As a result, he’d had very few intimate encounters since the night of the curse in Kilmartin Glen. In the early months, a few generous young lassies had been willing to pleasure him with their hands and mouths, but even that had troubled him, and he had not enjoyed the experiences.
He remembered pulling one eager lassie to her feet halfway through a session of oral frivolities, apologizing to her gruffly, then stalking off and concluding the matter with his own hand, outside in the bailey, alone in a dark corner behind a wagon stacked with empty whisky barrels. It had been a low moment.
Now, he yearned not only for sexual release, but for any form of intimacy. It had been a long time since he’d been touched by a woman. There had been no caressing, no kissing. Nothing—until his botched seduction in the stone circle the day before, when the floodgates had opened to a raging tidal wave of desire.
All at once, he realized he was breathing heavily while watching the rise and fall of Raonaid’s ample bosom beneath the covers. It was a beautiful but dangerous thing to behold, so he turned his gaze to her face instead.
She was as lovely in sleep as at any other time, and there was something surprisingly peaceful about her, which contradicted everything he knew and remembered about her.
Strangely, that made him hate her now more than ever for locking him up in these shackles, cursed to a life of isolation, forced to avoid the attentions of any woman who so much as smiled at him.
Another part of him, however, wanted to climb into bed with her, roll on top, and settle himself snugly between her soft, luscious thighs. He would kiss her lips, caress her, and, when she was ready, slide into her womanly depths with a profound and satisfying groan of liberation.
Lachlan shut his eyes and tried to think of something else—anything would do—but the effort was futile. He would have to get up.
He was about to do so when Raonaid stirred and moaned softly. She inched a little closer to the edge of the bed and wiggled her hips across the mattress. He could smell her perfume, faint in his nostrils after the storm but still present, nonetheless, and it irritated him further, due to the frustration it caused.
His mind reeled with confusion. For three long years he had dreamed of achieving vengeance against this woman. He had loathed her with every inch of his being, even imagined watching her die. He still loathed her now. But despite all that, he had been teasing and flirting, and he wanted overwhelmingly to touch her.
Which told him one thing: the flirting had to stop. It was too dangerous and vexing. He had wanted to punish her, to make her afraid, but as it turned out, he was only punishing himself.
Rising to his feet, he left the pillow and blanket on the floor. For a moment he stood over her broodingly, watching until she rolled onto her back. Then he turned his eyes away, donned his kilt in silence, and quietly left the room.
* * *
Catherine’s eyes fluttered open, and she sat up quickly. A bright, hazy beam of sunlight was shining in through the window. The blanket Lachlan had used was in a jumbled heap on the floor, and his tartan was no longer hanging before the fire. The room was quiet, and he was gone.
Tossing the covers aside, she rose and crossed to the window, drew the drapes, and looked outside at the storm-ravaged stable yard below. Some of the shingles had blown off the roof, and the muddy ground was littered with leaves and broken branches that had blown down from the trees. A shimmering cloud of mist rolled close to the ground.
Lachlan emerged from the stable just then, walking purposefully back to the inn, and she was relieved to see him. He had mentioned he would secure another horse. Perhaps that was his task just now.
Catherine hurried to don her skirts and bodice. A moment later, he knocked lightly at the door, then entered without waiting for an invitation and barely looked at her as he spoke. “You’re up, I see.”
His dark hair was tied back with a leather string, and he looked rugged and handsome in the morning light, with his tartan pinned neatly at his shoulder, his sword belt buckled loosely at his hip. His shirt was clean and dry, and at some point he had shaved.
Catherine ran her fingers through her tousled hair, which fell in large bouncy curls to her waist, imagining that she must look a mess.
“I sent for breakfast,” he told her, “but you’ll have to eat quickly and fill up. We’ll head east toward South Lanarkshire today, and won’t stop again until we’re close to Blackburn.”
His tone was brisk and irritable. He would not look her in the eye.
