Chapter Nineteen

Lillian woke when a large, callused hand closed over her mouth. Even before she could scream against the stranger’s palm, she was lifted to her feet, her back pinned to the wall of a man’s torso.

“MacLeod.”

She could feel her captor’s low, angry voice rumble through his chest. He knew Kirk. Lillian’s panic-fogged brain lurched to try to make sense of what was happening.

Her wide-eyed gaze landed on Kirk, who stood a stone’s throw away in the deep shadows of the forest—with another man, a warrior judging by the sword at his hip. Both Kirk and the warrior went taut, as if a battle would erupt at any instant.

“What the bloody hell are ye doing, MacLeod?”

Kirk’s gaze locked with hers, and she saw some animalistic part of him break free.

“Harm a hair on her head, Mackenzie, and I’ll kill ye before ye draw yer next breath.”

“Mackenzie,” the man at Kirk’s side said, his eyes going wide. His sandy-blond head whipped between Kirk and the man holding Lillian. “Ye are—” He clamped his mouth shut, his dark eyes turning hard.

The man reached for the sword at his side, but Mackenzie pointed his dagger at him.

“Stop there, man,” he warned. “Unless ye want me to stop ye.”

“Colin, dinnae,” Kirk snapped, keeping his gaze locked on her. “Lillian, it will be all right. I willnae let him hurt ye.”

She nodded, blinking back the frightened tears that had sprung to her eyes.

“I’m no’ here to hurt her,” Mackenzie said. “Ye, on the other hand—” he shifted the tip of the dagger to Kirk “—had better start explaining. Who is this man, and what did ye tell him?”

Kirk’s wild eyes darted between Lillian, the man holding her, and the one he’d called Colin.

“Colin is…a man I kenned in my old life—before I came to work with ye, Logan,” Kirk said carefully.

The man behind her—Logan Mackenzie—kept his dagger trained on Kirk. “And how did yer old friend find ye here, MacLeod?”

“It was complete happenstance,” Kirk replied, wetting his lips. “He doesnae live far—Stirling—and he was on his way to the Isles where he has family.”

“Aye,” Colin said, slowly lifting his hand from his sword hilt. “I frequently overnight in the ruins just there in the colder months. I never thought to run into Kirk here.”

Lillian could feel the tension radiating off Logan’s body behind her. “Ye are lying,” he said quietly. “Both of ye.”

Everyone seemed to hold their breath for a long moment. Lillian’s knees began to tremble. If it hadn’t been for Logan’s hand still covering her mouth and holding her against him, she would have crumpled to the ground.

Slowly, Kirk held up his hand to Logan. “Dinnae do aught rash, man. Ye ken ye can trust me.”

“Can I?” The words came deadly soft behind her.

“Where we come from,” Kirk said cautiously, “we are outsiders. We are the only Highlanders. Ye ken what it means to be with the Order—and what it means when a Highland man says ye can trust him.”

When Logan remained silent for a long moment, Kirk went on.

“I havenae betrayed ye, Logan. I swear it. But ye dinnae wish to be involved in this. Colin is leaving now—and ye’ll let him go alive.”

“He saw our faces,” Logan murmured. “He kens our names. And he has seen ye with the lass.”

“Just as ye dinnae want to be involved in this, Colin doesnae either. He willnae cause trouble—will ye, Colin?” Kirk rounded on Colin, his gaze hard and cold as ice.

“Nay,” Colin replied, meeting Kirk’s steely gaze with his own. “I willnae cause trouble.”

Some unreadable look passed between them. Lillian’s thoughts raced to understand what it meant— what any of this meant—but fear gripped her mind like a vise, strangling her ability to reason.

“I’ll handle this,” Kirk said, almost too quietly for Lillian to hear.

“Just remember what I told ye. One sennight,” Colin ground out. Then he shifted his gaze to Logan, watching him warily as he took a slow step back. When Logan didn’t loose the dagger in his hand, Colin took another step backward, and another, until he dissolved into the shadowy woods. After a moment, Lillian heart the faint sound of horse hooves crunching on leaves as Colin rode away.

Kirk turned back to Lillian, his gaze locking with hers even as he spoke to Logan. “Ye said ye wouldnae hurt her. Prove yerself true to yer word.”

