Highland Ruse: Mercenary Maidens - Book Two

by Martin, Madeline

  Kaid pushed himself off the desk and clapped Lachlan on the shoulder. “Go get yerself some food and rest. Ye’ve done well.”

  Without another word, Lachlan turned from the room and left Kaid plunged in a heavy press of silence.

  Married.

  The word echoed in Kaid’s head until it made his temples throb.

  To refrain from marrying would alert MacKenzie to something amiss. Kaid knew Delilah’s determination to do what was necessary to ensure the success of their plan.

  There would be nothing Donnan could do to stop it, nor Leasa—nor even Delilah herself.

  There was nothing Kaid could do, but stand in agitated helplessness and wait.

  He found his gaze wandering toward the open window. The sun had eased higher between the hills.

  It would be noon soon.

  And perhaps by then, Delilah would be married.

  He realized his mistake then. Being two days away from her left time crushing against him. He’d been so damn worried about ruining the fragile thread of peace between himself and MacKenzie, he’d remained home.

  He never should have tasked Donnan to go with the ladies. It should have been Kaid. He charged out the door and called to Lachlan. The weary man swayed back to regard him with bloodshot eyes.

  Kaid caught up to him and clapped him on the back. “I’ll be gone several days and need ye to mind things here in my absence.”

  Lachlan, ever the willing servant who had minded things not only in Kaid’s previous absence, but in his father’s as well, gave a dutiful nod. “But after I’ve slept, aye?”

  Relief eased the churning tightness inside Kaid and he laughed. “Aye, after ye’ve slept.”

  Then he made his way down to the kitchens to where he’d sent Claire, to tell her he’d be gone a few days—and that he’d be home soon. He couldn’t tell her he intended to bring back Delilah, but by God, he would not return without her.

  • • •

  There was only so long one could continue to feign sleep.

  The anxious pucker of Leasa’s brow told Delilah she’d already pushed far beyond the limit.

  Leasa knelt by the bed. “My lady, Laird MacKenzie wishes to see you. He’s…not happy.” Her hair was down and twisted over her right shoulder.

  While becoming, the hairstyle was not one she’d ever seen Leasa wear before.

  “Your hair looks lovely,” Delilah offered.

  Leasa’s cheeks went red, but rather than meet Delilah’s face with her bright, cheerful gaze, the maid glanced away and murmured her thanks.

  Delilah’s stomach twisted. Something was amiss.

  “Are you ill?” Delilah searched the woman’s face. She did not appear pale. In fact, she was rather flushed.

  True, Delilah was faking to avoid the precipitous wedding, but perhaps Leasa actually was sick after the time she’d spent wandering the dark, chilly floor of the castle.

  Leasa shook her head with her jaw tucked against the length of her hair.

  A tremor rippled down Delilah’s back. “Leasa—” Before the maid could stop her, Delilah reached out and pulled Leasa’s hair back from her face.

  Leasa gasped and tried to pull away, but not quickly enough.

  Delilah saw the flash of bruised skin, the line of Leasa’s jaw reddened across her cheek and already darkening at the center.

  Outrage flashed through Delilah and she flew from the bed. “Did he hit you?” she demanded.

  Leasa stumbled in her haste to pull herself back. “He…was just angry.” She crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly looking miserable. “It happens.”

  “No.” Delilah shoved her arms into the stiff sleeves of a dressing gown. “It does not happen.”

  “No,” Leasa gasped. “My lady—don’t.”

  But Delilah was already storming her way to where she knew MacKenzie’s solar to be. Without bothering to knock, she let the force of her rage and anger slam through the door.

  MacKenzie stood beside his desk where a tall, thin man with gray hair was bent over a book. Both men jerked their heads up, like two puppets whose cords had been tugged in unison.

  MacKenzie glared at Delilah and closed the book the other man had been studying. “Leave me, Duncan.”

  The old man nodded once and quit the room with all the decorum of a skulking alley cat.

  “I’m glad to see ye’re recovered.” MacKenzie gave her a grin so hard and so collected, it made her want to slap it off his face. “Though I dinna think yer dressing clothes will be a sufficient wedding gown.”

