Page 5 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
Maeve entered, wearing a woolen gown with a fichu draped about her neck and tucked into the laces at her bodice. The edge of her linen cap dipped, but didn’t hide the wide, disfiguring scar that rippled down the left side of her face, just missing her eye, as if her skin had been melted in a fire. The other half of her face showed that she couldn’t be more than thirty years old.
Before she could embarrass herself by asking about Maeve’s injuries, Laird Carlyle returned, carrying a brazier piled with peat. As he worked to start a fire, the two women waited. At last, with a brusque nod, he departed again.
Maeve’s smile was lopsided because of her injury, but it was still friendly, as she set a tray on the table and laid an armful of clothing on the chair. “Good day, mistress. Ye’ve heard that I’m Maeve. And what are ye called?”
She looked over the woman’s shoulder, wishing Laird Carlyle would return and explain it all as easily as he had to Ivor. “This will sound foolish, but . . . I don’t know my name. I woke up in the rain, with a pounding head and . . . that’s all I know. Your laird found me wandering down the road.” She gave another shiver.
Maeve’s expression faded from interest to deep concern. “How terrible for ye, mistress. Wounded, and now soaked—ye’ll catch yer death. Don’t fash about anythin’ but feelin’ better. That will help yer memory. Let’s get ye out of these garments.”
It took far too long to unpin, unlace, and untie all of her clothes, for the wet strings proved difficult. But at last, she was dressed in a clean nightshift, her head poulticed and bandaged, the scratches on her palms cleaned. She’d wanted to dress in a gown for the day, but Maeve had insisted she needed her rest after such a terrible wound, and she hadn’t protested all that much.
They’d found a small pouch of coins hidden within her skirt, and without saying anything, Maeve tucked it beneath her pillow, out of sight. If Laird Carlyle had been a dishonest man, he would have looked for such a thing and left her to die. But he’d helped her, brought her to safety—in a cave, she reminded herself. There had to be a story behind that.
When at last she lay on the pallet, a blanket pulled up around her, she felt almost peaceful, warm for the first time in hours. Her head continued to throb, but it had dulled. She had a bowl of soup warming her from the inside, and she tried to tell herself to be content that she wasn’t alone, that a kind man had found her.
She drowsily watched Maeve put away her healing supplies, then said, “It feels so strange not to know myself. I must have a name, a family, maybe even a husband.”
“Ye wear no ring, nor is there a mark of one,” Maeve pointed out.
“True. I could be newly married. But regardless . . . I need to be called something, even if it’s only temporary.”
“Should I just suggest names and ye can pick the one that seems to speak to ye?”
“Just . . . name myself?” She blinked again, feeling the distant call of sleep. “Very well, what kind of person do I look like, Maeve? A Mary? An Elizabeth? No, those just don’t . . . mean anything to me.”
Maeve studied her with narrowed eyes.
“Fiona?” Maeve asked. “Margaret? Catherine?”
“Catherine!” she cried. “I like it.”
“Do ye think ’tis your name?”
“I—I don’t know. But I need to call myself something.”
“Mistress Catherine ye’ll be then,” Maeve said, rising up from the chair. She placed a cup of water at the edge of the table, within easy reach, then made sure that the lantern had a fresh candle. “I’ll check on ye later, Mistress Catherine,” she said, emphasizing the new name. “And I’ll try to keep the voices down out in the great hall.”
“The great hall?”
Maeve chuckled. “Our private joke. Sleep well, Mistress Catherine.”
Catherine.
After Maeve pulled the curtain across the opening and left, Catherine turned the name over and over in her mind, even as her eyelids grew heavier. It was a good name, solid, respectable. She hoped she was a woman who deserved it. But she worried that if she was traveling by herself, with only two men, what kind of woman was she? Or had one of those men been the husband she couldn’t remember?
The rain had stopped, the sun was setting, yet Duncan lingered in the small paddock, currying his horse with a comb to loosen the dirt and sweat. The animal asked no questions, unlike the people he was going to face when he went back inside. The wind picked up, and Duncan lifted his head at the eerie wail emanating from high above him. Though the sound was part of his everyday life, others thought the castle was haunted. Even the majority of his clan crossed themselves and kept their distance, which proved beneficial, since they couldn’t know where he was hiding. He’d handpicked the couple dozen men who lived with him in the caves, choosing the strongest, the most talented—the ones without close family who depended on them. The rest of Clan Carlyle lived in several nearby villages, farming their meager lands, raising a few precious head of cattle. The outlaw status of their chief had meant few people wanted to trade with them. The whisky smuggling was the only thing keeping his people from starving. But his clan couldn’t know about that, though he imagined many suspected. They probably thought he was reiving cattle, too, but he preferred stealing from the Earl of Aberfoyle.
And now he’d stolen the man’s daughter to show him the reality of losing a child.
Duncan tipped his head back and could just see the turret of his ancestral home, rising on the mountain high above the glen. From miles away it could be seen, a testament to the greatness the Carlyles had once taken for granted—or a reminder of how far they’d fallen. Oh, the fall had started long before he was born, but for a man who’d vowed to raise his clan up again, he’d done a poor job of it.
No one had lived in the Carlyle castle for several generations; who would think to look for Duncan in such an obvious place? Yet he’d brought Catriona Duff here—the daughter of his enemy. She’d been unconscious and hadn’t seen the hidden path. He would just have to make certain she stayed within the cave until he knew if she was lying to him. If she caught a glimpse of the castle, she’d be able to guide her clansmen here, and he couldn’t allow that. He was endangering his people just by bringing her to the cave.
Taking a deep breath of resignation, Duncan followed the path along the mountainside until he reached the entrance to the cave. He’d passed several hidden men guarding the encampment. Inside, he found his people eating supper, seated on logs or stone, all eyeing him warily. These were the only clansmen allowed close to him, the ones he trusted most to aid his whisky smuggling, and on rarer occasions, to help find the stolen children before they could be taken onto ships for the colonies. But he could never relax and be one of them, was always conscious of the danger he’d put them in—like when he’d nearly been captured last month. He was their chief, the reason their lives were hard, and it was his responsibility to give them a better life.
Maeve brought him a plate of fried trout and someone cleared a place for him at one of the tables. They were all unnaturally quiet, and he knew why.
“The stranger is not hungry?” he asked in Gaelic, in case Catriona was eavesdropping.
