two weeks remaining—and too much could have happened in that time.

The village sprawled out in front of them, heavy with the odor of farm animals and peat smoke.

She’d seen those roughhewn structures before, the thatched roofs and laden carts of goods set up where the town center was visible. They’d been in Kaid’s book, sketched in jagged lines of thick black and clouded with death.

She half expected to find dark blotches of dried blood in the hard-packed dirt, evidence of past violence. But all that met her gaze was a crowd’s curiosity.

Though she was no more noble now than any one of them, her back stiffened of its own accord, shoving strength where weakness wanted to prevail.

She was on display, a prize caught and shown off. Though she wanted nothing more than to fend off the reaction, their stares left her raw with vulnerability.

At first, whispers started with the quiet of tree leaves shushing against one another in the breeze. But as she stopped, as she was helped from her horse and led through the parted masses toward the massive castle, those whispers became a hum, and then a buzz.

Their words came in snatches.

English.

MacKenzie.

Bride.

Death.

She tried to blot it from her mind, but she couldn’t stop her ears from listening any more than she could stop her knees from turning to jelly.

“Mama!” A cry cut through the air.

Delilah maintained her composure, but sought out the person who’d spoken as discreetly as possible.

The cry came again, this time in a wail.

Delilah turned toward the sound to find a small girl wrestling against the hold of a woman with long brown hair. The girl jerked backward in a mass of blonde hair and pulled free from the woman’s grasp.

The child staggered, almost falling, before she righted herself and ran forward, arms outstretched. “Mama!”

But she didn’t head toward any of the women in the village. She ran hard until she smacked into Delilah’s legs, and her little arms locked around Delilah’s knees in a ferocious hug. “Mama.” The word choked from the child on the bubble of a sob.

Delilah stared in surprise at the child. The girl’s long blonde hair hung down her back against the rough brown fabric of her homespun dress.

The child lifted her head and met Delilah’s gaze with large blue eyes. A gasp tore from the girl’s mouth and she jerked back as if she’d been struck.

Delilah stepped away instinctively, worried the girl had somehow been hurt. Perhaps the dagger in her skirts? But no, that wouldn’t have—

“I’m sorry.” The woman with the long brown hair appeared in front of Delilah, her cheeks flushed. Her English was broken. “Claire,” she knelt in front of the girl and switched to Gaelic. “This is not yer ma.”

The girl, Claire, looked up at Delilah again. Tears welled in her eyes and left the beautiful blue glossy with such sorrow, it snagged at Delilah’s heart like a barb.

“Because my Mama is dead.” The girl’s voice was flat.

To hear such innocence speak so bluntly of death was more than Delilah could bear.

She had never thought herself a maternal woman. Her older sisters all had been and readily took to the care of the younger children. But now she found her heart aching to pull the girl into her arms and soothe away her pain. A tear ran down Delilah’s cheek.

She stepped toward Claire without intending to, but the girl backed away again. “My mama is dead.” Her voice was hard with an edge of determination when she spoke this time.