Page 85 of Highland Ruse

“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.