by Gayle Callen
“Checkmate,” Torcall said with satisfaction.
She didn’t have to pretend surprise—she’d let her thoughts briefly drift away, after all. “Well done,” she said, smiling up at him.
He smiled back with good nature, then seemed to recollect his duties, and glanced at the cave entrance with guilt.
“No one slipped through, I promise,” she whispered.
“’Tis not your duty but mine,” he growled.
She didn’t take offense. She only hoped she’d begun to win him over, she thought, glancing outside with longing.
Apparently she hadn’t hid it well, for Torcall said gruffly, “’Tis dangerous in the wilds of the Highlands, Mistress Catherine. Ye’re safer here.”
She nodded as demurely as she could. Glancing at Finn, she said, “Did you understand some of the game, Finn? I could teach you more.”
But without a word, he ran to the stream, keeping his back to the cave.
She sighed. “That poor boy has been through so much.”
“Sad it is,” Torcall murmured. “But he’s safe now, aye?”
As she pushed the crate back against the wall, she didn’t think Finn felt all that safe.
It was a good thing Catherine was still paying attention to him an hour later, because only she noticed when he slipped through the cave entrance and outside. She didn’t want to call attention to him, so she took advantage of Torcall’s focus on sharpening his dirk, just as Finn had, and followed the little boy.
The shock of sunlight made her falter and shield her eyes, but her sight adjusted enough to see the boy disappear to the left. She followed the rock wall and came upon Finn at a paddock, leaning on the wooden rail and watching the horses. When she came to a stop beside him, he flinched, his shoulders coming up like a turtle retreating into its shell from the world.
And inside her chest, her heart felt like it shattered for him. She may be alone in the world right now, but knew she hadn’t always been so. This little boy had only known the streets of Glasgow.
Though Catherine wanted to gather him against her, promise she’d keep him safe from the world, she could do none of that. She had no power except in the offer of understanding. She knelt down beside him, watching as he eyed her suspiciously, but he didn’t try to run away.
“I just needed to see the sky,” he said in his quiet little voice.
She glanced up at the blue, dotted with puffy white clouds. “If I remember correctly, it’s usually quite rainy in the Highlands. We’re lucky today.”
Finn put his hands on the paddock rail and simply nodded. They spent a quiet few minutes watching the horses graze. They were big, majestic animals, content with their lot. Catherine wanted to be content in the moment too, to know that agonizing over what she was missing was wasted effort. She could learn from these horses. Perhaps Finn could, too.
“Have you ever ridden one?” she asked.
Finn shook his head solemnly. “Almost run down by more than one.”
Catherine inhaled sharply, then realized that Finn was watching her, the faintest amusement in his blue eyes.
“Are you teasing me?”
“Nay, mistress.”
But she thought he’d enjoyed startling her, and perhaps that was a good sign.
“Did you come out here to run away, Finn?”
His eyes widened. “Nay, where would I go? Look at all these mountains and the glens between. I’d be lost or swallowed up by a bog, so His Lairdship said.”
So Laird Carlyle had had to scare the children for their own safety. She wanted to disapprove, but it had obviously succeeded—and he’d had practice knowing what worked best with frightened children.
“But I don’t know where I’ll go when ’tis time to leave,” Finn finished on a whisper.
“We could decide together,” Catherine said. “I don’t know where I belong either.”
He frowned at her. “I heard ye lost yer mind.”
Giving him a gentle smile, she said, “Not my mind, but my memory. I don’t know who I am or where I’m from. Laird Carlyle took me in, just like he’s taken you in.”
“Maybe ’tis good ye cannot remember,” he said solemnly.
She hadn’t thought of it that way. It made her sad to think that the boy might not want to remember what he knew. “Regardless of what I wish, I have no memory beyond waking up a few days ago in the rain, just before Laird Carlyle found me.”
Finn regarded her directly, for once not lowering his eyes. He appeared about to say something, but then pressed his lips together and turned back to the horses.
“I imagine you could ride one if you ask,” Catherine said.
He shot her a wide-eyed look. “I never learned.”
“You could learn now.”
He bit his fingernail, and she noticed it was already down to the quick.
She let her suggestion linger there, and at last realized she was outdoors for the first time in almost a week. She inhaled deeply, realizing how long she’d smelled only the scents of men in too close quarters, peat smoke, and cabbage. Now the air was redolent with the earthy scent of heather, leaves just beginning to turn toward autumn majesty—and horses, of course, she thought, eyeing those great beasts with amusement. Rising, she stared around her and saw that the cave was up a hillside, and that the green, rocky glen stretched out before her between barren brown mountains. She saw shaggy cattle—each too thin—and the occasional herd of sheep. There was a village far down the glen, but the only reason she knew that was by a collection of rising smoke from home fires.
“I cannot stay here forever,” Finn suddenly said, his voice low and angry. “Himself won’t let me.”
“Finn—”
“They’ll foist me off on strangers.”
