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A faint flush rush in Catriona’s cheeks. “I, ah . . . I may have struck him in the face.”

“Drew his cork, did you?” Sorcha’s lips curled in a bloodthirsty grin. “Nicely done.”

With that, she marched out the door with Freya on her heels, leaving him staring after them.

* * *

The truth, in all its messiness, all its inconvenient ugliness, had caught up with her at last.

No, not just her, but all three of them.

Cat had known it would. The truth always did find its way out, one way or another.

She’d just never imagined it would happen here , in the sanctuary of her beloved library, at the hands of the odious Marquess of Ballantyne.

But why not now and why not him? If her father’s death had taught her anything, it was that a world could turn itself upside down without any warning, and with no guarantee it would ever right itself again.

Smugglers, sorcery, poison, and now this, caught like a rabbit in a snare by a nobleman who could, if he chose, see her taken up for attempted murder.

Goodness only knew what Lord Ballantyne thought he had to gain from staring down at her with those glittering blue eyes. Did he think he’d be able to read all her secrets on her face?

Well, good luck to him.

Over the past few months, she’d become so adept at keeping secrets and telling lies that the truth no longer showed on the surface, like a canvas without paint, or a book without any words.

She perched on the edge of a settee, waiting, her hands folded in her lap while he paced. It was a miracle he could pace at all, or even stand, come to that. The effects of monkshood poisoning could linger for days, but poison, it seemed, was no match for the Marquess of Ballantyne.

No doubt his size helped.

She eyed him from under cover of her lashes. His shoulders were absurdly broad, and his legs so long that fewer than half a dozen strides took him from one end of the room to the other.

And his chest was . . . exceedingly firm.

A solid wall of muscle, really, much like his thighs were.

If she hadn’t felt them for herself, she never would have believed such thighs could exist, but when she’d been thrown over his lap with the heavy weight of his arm across her back and his body shifting beneath her with each of his labored breaths—

A strange little shiver tripped up her spine.

Revulsion, no doubt. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, being draped across his lap like a butterfly pinned to a board.

Not pleasant at all—

“I beg your pardon, Miss MacLeod.” He paused in front of the fireplace, his gaze finding hers in the dim room. “I believe I must have misheard you because it sounded as if you just said there’s no treasure .”

His tone was cordial enough, and his expression was one of polite inquiry, but there was an unmistakable tension in his long body, and the sensuous lips she’d guiltily admired while he’d been unconscious had tightened into a stern line.

One could hardly blame him for being displeased. God only knew what Rory had promised him, and he’d come a long way only to find disappointment at the end of his journey.

There wasn’t anything she could do about that, however. If she’d truly been the sorceress most of Dunvegan believed her to be, she could produce a treasure from thin air.

But she wasn’t, and she couldn’t. She couldn’t even keep a simple promise to her sisters anymore.

With every day that passed, control seemed to slip further from her grasp.

But there was no sense in becoming maudlin.

The sooner she made Lord Ballantyne understand he wouldn’t find what he sought here, the sooner he could be on his way.

“You didn’t misunderstand me, my lord. There is no treasure.” She raised her chin. “I’m afraid that you , much like every other gentleman foolish enough to believe in hidden treasure, have fallen victim to the most fantastical rumors.”

“Rumors,” he repeated. “Explain yourself, madam.”

“I believe I just did, my lord.” It wasn’t terribly complicated. “There is no treasure . Rory—that is, my father—returned to Dunvegan as empty-handed as when he left it. Alas, I’m afraid the rumors of a fortune in jewels and gold coins are precisely that. Nothing more than rumors.”

Silence.

She waited, breath held, but against every expectation, Lord Ballantyne didn’t fall into a murderous rage. He didn’t shout or grab her again. He didn’t say a single word, but stood quite still, his hands folded behind his back, his face expressionless.

Good Lord. Why didn’t he say something? Had he fallen into a fit?

They gazed at each other warily, until slowly—so slowly she might almost have believed she was imagining it—one corner of his lips quirked up in . . .

A smile? He was smiling at her? “Does something amuse you, Lord Ballantyne?”

Incredibly, his smile widened. “Rather, yes.”

