Page 75 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
Cat found the baby in her arms once again, and this time she wasn’t peacefully sleeping. She’d been jarred by her mother’s abrupt departure, and now she screwed her face into a little red wrinkled tomato and began to howl.
Cat jostled her carefully, up and down, like she’d seen mothers do. “You’ll be fine, little Alice, just be patient.” She tried to see what was going on in the parade of two children and two adults that had just passed her, but they were already out of sight around a cottage. Cat wanted to follow them, but the baby howled louder, and she didn’t know what to do.
“She wants to be up on your shoulder,” said a deep, patient voice.
She whirled around to see Duncan straightening after having ducked beneath a low doorway.
“On my shoulder?” she echoed, dumbfounded as to how she could accomplish that and still support Alice’s head, as she’d been warned.
Duncan took the baby out of her arms, and put her right up on his chest, where her little face could peek over his shoulder. Alice calmed down immediately, put her fist in her mouth, and sucked.
Cat let out a relieved sigh, then admitted, “She likes you much more than me.”
He arched one brow. “Much more than you like me?”
She could feel a hot flush of outrage work from her chest up into her face. “A lot better than she likes me,” she quickly clarified. “You know how I feel about you. You may have your people enthralled by your performance at the assembly, but I know what you’re truly capable of.”
“I enthralled them?” he said, ignoring her condemnation.
“You cannot be asking for a compliment from me.”
“Nay, but ye seemed to be offering one.”
“Believe whatever fiction you want.”
He continued absently rubbing Alice’s back. “I was doing my duty to my clan. They deserve the best I can give them.”
Regardless of who gets hurt, she thought. But he was standing there holding an infant with the same ease he held a sword. He seemed good at everything he tried—except dealing with his father and hers.
Thinking of his father brought a sudden flash of memory—the letters she’d found several weeks ago in Duncan’s trunk. She remembered that bold “A” by the man who’d threatened Laird Carlyle. Now she thought she might recognize the handwriting—and felt a surge of nausea. Did that “A” stand for Aberfoyle? If those threats had been made by her father, those letters were proof.
And then all she’d learned about Duncan’s father swirled together in her mind. Duncan didn’t respect him—but if he’d read those letters, he would have known his father had tried to stop the kidnapping of innocents, too. Suddenly she knew she needed to see the letters again.
Duncan looked around. “Why do ye have the bairn again?”
Cat was startled back into awareness of the present. “Oh, it’s Finn! Something happened with him and Logan and a clanswoman. I have to know what’s wrong.”
“Catherine—”
Ignoring Duncan, she picked up her skirts and began to run in the same direction that Finn and the women had gone. She didn’t see them at first, and passed a second cottage. Upon hearing raised voices, she turned down another dirt path and found a group gathered about Finn, whose folded arms covered her chest, and her head hunched between her shoulders, turtle-like. Logan stood at the girl’s side, looking bewildered.
Maeve’s expression was patient as she said something to the angry older woman. As Cat approached, she could hear the retort.
“The lads should be switched, and I’m the one who can do it,” said the woman, stepping toward Finn and Logan menacingly.
Finn, trapped at the back of the building but still uncowed, stepped forward as if to shield Logan. Muriel tensed, probably wanting to do the same.
“Mistress MacFarlane, it was a foolish prank on the boy’s part,” Maeve said calmly.
“What foolish prank?” Cat asked.
“And who do ye be?” the old woman demanded.
“My name is Catherine, and I’ve been taking care of Finn since he was rescued.”
“Ye’re Himself’s fancy lass, are ye?”
Cat stiffened, sensing she wasn’t being complimented. She glanced at Finn, who didn’t hide her curiosity. “I am a woman who was also rescued by Laird Carlyle, just like Finn.”