  Delilah didn’t dare to step closer to him. Not when everything in her had to fight the urge to strike him, to show him how a woman could hit.

  “You struck my maid,” she bit out.

  “She was being insolent.” He took three purposeful strides toward her, halving the distance between them. “And now ye’re being insolent.” He considered her a moment. “Perhaps I should strike ye.”

  “And perhaps I should strike you.” Delilah spat the words and had to imagine physically pushing down her anger in order to keep a handle on her temper.

  MacKenzie laughed—a cold, brittle sound. “I know ye haven’t the strength to hit a man like me.”

  He walked the last few steps toward her and the floorboards beneath him gave a long, tired groan. “Why were ye in the garden last night?”

  Delilah’s body was alight with the flood of energy and the thrumming pound of her heartbeat, the kind of surge a body gives before a good, ugly fight. It might have been due to him questioning her about the night before, which she’d known would come, or it might have been due to how badly she truly wanted to hit him.

  “I sent my maid for food, as I went to bed hungry.” She left the implication of his rudeness hanging in the air.

  He gave an indifferent shrug. “Ye could use without an extra meal or two, but that doesna explain why ye were in the garden.”

  Delilah cheeks flamed, and she hated the obviousness of her reaction. “My maid did not come back quickly, and I feared she may have gotten turned around, as we’re in a new place. I went to find her.”

  His brow rose with exaggerated impatience. “In the garden.”

  “I thought I saw something.” It was a flimsy excuse, but it was all she had.

  “And did ye?”

  There was a large crack running up through the center of the hearth and Delilah’s gaze continued to seek it out the way one’s tongue wanders toward a split lip.

  “Did ye see something?” he asked again.

  “Did you kill Torra?” Delilah hurled the question at him. It was not diplomatic in the least, but perhaps it would offset his dogged determination to get a clear answer from her when she had none to give.

  She did not expect his icy smile to widen, though perhaps she ought to have.

  “Torra.” MacKenzie nodded as one does when recalling a fond memory. “I’ve no’ heard her name in years.”

  The last word left Delilah’s skin prickling with fear.

  “Did you kill her?” she whispered.

  He took one more step toward her and stood so close she could punch him. “Ye could say that.” There was an exotic scent to him, some foreign perfume. An expensive one.

  All the hope pushing her through the awfulness of the ordeal at Edirdovar Castle, and the difficulty of being away from Kaid and Claire—it all crumbled into dust.

  “Go to yer room.” MacKenzie’s gaze scraped over her, abrasive with scrutiny. “Get some sleep and get yerself cleaned up. I’ll no’ wed ye looking like a beggar.”

  Delilah turned to go when he reached out and grabbed her arm in a hard grip. She spun toward him and suppressed the urge to drive her elbow into his perfect nose.

  He grinned. “I’m going to break ye, Elizabeth. And I’m going to enjoy it.”

  Delilah jerked her arm free and left the room before she gave in to the temptation to kill him.

  • • •

  Delilah regretted having not killed MacKenz
ie.

  She paced her large chamber while Leasa assembled a meager bag of their most precious belongings.

  It had been Leasa who had kept Delilah from killing MacKenzie. The guards, who seemed more plentiful by day than they had been by night, would have retaliated for their master’s murder by seeing both Delilah and Leasa dead.

  And while the sacrifice would have rid the world of MacKenzie’s cruelty and freed the MacLeod clan to live in peace, Delilah could not allow herself to so endanger Leasa. Not after all the maid had been through.

  But without Leasa there, Delilah would be free to kill MacKenzie.

  It would be a worthy sacrifice, and she knew she could get another chance.

  Her heartbeat quickened with the possibility.

  Leasa could leave once the household quieted, something that wouldn’t happen any time soon given the amount of bustling activity echoing from below. But soon all would quiet, and Delilah could pick the flimsy lock and let her maid escape to Donnan.