Logan stood motionless for a long moment. At last, he flicked his wrist, and the dagger he’d been holding disappeared up his sleeve. If Lillian had blinked, she would have missed it—he was even faster and smoother with the blade than Kirk.

As soon as he lifted his hand away from Lillian’s mouth, she bolted toward Kirk. Without thinking, she launched herself into his arms. He pulled her tight in a protective embrace, turning his back slightly to Logan as if to shield her with his body.

“It’s all right, lass,” he murmured into her hair. “Ye’re safe.”

A sob threatened in her throat, but she swallowed it. She could not dissolve into hysterics now, not when everything was happening so quickly. Who was Colin, and what had Kirk been speaking with him about?

And who was Logan Mackenzie? Was he friend or foe?

Above all, her mind swirled with questions focused on Kirk. What game was he playing? To whom was he loyal? And could she truly trust the protective warmth she found in his arms?

Lillian lifted her head from Kirk’s chest to find Logan staring at them. The moon burnished his copper-brown hair with blue light. A long scar marred his hard features from the corner of his left eye to his square jaw. His slate-gray eyes were wide with shock as he took in the sight of Lillian curled in Kirk’s embrace.

“What the bloody hell are ye doing, MacLeod?” Logan said again, but this time instead of hard-edged anger, his voice was filled with stunned horror.

“We need to talk,” Kirk answered softly. “In private.”

He disentangled Lillian’s arms from around his waist and stepped back. At the sudden absence of his protective embrace, panic shot through Lillian like an arrow.

“Don’t leave me here alone,” she breathed.

Kirk’s gaze locked with hers, and it was as if the ice in his pale eyes melted. “I willnae leave ye. Logan and I will be a stone’s throw away, and I’ll keep my eyes on ye the whole time so that naught will happen.”

Gently, he guided her back beside the fire and urged her down onto the cloak she’d been wrapped in. As Kirk built up the fire with a few fallen branches nearby, Lillian stared warily at Logan Mackenzie.

Logan stood motionless, watching Kirk move about their little camp. He’d smoothed his rugged features, but shock still darkened his gray eyes.

When his gaze landed on Lillian, she shivered. Though the man hadn’t hurt her, the emotionless way he’d used her against Kirk, and how fluidly he’d handled his throwing dagger, convinced her that though he might not be evil, nor was he innocent of dark deeds.

He continued to look at her, his slate eyes flat yet sharp in their assessment. When Kirk straightened from the fire and Logan shifted his gaze to him, Lillian exhaled in relief.

“We willnae go far,” Kirk reassured her again. “Just there. Ye’ll be able to call out if ye need aught.”

Lillian nodded, hating how scared she felt at the prospect of being without Kirk by her side.

As the two men strode into the shadowed trees just beyond the edge of the firelight, Lillian hunkered into the cloak and lay down.

Sleep would not come, however, for her mind raged with a silent storm.

Her suspicions that Kirk was not what he seemed roared to life once more. He was up to something. Lillian would bet her life that it involved meeting with Robert the Bruce’s man in Inverness and then conducting a secret conversation with the warrior named Colin.

He claimed to be simply following orders in kidnapping her and delivering her to the men who’d tortured her husband, yet he’d admitted to being forced into the task. Was there a chance that he was also working against his assignment in some way? Did a good, honorable part of him struggle within the bonds holding him in the role of bounty hunter?

Far more troubling than Kirk’s murky motivations, however, was the fact that she had gone from fearing him to longing for his nearness. It was madness, yet Kirk had awakened a dangerously powerful desire within her.

Like a moth to a flickering flame, she was drawn toward him. With his kiss and his rough hands on her body, he’d ignited a passion she’d never known before. And the nagging suspicion that he was far more than a cold-blooded mercenary was clouding her ability to reason a way out of this perilous situation.

She’d always prided herself on being logical and measured in her actions. That had been easy before she’d met Kirk. Richard had never caused even a spark of longing within her. But ever since Kirk’s kiss, she felt as though a wildfire had been lit within her. And it was spreading.

Lillian squeezed her eyes shut against the fire’s dancing flames, and a darkness far deeper than night swallowed her.