Page 28 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
“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.