Another knock sounded at the door. He moved quickly to answer it. “Ah, Abby, what a vision you are to behold on this fresh autumn morning.” He spoke with effortless charm as the young maid entered the room, carrying a tray.
Her cheeks blushed pink as she set the tray on the table, then glanced dismissively at Catherine. “Are ye sure there’s nothing else I can do for ye, sir?” she asked Lachlan. “Anything at all?”
“You’re a bonny lass, Abigail. I couldn’t have managed without you.”
The maid beamed a besotted smile at him as he placed his hand on the small of her back and led her out of the room. He shut the door behind them, leaving Catherine behind to wonder where he was off to now, and for what purpose. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she tiptoed across the room and pressed her ear to the door.
The sounds of quiet conversation and giggles filtered through the oak panel—
Suddenly the door opened, and she jumped back.
“Eavesdropping, were you?” Lachlan asked with complete disinterest, which came as an insult after his flirtations with Abigail just now. “Why aren’t you eating? Hurry up. We need to go.”
He moved to the tray, picked up a biscuit, and spread butter on it. He stuffed the whole thing into his mouth, then caught her staring at him, and froze. “What’s wrong with you this morning?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me. You look irritated.”
She moved forward and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Do women always throw themselves at you like that?”
“Aye.” He glanced at her crossly. “Not that it does me much good,” he added. “It’s more frustrating than flattering. I’ve had to give them a wide berth lately.”
“Because you cannot take advantage of the situation, and have your fun with them?”
“Aye. Thanks to you.”
She blew on the hot coffee and carefully took a sip. “Well, for the first time I am beginning to see the merit in the curse I placed on you. At least you are learning to restrain yourself, while hundreds of vulnerable, unsuspecting young women are protected from your awe-inspiring appeal.”
“Dangerous…,” he said. “I’m only dangerous because of you.”
“And you don’t think you were dangerous before? Following through on all those opportunities, no doubt breaking countless hearts without a care?”
He picked up another biscuit, slapped a thin slice of ham on it, and shoved it into his mouth. “Now you’re starting to sound like your old self. Always wanting to pick a fight. And you look more like yourself, too, with your hair down, all wild and dishevelled. We’re making progress, I think. Soon you’ll be remembering how to cast spells and hexes, and we can be free of each other at last.”
He stalked to the door, flung it open, and spoke to her over his tartan-clad shoulder. “Be downstairs in a quarter of an hour. I’ll be waiting for you in the stable. Don’t be late.”
With that, he shut the door behind him.
He seemed especially angry with her that morning, she thought, but she supposed his anger was far preferable to his desire, for at least he couldn’t kill her with it.
Chapter Eight
After gulping down most of the food on the breakfast tray, Catherine used the convenience one last time, then left the inn through the back door. She entered the stable exactly on time.
“Took you long enough,” Lachlan said while he tightened the leather cinches under the horse’s belly.
“You sa
id a quarter of an hour. I am not late.”
“You’re not early, either. Come here, lass.”
He bent forward and picked up a woolen cloak that was folded neatly on a stool. With a flick of his wrists, he shook it out.
“Where did you get this?” Catherine asked.
“From Abigail. It’s not fashionable, she tells me, but her mother was willing to part with it, which was good enough for me.”
“She gave this to you? How very kind of her.” Catherine wondered what Lachlan had offered them in return. Perhaps he took his shirt off for half a minute and they all fell over with their legs in the air.
“It wasn’t charity,” he replied. “Her mother made a healthy profit on the sale. Turn around. I’ll help you put it on.”
He draped it over her shoulders, lifted her long locks of hair out from under, then turned her around and buttoned it under her chin. The wool, though mended in places, was soft and thick, and it boasted a wide hood that would keep her head warm and dry in the coming days.
“Thank you,” she said. “That was surprisingly kind of you.”
“So now you think I’m kind?” He gave her a skeptical frown, then turned back to the horse. “Up you go. His name is Theodore.”
