He shook his head, cursing the lie. “He’s fine, lass, but he was surrounded.” That much was true. “I could not speak with him.”
She stared at him hopefully. “But he’s well?”
Broc swallowed. “Aye, he seems not to be in pain.” It was a half truth, at least.
She sat again, her hand going to her breast as though in relief. Broc tried not to notice the way her fingers lit so gently upon the curve of her bosom.
When was the last time he’d held a woman’s softbreast? When was the last time he had thought to miss it?
He’d made a vow to himself years ago to devote his life to his clan, to forswear his own gratification. Though on a few occasions he had forgotten himself—he was no saint—his loyalty and his life belonged to the MacKinnons. He owed Iain everything. There was nothing left of him to give to anyone else.
Broc took the chair across from her, watching her expressions as she deliberated.
She made him want things he hadn’t ever dared contemplate.
“What now?”
It was a damned good question.
She looked so forlorn, so vulnerable, and he vowed to protect her at all costs. He didn’t know why he felt responsible for her, but from the instant he’d spied Elizabet alone in the forest, he had felt drawn to her somehow. She needed him, and he refused to abandon her.
“Elizabet...” He leaned forward. “I know ye dinna like the idea of staying in this place, but I gi’ ye my word ye will be safe as long as ye remain.” It would give him time to figure out what to do.
Her brows slanted. “I don’t know...”
“If ye wish it, I will stay with you, but ye must trust me!” he pleaded.
She stared at the table, obviously torn.
“Och, lass, if I had meant ye any harm,” he reasoned with her, “would I have let ye remain here alone whilst I went to speak with Montgomerie?”
She seemed to think about it a moment and then shook her head.
“Nay,” he asserted. “I wouldna. And I am tellin’ ye I saw a bowman, and he was dressed in the same livery as the rest of your companions. Someone wants you dead.”
She shook her head, denying his testimony, though he sensed deep down she must believe him. She wouldnever have waited here for him otherwise. “Maybe he was defending me?”
“Was there a need to defend ye when we were only talking?”
Again she shook her head. “I simply cannot fathom why he should wish me dead.”
It seemed to Broc that she knew who the bowman might be.
“I was not the object of his attention,” Broc persisted, trying to make her believe.
Her brows knit. “But he was kind to me and to my brother the entire journey.”
“Aye, well... ’tis said you win more flies with honey.”
Her shoulders slumped. She peered up at him, her eyes full of indecision. “How long before Piers returns?”
Broc needed time, time to expose the bowman. “Three, mayhap four days,” he told her, shrugging.
“Sweet Jesu! That long?”
Every lie seemed to come easier. “’Tis what his wife said.”
She blinked in surprise, then cocked her head at that revelation. “Piers has a wife?”
