Page 36 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
Because watching her with the little boy unnerved him, twisted things inside him, made him feel too soft and warm. He prided himself on examining everything he did with objective eyes.
He couldn’t be objective about Catriona.
And he couldn’t stop watching her. Instead of retreating to her chamber—his chamber—as usual that night, she stayed out with the men gathered around one of the fires. They were celebrating the success of their smuggling raid, toasting each other with Duff whisky, but she didn’t know that. Duncan knew she only saw their high spirits, and now that she was no longer quite the prisoner within the cave, perhaps she felt free to enjoy herself.
But it made everything worse for him. He was forced to watch her smile at Ivor, at Angus, at Torcall. Even Melville’s glower couldn’t douse her good mood. She listened to them tease her to try some whisky, until she finally did. The sight of her face going red sent the men into gales of laughter, and when she wheezed in a breath, Duncan saw even Finn giggling.
To his surprise, she motioned for another dram, the men hooted their encouragement, and this time, she sipped it with more decorum. She listened to their stories of life in the Highlands, the freezing mornings bathing in a loch, the cattle they’d stolen, the redcoats they’d outraced.
She grew tipsy enough that she was all set to learn the bawdiest song the men knew. When she stood up to lift her glass, she teetered and caught herself on Ivor’s shoulder.
Duncan rose up. “I believe that will be all, laddies.”
They protested halfheartedly.
“Don’t stop our fun,” Catriona begged.
“I’ll not stop their fun, only yours. Ye’ll not be happy if ye’re puking through the night.”
She twisted her face into something so funny, that even he almost smiled amid the roaring laughter of his clan.
“Aye, well, men, I be off,” she said, her Scottish accent perfect.
That caused even more laughter. She took a step toward the passageway at the back of the cave, and reeled to one side, where Ivor caught her arm. Duncan strode forward and lifted Catriona into his arms. She was warm and curved in all the right places. He’d held her like this before, when she’d been a stranger, but now—now he knew too much about her. Now she made him feel a yearning that bordered on desperate, and not just for her body.
“Whee!” she cried, kicking her feet, even as her head fell back.
When she flung her arms over her head, he dipped to keep her securely against his chest. This was not the same as holding the dazed, sodden woman he’d held the first day they’d met. She literally squirmed to get comfortable against him, and he was glad his plaid hid his reaction. The women stood together and watched him curiously, but he could have sworn Maeve smiled with approval.
Maeve made no secret that she thought he needed to find a wife, to “settle him down.” As if he could ever bring a “Lady Carlyle” to live in a cave. And choosing Catriona? He was using her for revenge, and lately it seemed as if his punishment would be never having her, the sweet, intelligent, and compassionate woman that she was. If Maeve only knew . . .
Someone had already lit a candle in his bedchamber, and the curtain made the flame dance on the rough stone walls.
“’Tis like the spirits, dancing in the night,” she murmured, then chuckled.
That accent again. He wondered if other things would begin coming back to her.
As if she read his mind, she said, “I remembered something today.”
He froze just before laying her on the pallet. He stared down at her flushed face, his gut clenching, and waited, even as he told himself that if she’d remembered anything significant, she would not have been enjoying the evening with her captors.
She tugged the hair just above his ear and grinned. “Nothing important, silly, just a horse that might have been mine in a fine stable.”
He didn’t think a woman had playfully tugged his hair before. The women he’d known intimately had been brief moments in the dark, satisfying a need in them both, and little else.
But Catriona, drunk though she was, felt comfortable enough to tease him, even as she devastated him with hints that her memory might slowly be returning. This woman who mischievously lounged in his arms would then turn into a she-devil, and instead of tugging his hair, might rake his face with her nails.
“What do you think of my memory?” she asked lightly.
When he would have risen, she caught the front of his coat and held him there, until he put a knee down to balance himself.
“Duncan?”
His Christian name on her tongue felt as intimate as he had feared it would, but he didn’t correct her. “’Tis a random memory, to be sure.”
Her smile fading, she said, “I fear that mare was the one ye had to kill. I even had a dream about her last moments alive, as the earth gave way beneath us in a storm. Just that frozen moment, not the actual . . . fall. I thought it just a dream, a memory I’d created, but the horse was the same.”
That was two more memories she’d had, and her brogue had only broadened. Was her time with him growing short? He was surprised at the surge of melancholy such thoughts brought forth. Though at first her presence in their encampment had made things awkward, now she was a lovely helper, whose smiles and enthusiasm had won over many a cynical clansman—perhaps even him. Seeing her with Finn only made him think about the family he had denied himself. He was too eager to see her every time he entered the cave, too aware of her presence, too full of longing for her touch.