Had the man lost his wits? “Er, you did hear what I said, did you not? There is no—”

“Treasure. Yes, I heard you.”

“Well, then?”

He abandoned his post by the fireplace and approached the settee where she sat, moving so close to her she could smell the scent of woodsmoke on him.

For an instant, their eyes met. A jolt went through her, and for a strange, suspended moment, she couldn’t look away. His eyes were blue. Not Bryce Fraser’s pale, watery blue, but a bright, brilliant blue, like sunlight sparkling on water.

Goodness, she could feel those eyes all the way down to her toes.

He gazed at her with those disconcerting blue eyes. “I heard you perfectly well. What amuses me, Miss MacLeod, is that you seem to be under the impression I’d believe you.”

Ah. Well, this was hardly surprising, was it? Given the proliferation of rumors about Rory’s alleged treasure, and the fact that people generally didn’t like to believe what was inconvenient for them to find true, she’d anticipated this.

But his disbelief didn’t change anything for either of them.

“That is as you prefer, Lord Ballantyne, but the facts are what they are. You might believe me a liar, but alas, that won’t make a casket of treasure appear at our feet, will it?”

“You misunderstand me. I don’t think you’re a liar. I know you’re a liar.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Yes, Miss MacLeod, you are, and just when I thought we were becoming such good friends, too.”

His lips were still quirked in that strange half grin, and his blue eyes seemed, inexplicably, to be twinkling at her. Indeed, she might have been fooled into thinking he was enjoying himself.

But no. That wasn’t the case at all.

That twist of his lips wasn’t a smile, and that wasn’t a twinkle of humor in his eyes.

Despite every appearance to the contrary, Lord Ballantyne was furious. The hand resting at his side was white at the knuckles, and his lean body was tensed, like a coiled spring on the verge of bursting into motion.

Underneath his easy gallantry, his polite manners, and charming smiles, Lord Ballantyne was much like every other aristocrat—that is, unaccustomed to being denied whatever bauble he had his eye on.

How often did anyone ever dare to defy a marquess, on any matter whatsoever?

Never. He wasn’t the sort of man who’d gracefully accept disappointment.

“I know you’re lying, Miss MacLeod.”

His low, cold tone made her shrink back against the settee, even as her cheeks heated with shame. How she despised cowards! How she despised herself, for not being able to find a way out of the mess her father had plunged them into.

He took another step toward her until he was so close he was towering over her, and she was forced to crane her neck to look up at him. “Shall I tell you how I know?”

How was she to answer such a question? Either a yes or a no implicated her in some way.

Which, of course, was precisely what he intended.

So, she said nothing.

“Not a word, Miss MacLeod? Pity. I’ve grown rather fond of our chats. But no matter. We’ll do this your way.”

Her way? Did he imagine anything about the past twenty-four hours had gone according to her wishes?

A large, outraged marquess with a grudge against her father—a marquess she’d poisoned with monkshood, no less—was looming over her like an impeccably dressed, albeit blood-splattered ogre, demanding she produce a fortune in gold coins and jewels out of thin air.

If it hadn’t all been so dreadful, she might have laughed.

“Do you see this, Miss MacLeod?” He reached into his breeches pocket, withdrew something, and tossed it into the air. He caught it on his palm, then held out his hand to her.

It was a coin, a gold guinea, or—

No, not a guinea. She took it from him and held it up to the gray light coming through the window.

It wasn’t King George III’s face carved on the coin.

She turned it over, and instead of the shield of arms of England and Scotland, there was a cross.

She traced a fingertip over four double interlocking L s, each one topped with a crown, and the four fleur-de-lis in each corner.

It wasn’t an English guinea at all. It was a French Louis d’Or gold ten-piece with a profile of King Louis XIII on the front, a collar draped loosely around his neck, and a crown of laurel balanced on his sumptuous curls.

She squinted down at it, turning it in the light so she could make out the date.

Sixteen hundred forty.

“My father, Archibald Muir had three coins identical to that one, Miss MacLeod. I often admired them as a child, but he never let me play with them. He told me they were a reminder of a promise he’d made long ago, one he intended to keep when the time came.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

That much was true. She didn’t know anything about any promise, but it did have something to do with her father.