  Delilah would stay, feigning ignorance at her maid’s disappearance. Then, when MacKenzie demanded answers…Her fingers slid over the metal of her blade before letting the edge carefully scrape along her fingertips. Yes, she could still kill him.

  And she would.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall, near her door.

  Leasa slid Delilah a frightened look.

  “Hide the bag,” Delilah whispered.

  Leasa quickly complied and shoved the bundle into a corner behind the large bed. No sooner had she done so, the clatter of a key seeking purchase in the lock sounded and the great wooden door flew open.

  MacKenzie strode in, followed by several guards.

  Ten. There were ten guards.

  Too many for Delilah to take on herself without risking Leasa.

  “It would appear ye’ve lied to me.” MacKenzie motioned toward them, and the guards rushed forward.

  Large hands clamped around Delilah’s shoulders. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded with all the outrage of an offended noble.

  “Ye’ve deceived me—and I know this because Lady Elizabeth Seymour just arrived an hour ago.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Delilah had expected the dungeon.

  The guards were not kind in their act of half carrying, half walking her down the length of the hall. A quiet whimpering sound behind Delilah told her Leasa was sobbing.

  They stopped before a door, but it was no dungeon—it was MacKenzie’s solar.

  Delilah was shoved inside and Leasa was pushed into the room after her. She landed on the hard ground with a cry of pain. Delilah immediately bent to help her, but several men held her back.

  “She can rise on her own, the clumsy wretch.”

  Only after Leasa struggled to her feet did Delilah notice there were more in the room than the soldiers and MacKenzie.

  There, standing beside his desk, were two women she recognized with such suddenness, she had no idea how she’d missed them in the first place—Liv and Elizabeth.

  A part of Delilah wanted to run forward and embrace Liv, to bask in the affection of a familiar face when the last few weeks had held so much chaos.

  The little gray cat, Fianna, peered at her from Liv’s lap. It was all she could do to keep from stretching an arm out to pet Fianna’s thick, silky fur.

  Liv and Elizabeth both kept their faces impassive, but Delilah knew with stomach-clenching certainty what they must both be thinking of her betrayal. They sat perfectly still, Elizabeth regal in a burgundy gown with her honey-blonde hair piled beneath gold netting and Liv equally as beautiful in a plain blue dress, her red hair plaited in a simple braid.

  She wished they were alone so she could explain. Instead they were separated by a heavy wall of silence and unspoken accusation.

  MacKenzie turned toward Elizabeth. “Well? Do ye know them?”

  Delilah’s heart scampered into an erratic beat. Elizabeth could condemn them with a single word. Then again, doing so would condemn herself as well.

  Lady Elizabeth looked Delilah and Leasa over and shook her head. “I’ve not ever seen them before.”

  MacKenzie’s eyes narrowed for a moment in consideration. “A MacLeod sympathizer, then,” he muttered in Gaelic. He nodded toward his guards and spoke with clenched teeth. “To the dungeon.”

  The rough hands were on her once more, clamped at her shoulders and partially dragging her. This time the journey was a greater distance and down several flights of stairs. The final descent plunged them into near darkness where the air was wet, and the odor of metal and damp earth nearly choked her.

  A dungeon.

  It was a far cry better than the gallows. Though Delilah would have fought then. Most likely she would have died trying, but she would have regardless.

  Their chances of escaping were far higher in the dungeon than facing certain death.

  MacKenzie opened a large barred door despite its scream of protest. “Since ye were so concerned, I figured I’d ease yer mind before yer death.”

  With that, the women were shoved hard into the room and the door immediately slammed shut behind them. Delilah turned to find MacKenzie twisting the key. He gave her one more hard look before slinking back into the darkness, away from their cell.

  A single, narrow window framed the moon and allowed a square of its fair light to fall onto the floor before them. Something shuffled in the darkness beyond where they could see.

  That something was in the cell with them.

  A low moan sounded in the darkness, and shivers raked down Delilah’s spine.

  Leasa pressed her hands to her mouth, but it was not enough to squelch the sound of her cry.

  A shape emerged from the shadows, ragged and large.