“They want to find you a family,” she said earnestly, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He shrugged away her touch. When he ran back toward the cave entrance, she let him go, but turned to gaze after him—
And saw Laird Carlyle, his legs planted in a wide stance, arms folded across his chest, barring her way.
Duncan couldn’t miss the way Catriona flushed with guilt. She’d known his order to remain in the cave, and she’d broken it. He wasn’t going to be swayed by the pretty blush of her cheek, or the way the wind tugged loose a stray curl beside her ear. But hard as he tried to ignore how she made him feel, he looked at her in the sun and remembered the shadows of his room, and the way she’d come willingly into his arms and opened her mouth to him so eagerly, so innocently.
While he’d kissed her under false pretenses, knowing the truth of who she was, and denying her that comfort.
He didn’t like himself for it, but what her father had done—what he’d allowed—was bigger than both of them and this attraction that couldn’t mean anything.
And yet . . . he’d kissed her, unable to stop himself, unable to deny the dark hunger he felt for this woman.
Linking her hands behind her back as if trying to appear casual, Catriona said, “You have a beautiful glen, Laird Carlyle. I was relieved to discover that I remember the names of plants and trees. It’s so frustrating to remember such mundane things and not—”
“Ye know I said ’twas dangerous for ye to be outside.” He made himself sound cold and harsh.
She flinched, but met his gaze boldly. “I know. But would you have preferred that I let Finn go? I’m the only one who saw him run out.”
“If it happens again, alert the guard.”
“And frighten the boy even more than he already is?”
“He knows he need not be frightened here.”
“He knows you’ll give him over to a family whenever you choose. Of course he’s frightened. Who wouldn’t be?”
“And the two of ye commiserate, because ye think I’ll send ye off, too?”
Her shoulders sank, and she said softly, “No, I think I might have more say than Finn. But maybe I won’t.”
“Ye’re trying your best to wheedle you
r way into friendship with my men, to give yourself a say.”
She stiffened.
“Do ye think I don’t know ye’ve been attempting to befriend every guard with your pretense at bad chess?”
“I didn’t see you watching me,” she answered, with a trace of defiance.
“I’m always watching ye.” He held back a grimace, knowing he revealed too much.
She blinked at him, then a wash of color painted her cheeks. She was remembering the kiss, too.
“I’m sorry my chess skills are not up to your standards,” she said, speaking too quickly as if to distract them both.
“Och, we both know your chess skills haven’t even begun to be challenged.”
She shot him a taunting sideways look. “And you saw all that from wherever you hid to spy on me?”
“I was not spying on ye. Ye made no attempt to conceal what ye were doing.”
She cocked her head, but didn’t respond, just looked away from him and toward the glen, mostly hidden from them by trees. They could see glimpses of purple heather on distant hillsides, but the villages were obscured. He watched her study his land and people, the ones he’d broken the law for, the ones he’d been banished for protecting. Inevitably, she looked up—and gasped.
He knew what she’d seen, but he looked up, too. The castle tower, far above as if in the clouds, jutted out over the cliff, the sentinel of Carlyle lands. The walls on either side were crumbling inward, but that proud tower held on.
Almost breathless, she said, “That is . . . amazing. It is yours?”
“The ancient birthplace of my ancestors. But ’tis a ruin now. Rather an ironic symbol of my chiefdom, aye?”
“I disagree,” she insisted. “You may be outlawed, but it’s a brave, valiant thing you’re doing, and your ancestors would be proud.”
She could have punched him in the gut and it might have wounded him less. Brave and valiant? He wanted to laugh his disgust at himself. If she only knew what he was capable of, what he’d done to her in the name of family pride and vengeance. And he would change none of it. Her father had to understand what the parents of those stolen boys felt like. It might help stop the kidnappings.
The wind picked up, and the familiar wail began.
She stared upward. “It’s coming from up there, isn’t it? At night it seems quite frightening.”
And that was the point. He shrugged. “I’m so used to it I don’t even hear it anymore.”
“I had wondered if my head wound was making me hear things,” she admitted, her mouth twisted in wry amusement. “What is it?”
He looked up, even as he realized he didn’t want to meet her eyes as he lied to her yet again. “’Tis just the way the wind moves through the ruins.”
“Could we go up?”
“Nay, did I not just say there is danger there?”
She blinked at him. “Oh, very well. Did you grow up there?”
“We had a manor in a nearby village.”
“And your father ruled from there.”
“If ye call what he did ruling.”
She eyed him with curiosity, and he didn’t like having revealed too much with his sarcasm.
“He’d be proud of you,” she said quietly, “whatever your relationship used to be.”
“Nay, he would not. I vowed to be a better chief than he, thought I could not possibly be worse. I was wrong.”
Frowning, she opened her mouth as if to contradict him.
“I’m not an honorable man,” he warned her. “Ye already know that.”
Color bloomed in her cheeks again. “I don’t know what you’ve done, or why you punish yourself, but you can’t stop me from thinking well of you. You rescued me; you rescued those children. You’ve given me a place to stay when I have no one. And Finn will see that you can be trusted.”
