Page 63 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
The women looked at each other and shrugged in turn.
The only place left was—he glanced up at the turret that seemed to straddle the cliff. He left the curious women and found the hidden path, heading up it a little faster than he might. Would Catriona have gone up to the ruins again, when he’d warned her she shouldn’t go alone?
At the top he was heading directly for the gatehouse when movement caught his eye. He saw Catriona silhouetted against the morning sky of orange and pink, standing so close to the cliff, she seemed like she stood at the edge of the world. The wind whipped her skirts and tangled strands of her long dark hair around her head.
On one hand he was relieved—why had he thought she would leave the encampment alone?
But on the other hand, she stood so still, so near the edge, that his heart skipped a beat as he hurried to her. He feared calling out her name would frighten her, so he deliberately kicked a few rocks together. He saw her start and look back over her shoulder, her expression stark and impassive.
Turning fully toward him, she said, “I know I should not have come up here alone.”
Something seemed . . . off as she spoke, and he realized that her brogue had gone away again. He’d liked how she’d sounded like one of his people instead of the aristocratic daughter of his enemy. Perhaps it was better this way. He needed to remember she wasn’t for him.
“Why did ye then?” He stepped up beside her, not touching her, and they both looked out over the Highlands, where the barren mountains rose and fell, and the tallest was touched with winter’s first frost.
She gave a long sigh. “I don’t really know. I suddenly felt like I needed to see the land as a pure thing, where villains who kidnap children—who kidnap women—don’t exist.” Her voice rose on the last phrase.
Her words echoed into the sudden silence. And he knew, without a doubt, that she remembered who she was, that she comprehended everything he’d done.
He clenched his jaw and braced himself, as if he’d lost something precious—something he’d never had, he reminded himself bitterly. “Ye’ve remembered.”
“Yes, I’ve remembered,” she said with a sneer. “I’m Lady Catriona Duff, and you knew it. You lied to me; you took my brooch and hid it, all to keep me in the dark and dependent on you.” Her voice broke, and she covered her face with both hands while her shoulders shook. Her whisper was agonized when she looked up at him with wet eyes. “You let me depend on you, care for you, desire you, and all along you were using me.”
Her words cut him, but he deserved the pain. “Aye, it started that way, but it’s not how it ended,” he said roughly. “I blamed your whole family for what your father had done; I wanted to despise ye as an arrogant aristocrat with no idea what it was like to suffer as my clan has suffered. Instead, I found a woman who treated everyone the same, who felt each person’s pain as her own, who tried to help everyone she met.”
She slapped him hard across the face, her eyes suddenly blazing within the sheen of unshed tears.
“You made certain I was a dependent, naïve, pliable creature so frightened of the strange world that I never left your side.”
“That was never how I saw ye,” he insisted. “I saw ye as courageous and optimistic. Ye could have sunk into a corner in fear, but that is no the woman ye are.”
“No, it’s not me—I’m a woman who doesn’t forget the evil done to her and to her whole family.”
“Evil done to your family?” he shot back to her. “Ye don’t think your father deserved far worse than he got, the reward of dying an old, rich man in his own bed?”
“Yes, you’ve opened my eyes,” she said bitterly. “You showed me what kind of man my father was. I knew he was a bastard, but to find out he was a monster . . .”
She shuddered, and he wanted to comfort her, but he’d lost that right—he’d never had that right.
She gathered herself together, and though a tear fell down her cheek, she ignored it to say with sarcasm, “And yet you still needed your revenge.”
He could make no rebuttal, for that was the truth.
“What was your plan? Go ahead, explain it to me. Did the brooch show you who I was, daughter of your enemy?”
“I’d seen ye before,” he said, “riding through Edinburgh once, in your silks and finery.”
“Oh, of course, I deserved to be punished for that.”
“Nay, I never thought that. But your father, aye, he deserved to be punished, to know what it was like to be missing a child. His child was perfectly safe, not sold to agents who planned to use that child until he was crippled or worse.”
Though her face blanched, she spoke coldly. “So I was betrayed by the man who I thought had saved me, used to punish a man who was already dead. When did you discover that little truth?”
“I went to Castle Kinlochard.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “You saw my brother? Is he worried about me? Is his wife full of anxiety? It’s not good for the babe she carries.”
“They don’t believe ye’re missing at all. Apparently everyone is used to ye getting so caught up in your social life that ye sometimes forget to write.”