Catherine moved forward and mounted the handsome chestnut gelding. The saddle pouches slung across his back were near to bursting with provisions.
“Where did you get the money for all this?” she asked as she gathered up the reins. “You didn’t trade my jewels, did you?”
He swung effortlessly up onto Goliath’s back. “Nay, I have my own money, lass. I don’t need yours.”
“Are you wealthy or something?”
He gave her another look of warning that suggested she stop asking questions, then urged his mount onward.
She, too, kicked in her heels, and was pleased at least to have her own horse, so that she wouldn’t have to feel Lachlan’s big, strapping body rubbing up against hers every minute of the day.
* * *
By midmorning, the mist lifted. A fresh autumn breeze was gusting through the forest, bringing out the clean scent of the rain-soaked leaves on the ground.
Lachlan rode a fair distance behind Raonaid, watching those long, bouncy locks of red hair. He wondered with more than a little concern what would happen if she never regained her memories or remembered the person she once was. What would he do about the curse? How would he live? He’d be alone for the rest of his days, for if he ever let himself love a woman, he would be forced to relive the pain of his wife’s death.
He simply could not bury another.
All at once, he felt a more urgent need to reach Kinloch as quickly as possible. He needed to know the truth about this woman. Was she playing him for a fool, pretending to be without knowledge of her life as a witch? Or was she truly lost and in need of his help?
Either way, he did not wish to spend any more time alone with her than was absolutely necessary, for she stirred too much chaos in his mind. She reminded him of what he could not have, and it was torture, all of it, especially because she was his enemy. It made no sense that he was attracted to her.
They trotted through a shallow burn, where the horses’ hooves splashed through the rushing water.
“We need to move faster,” Lachlan said, galloping past Raonaid. “Can you keep up?”
She nodded, and he led them deeper into the forest.
* * *
After a grueling day of travel with few breaks to rest and water the horses, Lachlan and Catherine stopped for the night in a quiet glade near a slow-moving river. Lachlan built a fire and warmed the salt pork in a pan while Catherine, exhausted to her core, laid out the bedroll that was tied to his saddlebags.
While the meat sizzled, she divided up the bread and poured them each a cup of wine. She sat down on the bedroll, sipping the wine slowly and rubbing the sore muscles of her thighs. “I am so tired,” she said, “I can barely move.”
“I’ll not hear any complaints from you, lass,” he gruffly said. “You wanted to come. You begged me to take you.”
“I am not complaining,” she adamantly replied. “I am merely making conversation. It wouldn’t hurt you to try. The way I see it, we are both prisoners here, each of us cursed in our own way, and we have no choice but to be together for the next few days. And I certainly did not accompany you because I imagined it would be good fun. Good Lord! I came because I am desperate to know who I really am.”
He sat utterly still, his eyes almost diabolical. “Do not compare your plight to mine, lass. You may not remember your past, but at least you have a future. Once you collect that inheritance, you can do whatever, or be whoever, you bloody well please.”
She frowned at him. “Are you jesting when you imply that this is less important for me than it is for you? Or do you genuinely not understand how it might feel to have no identity, and no sense of yourself? I have been told a hundred times that I am Catherine Montgomery, and I yearn to believe it. If only I could. But in fact I believe nothing. Not in my heart. Ever since the moment my grandmother collected me at the convent, I have felt as if half of me was still missing. I see a ghost of myself in the looking glass. I have dreams that I am somewhere else, in another place, in another woman’s body. I’ve had doubts about my home—and how am I supposed to feel about the people who claim to be my family? I feel as if they are hiding something from me—hiding the real me. So when you appeared in the stone circle yesterday, I thought my prayers had been answered. At last, here was a man who knew the truth!” She was growing fevered with frustration and began to shout. “A man who could prove that my feelings were justified—that I was not, in fact, the person they alleged me to be. That there was more of me, yet to be discovered! But now, sitting here with you, I am beginning to think that you don’t know me at all, either, and that you, too, are mistaken. For I am certain that I cannot be a soulless witch.”