He didn’t think his guilt could keep growing, not after everything her father had done in the name of her family, but grow it did, until he felt cut by it.
But still, he wanted her. The green-and-yellow bruises beneath her eyes only reminded him that her beauty was not solely what he desired. It was her, the woman who’d lost everything, yet served his men with patience and gratitude. She could have reacted to her trauma in fear and neediness; instead she’d tried to do her part, had given herself over to their mission.
Every second he watched her mouth as she spoke only reminded him that he wanted to take it, invade it, claim it. Every graceful movement of her body as she walked past him, sending a little glance sideways at him, made him want to drag her beneath him, made him want to show her the power he could wield over her with passion. She would feel as helpless and desperate as he did.
Instead, after she’d gone, he stood immobile for far too long, seeking to master himself, to remember what was at stake.
Two days later, Finn was the last boy left, and before breakfast, he watched Catherine try to cook oatcakes on the girdle. Maeve had given her her own cook fire to practice, and the women left her alone, giggling whenever they glanced her way. Not Sheena, however. Catherine had not won her over, and her disdain was less and less hidden. Catherine didn’t know what she’d done to offend her.
When Catherine burned her second batch, Finn chuckled, and it was so difficult to act like his briefly amused expression wasn’t the best thing she’d seen from him in days. He seemed to be opening up under her attention, and she knew that if he learned to relax with people, he would eventually accept and appreciate having a new family.
Looking at the girdle, which seemed to mock her with its hot black surface, she gave a frustrated sigh. “I am a woman. I should know how to cook. I know how to sew.”
“I thought everybody knew how to cook,” he offered amiably.
She almost laughed aloud. They were both in the same position, waiting for a new start to life—and apparently he felt better thinking she was worse off than he was.
Or maybe he just liked to be of help, for he flattened the next ball of dough, and did a better job watching over it than she did. For an hour they worked together companionably. He’d become her little shadow, the two of them stuck there together.
Until Duncan came over. Then Finn seemed to shrink as he scuttled away.
The laird eyed the boy, frowning. “I’ve not beaten the lad,” he said gruffly.
“But other men have.” She spoke quietly, and he stepped closer to hear her. “Perhaps the men who kidnapped him, or simply the men who lived on the streets with him.”
“And he’s said nothing about family to ye?”
She shook her head. “I honestly don’t think he has any. Sort of like me, for surely your men would have encountered people looking for me by now.”
She tried to keep her voice expressionless, because she didn’t want him to see how it kept her awake at night, at first wondering if her family was missing her, and now dreading that she had no one out there at all. Perhaps those men who’d died had been her only family.
“It’s been eight days,” Duncan said quietly. “Ye were traveling. If ’twas a fair distance, ye’re not likely to be missed yet, aye?”
She shrugged, glanced down at the girdle, and gave an unladylike curse. “Oh, I’ve burned them again.”
When she removed the blackened cakes from the heat, she glanced up to see him watching her, unsmiling. But his eyes seemed a bit less shadowed, as if she amused him. Or maybe she was reading too much into this inscrutable man.
“Ye’ve picked up the language of a cave-dwelling clansman,” he said dryly.
She ignored his teasing. “I can serve the food, stir it even, but I will never rival Mrs. Skinner. Surely there’s something else I can do. Laundry, perhaps? You trust me outside now.”
He took her hand and lifted it, as if pointing out how white and useless it was.
She practically forced her thumb near his face. “See, I’m developing calluses, aren’t I?”
They were standing too close again, and she realized that seemed to happen t
oo often. She glanced about and saw more than one pair of eyes watching them speculatively, most without rancor. They were a source of interest, but only Melville seemed to care what they did with each other.
Lowering her voice, she said, “Do you have any idea why Melville dislikes me so?”
Duncan grunted. “I’ve been told he hopes I will marry his daughter.”
Catherine’s mouth dropped open, and it took everything in her not to look Sheena’s way. “What does that have to do with me?”
He cocked his head. “I’ve never kissed his daughter.”
She felt her face flame scarlet. “Oh. But . . . he doesn’t know we’ve kissed. I promise I’ve not told anyone.”
“He’s not a stupid man.”
“It’s my fault,” she murmured, not knowing where to look anymore. “I’ll try to be more careful. I don’t know if I’ve ever kissed a man before, and it seems pretty wonderful. Perhaps my face showed too much . . .” She trailed off in distress.
When he didn’t say anything, she risked a glance up, only to find him staring at her mouth with a hunger he didn’t bother to hide.
Maeve interceded, bustling her away with the women to begin clearing the breakfast dishes and shooing the men off to their day’s chores, which eventually left Catherine and Duncan even more alone.
Catherine stayed where she was, embarrassed and grateful as she hovered near him as tentatively as a bird. He didn’t move away either; she could hear him breathing, knew it had quickened, just as hers had—here, in front of too many people.
“What happened to Maeve’s face?” she asked quietly, trying to distract herself.
He studied his friend’s face impassively, and then said the last words Catherine expected. “My mother did that.”