“Temporarily,” he corrected stiffly. “I did not break the oath, I merely have not filled it. Yet.”
“Temporarily,” she conceded. A ruthless murderer would not have bothered to have this conversation with her, which meant he had reservations about killing her. Once she knew what they were, she would exploit them to her advantage. “So, why? Is it because I’m a woman?” If that was the case, she resolved, she would be as feminine as possible from this moment on. She would drip vulnerability, bat her eyelashes, and ooze helplessness while doing everything in her power to steal the flask back and regain the upper hand.
“That is what I thought at first, but nay, it is because I doona know if you are guilty of anything. I have no problem killing a traitor, but I have not yet taken an innocent life and I doona wish to start now. But, Lisa, should I discover you are guilty of anything, no matter how small the transgression …” He trailed off, but his point was perfectly clear.
Lisa closed her eyes. So, he intended to watch her, study her, before he decided whether he would kill her. But she didn’t have time to be studied and watched. Her mother needed her now. Time was of the essence, and if she didn’t find a way back soon, she might lose Catherine without getting to say good-bye, and there was much she needed to say to her mother still. She’d been so obsessed with earning enough money to make ends meet, and with maintaining a cheerful smile on her face to keep her mom’s spirits up, that somehow they had quit talking. Both mother and daughter had retreated into cautious pleasantries because the reality was too painful. But Lisa had always thought there would be time, a few special hours, maybe a week, in which she stopped going to work, incurred more debt, and did what she most wanted—stayed at home with Catherine, holding her hand and talking until the very end.
She shook her head, bewildered and more than a little angry at what life had dealt her. How dare her life keep getting worse? She stiffened her spine and her eyes flew open. “I must get back home,” she insisted.
“It is impossible, lass. Returning you is not in my power.”
“Do you know anyone who can?” she pushed. “You must concede, it would be the best solution. All our problems would be solved if you simply sent me back.”
“Nay. I know no one who has such power.”
Did he hesitate briefly? Or did her desperate need to cling to hope conjure the illusion? “What about the flask?” she said quickly. “What if I touched—”
“Forget the flask,” he shouted, straightening to his full height and glaring down at her. “It belongs to me, and I have already told you that it cannot return you to your time. The flask is my property. You would do well to forsake all thought of it and never mention it to me again.”
“I refuse to believe there is no way for me to return.”
“But that is the first fact you must accept. Until you acknowledge that you cannot return home, you will have no hope of surviving here. One of the first lessons a warrior is taught is that denial of one’s circumstances only results in failure to recognize real danger. And I assure you, Lisa Stone, there is infinite danger in your present situation.”
“You don’t scare me,” she said defiantly.
He stepped so close that his body brushed against hers, but she refused to back up an inch. For all she cared, he could stand on top of her, but she would not yield ground; she had a feeling that lost ground was not something a person ever got back from Circenn Brodie. She returned his glare.
“You should be afraid of me, lass. You are a fool if you are not afraid of me.”
“Then I’m a fool. If I went through time once, it can happen again.”
“Would that it could, for it would certainly make my life easier. Then I would not be caught in this dilemma. But I doona know how to make it happen. Believe that much, at least.”
Lisa found herself studying his face the way he’d searched her eyes moments ago, seeking some way to gauge if he was telling her the truth. But she was intelligent enough to recognize that she was in the defensive position—he being the massive and invincible offense. She would be wise not to push him too far.
“Temporary truce?” she offered at last, not meaning a word of it, resolved to find the flask at the earliest opportunity and fight him any way she could.
“You will abstain from climbing my walls?”
“You promise you won’t try to kill me without first telling me, so I can have a bit of time to accept it? A few days would do,” she countered, postponing the possibility of death any way she could.