Page 85 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
“She’s with me,” Duncan said coldly. “She’ll keep silent. Now tell me why ye insisted I come?”
After a suspicious glance at Catriona, Reid said, “My ship has been followed. I cannot deliver your cargo, and I don’t know when I’ll next return. I can’t risk sailin’ at night for they’ll mark me as a smuggler. I might be stopped leaving Loch Lomond regardless, and I want nothing suspicious aboard.”
Duncan scowled. “Then ye didn’t load the cargo?”
“Nay, ’tis all yours. I’ll send word when I can next sail.” He leered at Catriona, then insolently tugged his bonnet. “Mistress.”
“Reid,” Duncan called when the man reached the door.
Reid glanced over his shoulder and paused. “Aye.”
“Be safe.”
He flashed a smile, where several teeth were missing. “That I will.” Then he went out the door and closed it behind him.
Duncan turned and regarded Catriona, who looked at the closed door as if disappointed.
“If ye miss him, I can make him return,” he said dryly.
“’Tis true, I had questions for him.”
“None he would have answered.”
“He smuggles the whisky?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
She frowned and looked around. “But . . . this is only a fisherman’s cottage. Where are all the casks?”
“Ye know I’ll not answer that—for your own protection, of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated dryly.
“But I do have questions for ye.”
He stepped closer, her skirts swirling around his legs. They would have touched if she hadn’t stepped back.
“Are ye afraid of me?” he demanded, more harshly than he’d intended. He’d spent weeks protecting her, and the thought of being the cause of her fear both infuriated and saddened him.
She drew herself up and leaned toward him, pointing a finger for emphasis as she said, “You don’t frighten me. I followed ye, didn’t I?”
“Why? Does it have something to do with your snooping in my trunk?”
He couldn’t tell if she was blushing, in the low light.
“Aye, ye didn’t hide that from me.”
Stiffening, she said, “When ye gave me space for my garments in the trunk, I saw letters.”
“So ye found my father’s papers. Nothing in that trunk is a secret to me.”
“And have ye read them?”
He frowned. “Ye read them?”
“Have you?” she demanded.
“I read the first few, and they’re inconsequential. I don’t need to read another thing related to that man. He gave up on me, our family, this clan, a long time before he died.”