Lachlan regarded her in concerned silence from under a deeply furrowed brow. Then without a word, he served up the pork and handed her the pewter plate.
She wondered uneasily if she had just confirmed everyone’s fears that she was a raving lunatic, who would be better off at an asylum. Had she really just told him that she saw ghosts of herself? She wouldn’t be surprised if he decided to abandon her right now and take his chances with the curse.
“It’s been a long day,” he said, watching her carefully while she poked at her supper. “You’re exhausted, lass.”
“I most certainly am.”
Reaching for the jug of wine, he rose to his feet, circled around the fire, and refilled her glass. “Are you cold?”
She shook her head, but shivered. He went to fetch a blanket from one of the saddlebags and wrapped it securely around her shoulders.
“You’ll have to prepare yourself for tomorrow,” he told her, sitting down on the opposite side of the fire and reaching for his plate. “It won’t get any easier. We’ll ride around the Gargunnock Hills in the morning, stop for supplies in Kippen, and maybe get a hot meal, but once we reach the Great Glen, we’ll be sleeping and eating under the stars. Will you be able to manage?”
She looked down at the bedroll, then across at him in the firelight, taking some comfort in the fact that he was, to some extent, concerned for her well-being.
“I suppose if I have come this far,” she heartily replied, “I can survive the rest, for the sake of recovering my memories. It hardly matters anyway, where I rest my head. My joints are groaning with agony; my eyes feel like they are full of sand. Even if there were cannons going off over my head, I’m quite sure I would sleep like a baby.”
“Good.” He stared at her for a moment, then dug into his supper. They spoke no more after that.
Later, after washing the dishes in the creek, Catherine returned to the fire and lay down on her side. The last thing she remembered as she drew the blanket over her shoulders was the sight of Lachlan on the other side of the fire, lounging back on an elbow, sipping a cup o
f wine, watching her through the iridescent flames with those smoldering dark eyes, before her own weary lids fluttered closed.
* * *
Sometime during the night, Catherine tore the blanket off and scrambled to her feet. “Get off me!” she shrieked, slapping at her cheeks and arms, spitting out the dirt she could still taste on her tongue.
She was aware of the campfire and the trees, and part of her knew that she was somewhere in Scotland, traveling with Lachlan MacDonald, the Highlander who had attacked her in an ancient stone circle—and that she’d had a dream. But the effect upon her mind was so vivid and disturbing, she could not yet escape it. Her heart was racing with terror. She felt as if she were suffocating. She couldn’t get the dirt off her sleeves!
Suddenly Lachlan was there, holding her steady by the arms. “You’re dreaming, Raonaid. Wake up. Look at me!” The deep timbre of his voice compelled her to focus on his eyes, darkly luminous in the night.
It took a moment for her to accept that there was no dirt on her. Still feeling panicked, she held on to him, her hands curled tightly around his forearms.
“Are you all right?” he asked when he seemed certain that she was fully awake.
“I dreamed someone was trying to bury me,” she said, “as if I were dead. I was lying in a grave, and dirt was being shoveled onto my face. It felt very real.”
“It wasn’t,” he said. “No one was trying to bury you.”
“Am I going mad? I fear that I am. The nuns in the convent thought I was haunted by the devil. If my grandmother hadn’t come to claim me when she did, they might have sent me away, to someplace terrible.” Her body began to tremble.
Lachlan regarded her with concern in the moonlight. He was completely drawn in.
Was this a trick? he wondered, working hard to shake himself out of the spell. Was she making it up in order to convince him that she was truly in need of help?
It had occurred to him more than once that she might simply be seeking another chance to return to Kinloch and destroy his cousin’s marriage. She had been obsessed with Angus before, to a murderous degree. Perhaps she was out to finally seize everything she wanted—a dead heiress’s fortune and the powerful Chief of Kinloch as well.
Seduced by the Highlander Page 7