“I fear for them all.” Caterine clutched the edges of her bed-robe, nerves damping her palms.
Rhona stepped closer, a knowing glint in her eyes. “You care about him, as I do James. Your worry sent you to examine the Laird’s Stone.”
“How can I not care for him?” Caterine started pacing. “He’s a gallant and noble-hearted man. But I was not examining the Laird’s Stone. I was putting away his ring.”
“Putting away his ring?”
Lifting her hand, Caterine wiggled her bare fingers.
“Why?” Rhona’s brow pleated. “You said you care for him.”
“I do.” Caterine lowered her hand. “I honor him too much to wear his ring so long as I cannot give him my heart.”
“You’ve already done that.”
“Nae, I have not.” The denial sounded hollow even to Caterine’s ears.
Troubled, she went to the darkened window embrasure and wrenched open the shutters. Needing, welcoming, the blast of icy air that rushed into the room.
Naturally, Rhona followed her. “If you have not yet given him your heart, then I am a virgin.”
“My heart is and shall remain my own,” Caterine insisted, sinking onto the window seat. “I have told him so.”
Rhona’s brows shot up. “He believed you?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Caterine adjusted the bed-robe over her knees, clung to the frankness that protected her from folly.
And pain.
“Oh, mercy.” Rhona tightened her lips, shook her head. “This is not good.”
Caterine sighed. “It’s not as bleak as you make it.”
“How so?”
“He doesn’t need my love. He shall have all else I can give him,” Caterine said, stunned by the pang of longing that ripped through her just thinking about him.
Rhona nudged her. “What ‘all else’ do you mean? Admiration? Respect? Companionship?”
“So long as he is with us, aye. All those things and more.”
“Such as?”
“You know what I mean.” Caterine pulled a small cushion onto her lap, clutched its edges. “I am not yet a crone. I have feelings, even if they’ve been frozen all these years. Perhaps it’s time for a thaw?”
“Did you say that to the Sassunach?”
Caterine hesitated. “I told him I should like to explore desire.”
Rhona’s jaw slipped. “Oh, my.”
“You needn’t look so shocked. If I recall, ‘twas you who claimed I am in need of suchlike.”
“But, my lady, I never meant the one without the other.” Rhona dropped to her knees, reached for Caterine’s hands in a strange mirroring of how her new husband had knelt before her in this very alcove.
How easily he’d made her want him.
Rhona squeezed her hands. “I’d so hoped you’d find love and desire with your champion.”
