“Ye’re welcome tae walk if me company offends ye, lass,” he said, the faintest edge of amusement beneath his calm.
“I might,” she returned, chin lifting, “if I trusted the road half so much as ye trust yerself.”
He gave a quiet sound—half laugh, half scoff—and turned forward again, his shoulders shifting beneath the weight of his plaid. Catherine’s pulse stumbled despite herself. She told her heart to still, to remember what sort of man he was: her brother’s friend, her reluctant escort, nothing more.
Catherine felt her lips curl in satisfaction. She had not addressed him directly, yet he had heard her all the same. And if she pricked him enough to draw a reply, then perhaps his lairdly calm was not quite as unshakable as he wished the world to believe.
Hours passed in the steady rhythm of hooves and the occasional murmur of soldiers shifting formation. Catherine’s thoughts circled restlessly, refusing to be stilled. Every turn of the glen seemed too quiet, every tree a place for enemies to crouch. The Highlands were not safe. Not for the MacDonalds, while Angus Campbell gathered clans into hisPact of Argyll, weaving alliances like snares so that their family stood nearly alone against the tide.
Her jaw tightened. She would not be taken like a lamb to slaughter, no matter what Tòrr or Aidan or any man decreed.
The glen widened at last, the loch glimmering ahead through the mist. Catherine took a deep breath, relief prickling through her veins at the sight of the birlinn waiting at the shore, its mast stark against the sky. One passage, and they would be behind Cameron walls. For now, safety seemed within reach.
Until the horses at the front balked. A ripple ran down the line. Catherine straightened in her saddle, eyes narrowing as she peered past the men ahead and she noticed shapes moving on the shore. A band of riders with steel at their sides, waiting.
Her pulse kicked hard. She felt Alyson stiffen beside her, heard Sofia’s quick breath. The air thickened, weighted with the certainty that danger had found them again.
Aidan reined forward, his horse stamping the earth. His voice rang cold across the glen. “What is this?”
The group parted, and a single rider advanced. Catherine’s stomach twisted at the sight of him—familiar in ways that scraped raw against her pride. Broad shoulders, fair hair darker than memory, eyes fixed on her with a heat that made her blood run cold.
“Catherine,” he said, and the name on his tongue was a claim.
Her breath caught. Laird Edwin MacLeod.
CHAPTER TWO
The letters she had burned, the gifts she had returned, the courtesy she had shown him only because custom demanded it—none of it had severed him. She had been polite, as was expected of her, but she had never encouraged him, never accepted a single word of his supposed courtship. And now, there he stood, blocking her path, armed men at his back.
Aidan’s gaze cut to him, sharp as a drawn blade. “Edwin MacLeod. State yer purpose.”
Edwin’s eyes never left hers. His mouth curved into a smile she knew too well. “I am here fer what is mine.”
Every muscle in Catherine’s body went taut. “What is yers?” Her voice rang clear, though her heart thundered.
Edwin’s smile deepened, and when he spoke the words were a shackle thrown at her feet. “Me betrothed.”
The word struck like a slap.Betrothed.
Catherine’s lips parted, breath catching in outrage before she forced it into steel. “Yer betrothed?” She could hear the blood pounding in her ears, could feel Alyson’s stiff silence beside her and Sofia’s hand clutching at her sleeve.
But Edwin only smiled wider, the same boyish curve he had once wielded at feasts, when he had pressed notes into her hand or lingered too near in corridors. He looked at her as though her protest meant nothing, as though her will were smoke against stone.
Aidan’s gaze cut between them, cool as mountain frost. “What claim dae ye make?”
Edwin straightened, his chest swelling beneath his plaid. “Catherine MacDonald has long been promised tae me. Our faithers began the negotiations when we were bairns, and the contract was near drawn when her father fell. Her brother Tòrr will sign it soon enough—an agreement between our clans, made in good faith.”
Catherine’s hands clenched on her reins, her blood hot. “Ye speak o’ contracts that were never signed, Edwin. There was nay promise, nay word from Tòrr, and certainly nay word from me.”
Edwin’s tone softened, the false tenderness cutting deeper than anger. “Ye forget, Catherine. The MacDonalds ken o’ our courtship. Ye returned me letters only out o’ modesty. Ye cannae deny what all the Highlands already ken.”
“Nay.” Catherine’s voice shook with fury, though she sat tall in the saddle.
A murmur ran through the MacDonald men around her, the uneasy shiver of swords half drawn, of pride affronted. Catherine’s cheeks burned from the humiliation of being spoken of like a parcel to be claimed. She had ignored Edwin’s letters, returned his trinkets, let his eager words fall unanswered. That silence should have been enough of an answer. And yet here he stood, his delusion thickened into chains.
Aidan’s eyes lingered on her longer than on Edwin, searching, assessing, weighing something unspoken. Catherine met his gaze head-on, unwilling to flinch beneath it, though the ground seemed to shift beneath her boots. There was no mockery in his look, only a measured calm that made her pulse stumble.
For one wild heartbeat, she wondered what he saw—a foolish girl dragged into another man’s lie, or a woman worth defending. Either way, she hated that the question mattered. Her throat tightened, pride warring with shame as she forced her chin higher. If he pitied her, she would sooner drown in the Spean than bear it.
