“Oh.”
She looked so absolutely shattered by his news that he tugged her to his chest. “I know you were attempting to aid Jamie, and your efforts are appreciated,” he said softly into her hair. “Even though I should paddle your arse for coming all this way on your own.”
“My bottom is quite sore enough,” she said, her voice muffled against his lèine. She sagged against him. “I truly believed I could help.”
“I know.” He tipped her head up and planted a firm kiss on her lips. “Now, I must ask you to stay here and wait patiently for my return.”
“Where do you go?”
“We enter the keep tonight.”
She frowned. “How?”
“Promise me you’ll make no attempt to follow.” When she nodded, he explained. “Up the cliffs.”
Her hands gripped the front of his lèine. “You’re mad. That’s a sure way to meet the Maker.”
“For lads born in the Highlands, ‘tis a simple feat,” he assured her, even though it was no such thing. “And these Lowlanders will never expect it.”
“I’ll be praying for your safety.”
“Will you?”
She looked at him, her eyes dark and serious. “Do what you must, but come back alive.”
“I’ll do my best.” He kissed her again, then let her go. “Stay out of trouble, lass.”
“What trouble can I get into here in the wood?”
He snorted. “You’ve a knack for finding it wherever you might be.” He turned to leave, but she caught his sleeve.
“I love you,” she said quietly, as if haste would somehow minimize the importance of her words.
His heart thumped heavily in his chest. He took her chin and peered into her face. It was a moment that begged for heartfelt words and promises of devotion, but saving Jamie would not wait. “I’m going to hold you to those words. When I come back, we’ll have the discussion we ought to have had some time ago.”
And then he kissed her again. Hard. “Godspeed, lass.”
* * *
When the men had departed, Isabail lit a small fire. When she was certain the wood had caught, she sat on a stump with her hands toward the flames and finally let weariness curl her shoulders. She’d raced all this way—and forced Ana to race with her—for naught.
Daniel was not at all the man she’d thought him to be. His betrayal of her was not some spontaneous thing, some madness. He’d been plotting against her for months. How else could he have replaced her soldiers? It was even possible, though it made her heart ache to contemplate it, that his love for John had been a sham, that John’s death hadn’t been the accident he insisted it had been.
She tossed another branch on the fire and watched a plume of sparks leap into the night air. What a fool she was. Now Aiden was risking his life scaling the cliffs to her castle and she was unable to do anything but wait and pray.
“I take it your plan to spare lives was not well received?”
Isabail looked up. Magnus stood just inside the circle of light cast by the fire, the black outline of trees at his back.
“It was a naive plan,” she responded dismally. Like all of her plans.
He advanced. “It was born of a genuine desire to help the lad. Who could find a fault with that?”
“Niall MacCurran for one,” she said bitterly. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him I dragged Ana along on my foolhardy quest and then left her in the woods with an old peddler.” She released a humorless laugh. “He’d have been completely distracted as he set off to scale a cliff to the castle, and I’d have another person’s blood on my hands.”
“Ah,” he said, lowering himself to the log beside her. “Indulging in a wee bout of ‘pity me,’ are we?”
She glared at him. All of it was true. Couldn’t Magnus see that?
