Page 68 of Highland Ruse

She straightened as if he’d slapped her. “I spent the day helping them.”

“Aye, I told ye to,” he countered. “Ye’re worried about a vial of liquid when my people will die if ye dinna help us.”

Her hands dropped from his. Her expression was wounded, and he knew he’d hit a mark deep within, exactly where he’d intended to strike.

Except now there was a wrench of guilt where his ire had once resided.

“I can’t…” she started. She looked hard into the fire and a small muscle worked at her jaw. “It’s so much more than me wanting to help.”

“Ye canna take me from my own castle to Killearnan,” he said.

“I know.”

“Ye canna fulfill your original purpose for playing Elizabeth with me. But ye can help us by playing her again.” He wanted to touch her tense shoulders, just a brief graze of his fingertips along the silken heat of her skin. He was close enough to do so.

His hands balled into fists. He would not have her think he was attempting to seduce her into compliance.

The golden glow of the fire flickered across her comely features. Her expression was impassive and the silence stretching between them was becoming uncomfortably long.

“What would you have me do?” she asked.

“I’d like information ye dinna want to share.” He tried not to speak too quickly, to appear too overeager. “Who sent ye, why, what my death meant to them, the details of yer mission.”

She tilted her head away from him, as if hearing as much physically hurt her. Worse still, he sensed her wary interest flagging at the demand for information.

She turned back to him. “I told you before, MacKenzie did not hire me—that is all I will share with you.”

Kaid nodded and shoved down the fresh rise of questions surging in his mind. Those were things to worry over another time. “Verra well. I need ye to pretend to be Elizabeth Seymour with MacKenzie.”

She opened her mouth, and he put a hand up to stop her inevitable protests.

“I want to ransom ye to MacKenzie, but for more than just to get my da’s sword or work out peace negotiations. If I do that, he’ll agree to peace and then attack without any thought to our deal.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “This is something I’m asking ye to do as Delilah. I dinna know that Elizabeth could have done what I’m about to ask for.”

Delilah lifted her brow. “Go on.”

“Ye remember I told ye MacKenzie had an older sister named Torra? She was the true heir to the MacKenzie lairdship per her father’s wishes before his death. Ye need to find her.”

She merely notched her chin upward in a way that left her mouth far too temptingly close. “You speak as though Torra will be hard to find.”

A palpable sense of relief melted over his shoulders. He understood by her straightened back and her solemn demeanor that she was intrigued. But then she was the same as he—a schemer, a chess player in the game of life. And he respected her all the more for it.

“MacKenzie’s sister was deemed mad when her father died,” Kaid said. “No one has seen her since.”

“Perhaps she is dead.”

“If she is, we will have to come up with another plan.”

Delilah did not answer, resuming her stare into the popping fire.

“Will ye help?” he asked.

Her chest swelled in a long, deep sigh before she finally turned back to him. “I promise to think on it if you promise to rid yourself of the poison clutched in your hand.”

The vial was hot in his palm now. Delilah stared at his fist until he unfurled his fingers and presented the valerian root to her.

He wanted to tell her what he sacrificed, how it was a blanket of comfort she was yanking from his soul, but instead he surrendered it in silence.

She pulled the stopper from the vial and flung the contents into the hearth where the precious droplets hissed and spit. Then she threw the vial and stopper into the fire as well.