It must because she’d seen a coin exactly like this one before in Rory’s—

“It’s the strangest thing, but after his death, I couldn’t find the coins among his personal effects. It was as if they’d disappeared.”

“Surely, you don’t expect me to explain how—”

“You can imagine how perplexed I was when a coin identical to the three my father had kept for so many years—a Louis XIII ten-piece coin dated sixteen hundred forty—arrived at my townhouse in London a few weeks after my father’s death.

There was no letter with the coin, nothing to explain its sudden appearance, but the seal on the envelope was a bull’s head with two flags on either side and the word Tenete above it. ”

“Hold fast,” she murmured.

“That’s right. It’s Clan MacLeod’s motto, I believe, and the bull and flags Clan MacLeod’s crest?”

“Yes, but—”

“The initials RM were underneath the crest.” He nodded down at the piece of gold clutched in her palm. “Roderick MacLeod. That coin came to me from Castle Cairncross.”

She closed her fingers around the coin in her palm. Her head was spinning, but she kept her face carefully blank. “It’s an unusual coin, my lord, but I didn’t send this coin to you, and its existence doesn’t prove a thing about any treasure.”

“I believe the pact my father mentioned was one he made with your father, and that it had to do with these coins. Meanwhile, your father, a notorious smuggler, is rumored to have claimed a treasure right before he died and brought it back here to Castle Cairncross.” He leaned closer, his face mere inches from hers.

“Do you believe in coincidences, Miss MacLeod? Because I do not.”

She didn’t believe in them, but she wasn’t about to admit it to Lord Ballantyne. “I own it’s curious, my lord, but—”

“Are you aware, Miss MacLeod, that the lost Jacobean gold was said to be made up in part of Louis d’Or coins? That treasure belongs to the clans, as restitution for the misfortunes they suffered during the Jacobite Rebellion.”

“What treasure? There’s no proof that a treasure even exists.

Even if my father did find a treasure in Louis d’Or coins, how can you know for sure that he ever made it back to Castle Cairncross with it?

For that matter, why should I believe my father sent you this coin at all? You might have gotten it anywhere.”

“I give you my word as a gentleman, Miss MacLeod.”

“Your word ?” She laughed, but it was a bitter, ugly sound. “You’ve done nothing but lie since I laid eyes on you, Lord Ballantyne.”

“You’re full of excuses, I see. Forgive me, but I think your father did return here with the treasure. Do you know what else I think, Miss MacLeod?”

“N-no, my lord.”

“I think you’re hiding it here, somewhere inside this castle. I imagine there are any number of hidden nooks and alcoves in which to hide a treasure.”

“I’m not. I’m telling you the truth, my lord. My father returned to the castle with a pistol ball embedded in his thigh and a raging fever, but he did not return with any treasure.”

But she knew already it was hopeless.

Why would Lord Ballantyne believe her, when every smuggler in Scotland was talking about Rory MacLeod’s treasure? Why would he believe her when she had every reason to lie?

Of course he thought she was hiding the treasure from him, so she and her sisters might keep it for themselves. A choked laugh tore from her throat as she glanced around the library at the threadbare rugs, the weak fire, and the empty decanters arranged across the sideboard.

It hardly looked like a household rich with treasure.

He reached for the coin and plucked it from her hand, his fingers grazing her palm. “We’ve reached an impasse, I’m afraid, Miss MacLeod.”

She glanced up at him, her breath catching as the light fell on his face. He was half-lost in shadows, but in the flickering firelight, with his sharp cheekbones, angular jaw, and that rough prickle of dark beard, he looked . . .

Savage. Just like every other smuggler who’d come here.

Aristocrat or not, Lord Ballantyne was a dangerous man, and he was here , inside her home, and she and her sisters were at his mercy.

She straightened her shoulders and met his gaze. “What is it that you want, Lord Ballantyne?”

“Why, only to fulfill my promise to my father, Miss MacLeod. I want what belongs to the clans.” The half grin that had quirked his lips earlier was back again, but this time there was nothing playful about it, nothing humorous.

“I will have it, Miss MacLeod.” He tossed the Louis d’Or ten-piece in the air, caught it between his fingers, and slipped it back inside his pocket. “Even if I have to tear your castle apart to get it.”