  Delilah slipped her fingers into her pocket where the lining had been cut away to make the dagger at her thigh more accessible. She crouched low, her muscles coiled to strike, to fight.

  The beast moved forward and gave a hoarse swallowing sound.

  Delilah edged backward, encouraging it into the light so she could see what she might need to kill.

  The moonlight hit the thing and revealed it to be not a thing at all, but a young woman. She was slender and dressed in a ridiculously extravagant gown for the sorrowful pit of despair where they’d been left.

  The woman pointed toward Delilah. Bits of ruined lace hung from her sleeve like clumped cobwebs. Dark hair fell around her face in lank waves and cast her face in shadows. Still, Delilah could make out her mouth working, as if she intended to speak.

  The woman gave a mewling sound and shook her head in irritation.

  Leasa stepped backward to put herself behind Delilah. The maid’s fear was as thick in the air as the pungent odor of the woman’s unwashed body.

  “Who?” The woman’s mouth formed an exaggeration of the word and she stabbed the air with her bony finger.

  Delilah stepped to the left, forcing the woman into the light in order to keep eye contact. The pale light fell on her face, and Delilah realized the woman was not as young as she first thought. Strained lines creased her brow and rimmed her mouth. Nor was her hair dark as it had been in the shadows, but a streaked and dirty red.

  “This is Leasa.” Delilah indicated Leasa, hesitating for a moment over her own name. But what did sharing her name matter? No one knew her surname, not that her surname held much traction in Scotland. “And I’m Delilah.”

  The woman’s gaze lowered to the ground and searched the darkness before she suddenly dropped into a very stiff curtsy.

  When she rose, she looked up at Delilah with the wide, wounded gaze of an animal often beaten. She licked her lips and swallowed.

  “I…” The sound came out in a long croak. The woman grimaced and shook her head again, as if chastising herself. “I…”

  She gave a feral growling noise and pressed her hand to her bony chest. “Torrrr.”

  Her features relaxed into a look of accomplished victory.

  Delilah pointed at
her. “Tor?”

  The woman shook her head vehemently and hit her chest hard enough that the thump echoed off the wet walls. “Torra.” She nodded in obvious encouragement for Delilah to understand. “I’m Torra.”

  • • •

  Donnan always was good at hiding. It was why Kaid had sent him to Edirdovar in the first place.

  If only he wasn’t so hard to find. Even in the light of a new day, it was impossible to locate him.

  Kaid skimmed the treetops for anything amiss. Staying aloft was one of Donnan’s best hiding tricks. Kaid had left his horse at a paid stable in the village and walked the remainder of the way to the castle.

  He’d had to duck away from several guards. Thus far, his labors had rendered him unseen.

  Now he was entirely visible in the forest, scanning the trees like a fool. He itched for a good cleaning after the hard travel and his mind fogged with exhaustion.

  “Anything interesting up there?” a voice asked nearby.

  Kaid smirked and stared into a thick patch of bushes where the question came from. A white smile flashed at him.

  He strode toward the bush and ducked beneath the cover of it to sit beside Donnan. “I dinna know if I should hit ye for being an arse or hug ye for helping me find ye.”

  Donnan had dirt smeared on his face and his plaid pulled around his body. He shrugged. “I prefer hugs.”

  Kaid pulled his plaid around his body and over his head to ensure his own optimal cover. “I heard MacKenzie intended to marry Elizabeth.” He searched his friend’s dark gaze. “Is that true?”

  “I heard similar, but it’s no’ happened yet.” He jerked his head toward a stone building near the castle garden. “If the priest is as ruined as the chapel, I wish him luck.”

  Donnan was right. The building was in sore disrepair, its windows gaping and jagged like broken teeth and embedded in a tangle of weeds.

  “There could be one inside the castle,” Kaid offered.

  Again, Donnan shrugged. “I canna imagine the inside is much more grand. From what I see in the windows, the halls are empty. No’ just of the clan, but of furnishings.” He nodded toward several figures standing near the entrance of the castle. “Even the guards. They’re mostly paid men, no’ MacKenzies. Mercenaries who work by day, and all but a few leave at night.”