Page 89 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
But those scars . . . surely he’d gotten them in gaol, and her father had helped put him there. How would she feel, what would she do, if someone had done such a thing, harmed innocent children, almost destroyed an entire clan?
Duncan’s faint smile faded as he came back to the bed and saw her expression.
“Your back,” she whispered.
He lay down on the bed, then pulled her up to rest within the crook of his arm, his shoulder pillowing her head.
“’Tis the past,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t matter between us.”
“Everything matters, Duncan. All of it is how I came to be living at the cave.”
His heart beat strong and sure beneath her hand.
“The first time I tried to escape the thieves’ hole, they caught and punished me. Let us not talk of it now. Tell me of your girlhood.”
“What?” She tilted her head up so she could see his face. “Ye want to discuss something so unimportant?”
“It formed ye. How can it be unimportant?”
Those dark eyes were serious upon her, and his fingers began to comb through her hair. The gentle tug, the occasional brush of his fingers on her back or shoulder, were strangely comforting.
“Ye know who my father is,” she said softly. “He could be a monster to others, but he was not to me.”
“I am glad for that.”
“Truly?” she whispered. “It makes me feel . . . spoiled, useless, this precious object on his shelf.”
“It makes me glad to know ye were happy, that ye had the best your father could provide.”
Her throat was tight. “I never understood how he treated those who weren’t family. Oh, he was brusque with the servants, but Mother assured me he was only busy thinking about the weighty matters of the world. I was able to travel in fine carriages, dress in the best clothing, socialize in Edinburgh or London, and I thought I had the pick of men for my husband.” She gave a sad laugh. “It turned out that Father was manipulating me from the moment of my birth. I was betrothed to the heir of the McCallum clan when I was but a babe, but he never told me.”
He stiffened. “Ye’re betrothed?”
“Nay, it ended this past summer.”
He let out a breath.
“Do ye think I’d have done this with ye if I was promised to another man?”
He met her gaze. “Nay, I assumed ye’d have told me something so important when your mind cleared. But to hear the words on your lips . . .”
She gave him a gentle bite on the chest. “Ye deserved it.”
He nodded. “Your father was thoughtless and cruel. Betrothals often happen to repair clan ties, but to not tell ye . . .”
“Do ye know how I found out?” she whispered, her throat tight. “When my betrothed, Hugh McCallum, came to meet me in York, Father refused him, sent me out of town oblivious, put my dear cousin Riona in my place, and manipulated Hugh into kidnapping her. And it worked.”
His chest lifted in a great sigh. “I’m sorry.”
“Poor Riona must have been so frightened. Hugh thought he was only doing what he’d been forced to by my father. Riona and I have the same name, Catriona—our fathers were competitive in everything—so Hugh thought Riona was trying to elude the marriage, just like my father had done.”
“I did not hear of a scandal.”
“Nay, ye didn’t, because they fell in love and married. My brother Owen agreed to wed a McCallum to keep the contract between our two families whole. He and Hugh’s sister Maggie were lucky enough to fall in love, too. Everyone is happily married, bairns on the way. I thought it was my turn to find my own life, my own happiness. ’Tis why I left for Glasgow.”
“And then I kidnapped ye,” he said, his voice flat, yet with undercurrents of anger and frustration.
Cat boosted herself up on one arm and looked down at him gravely. “Aye, it was an awful thing, using me to punish my father. He used me, too. I don’t know if I can ever forget what ye did.”
