Page 57 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
At last she lowered her lashes. “In my excitement at the success of the rescue, I forgot . . . the circumstances.”
“Aye, the circumstances. What could possibly have made you and a boy follow my men on such a dangerous mission?”
He didn’t even realize he was towering over her, his voice rising, until she was looking up at him, lips pressed tightly together.
She raised both hands. “’Twas wrong, I know.”
“Ye’ll only concede ‘wrong’?”
Those golden eyes gleamed in the last of the day’s light, and seemed to beseech him. He didn’t want to fall under their spell. Right now he was her chief.
“Yer lairdship, ’twas all me fault.”
Duncan and Catriona both turned to see Finn emerging from the shadowy path that led to the paddock. The boy’s features were stark with apprehension and fear. Though Duncan hated to inspire such a thing in a child, it was sometimes necessary to keep them safe.
“Finn,” Catriona began.
“Nay, mistress, ye cannot protect me. ’Twas I who needed to help others like me, my laird. Mistress Catherine tried to stop me, but I would not listen to her. She came along to protect me in my foolishness.”
Catriona frowned at the boy, but did not contradict him.
“Ye did not consider that you could endanger my clansmen?” Duncan said. He was no longer quite so angry, but he couldn’t let them see that.
Finn swallowed audibly, then shook his head. “Nay, I wanted to help. I remembered how afraid I was of yer men and what they meant to do to me. I thought I could ease their fears.”
“And did ye?”
The boy’s chin came up a bit. “I did, my laird.”
“Then go off and see to Mistress Catherine’s horse, as well as your own, and think on how ye could have handled your wish better.”
Looking abashed, the boy led his mare away.
Duncan turned back to Catriona. The rising moon touched her with a glow, altering her homespun clothing. She looked remote and beautiful, and it took everything in him not to draw her into his arms, to kiss her with passion, with regret, with confusion. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do with her now, and couldn’t face how that made him feel. So he focused on keeping her safe. “And how should ye have handled yourself better?”
Taking a deep breath, she boldly said, “I don’t know what I could have done differently. If it had been whisky, Ivor assured me he wouldn’t have taken me along. He said I’m not to know such things, that it would be dangerous. He says the Earl of Aberfoyle is involved, that it’s his whisky we steal, because of what he’s helped to do to the stolen children.”
The moment she’d mentioned her father’s name, Duncan had drawn a deep breath, waiting for her to say that the name had triggered her memory. Had he not made it clear to Ivor that she was to know nothing? But she still looked at him with earnestness, no revelation of awareness about her identity. Her father’s title meant nothing to her, and the constricting feeling of dread slowly loosened its hold on him.
But he couldn’t stop thinking of the danger she’d been in, following his men, maybe not even alerting them of her presence immediately.
“You seem upset,” she said, her voice pleading. “Finn needed me. He wanted to be of use, to help children like himself, aye, but he also wanted to repay ye for all ye’ve done for him.”
“Try not to make me feel so bad for wanting to keep you both safe,” Duncan said dryly.
She came closer in the darkness, and put her delicate hand in the middle of his chest. He willed his heart not to beat faster—he didn’t want her to know how easily she affected him, but he might as well have asked an eagle not to soar.
“I care about him, Duncan, and I know how he feels. Finn and I just want to be . . . a part of something, to know we matter, that we can help rather than just sit uselessly in the cave, sheltered and fragile.”
“Ye’ve hardly been useless,” he said gruffly. “Ye’re our guest, yet ye’ve been working harder than many a man.”
She rolled her eyes. “Now ye’re teasing me.”
He wanted her to say his Christian name again. Hearing it on her lips, in her sweet feminine voice, fooled him into thinking he was just a man, alone with a woman in the night, two people with possibilities and a future that might arise between them.
Damn, but he was a fool.
“Ye’re scowling so,” she whispered.
