Restless, she continued to prowl the windows, her gaze on the cliff road. She tried willing her husband and the others to appear, but the mainland cliff-head, stretching as far into the darkness as the curving bank of windows allowed her to see, remained deserted.
She glanced at Rhona. “Shouldn’t they have returned by now?”
“Nae, my lady. I doubt we’ll see them before cockcrow. Perhaps not until gloaming.”
“So long?” Caterine’s heart dipped. “Surely not.”
Rhona looked at her. “Think you it will be easy to turn a holding the size of Kinraven into soot and ash?”
“Of course, not,” Caterine said, staring out at the night-darkened sea as she paced past the bank of windows. “If I did, I’d be asleep in my bed.”
“You are wearing a track in the floor rushes,” Rhona said, and Caterine glanced at her.
“So?”
“You’re unsettled.”
Caterine tried to see some hint of distress behind her friend’s dark eyes. “Are you not concerned for them?”
She had to be, for the depth of Rhona’s feelings for James permeated the chamber. It was there in the array of her trinkets scattered about, and through the number of her clothes hanging on the wall pegs.
“Have you so little faith?” Rhona stroked Leo’s back. “Your champion swings a mighty sword,” she said. “If I do not doubt my love’s safe return, then surely you should have no concerns for yours.”
“He is not my love.” Caterine stepped closer to the nearest window and rested her forehead against the cold, grainy stone of the elaborately carved tracery.
She welcomed its cooling relief.
“I enjoy his attentions,” she admitted. “He is well-skilled.”
“Truth tell?”
“So I said.” Caterine trailed her fingers along the window’s edge, watched the thin white mist curling above the waves.
“I am not surprised,” Rhona rattled on. “He is a fine, braw man. A gallant knight, a champion. How could he not steal your heart?”
“Have done.” Caterine straightened, but kept her gaze on the sea. “You are not going to squeeze a confession of love out of me. The only thing he has stolen from me is my aversion to his English blood and my desire to live an abstemious life.”
“So you enjoy lying with him.”
“I do.” Caterine owned, feeling her friend’s I-told-you-so smile clear across the room. “That does not mean he has stolen my heart. One pleasure can be savored without the other, as you of all souls should know.”
Guilt pierced her on the words, and she whirled around. “I am sorry, I did not mean-” she broke off because Rhona looked anything but hurt.
Far from it, she wore a knowing smile.
More telling, she was tapping her chin. A sign that whatever she was about to say, had to do with Sir Marmaduke. And so far, all her pronouncements and predictions had come true.
“I have it!” Rhona cried then, her smile widening. “You are right. He has not stolen your heart. You’ve given it to him.”
Caterine drew a strangled breath – of cold, briny air and denial. “You are mad.”
Rhona laughed. “Perhaps, but in the best of ways.”
“You are a long-nosed, meddling-”
“I am the friend who loves you, and you are in love with your champion,” Rhona declared, and Caterine’s heart agreed.
“Nae, I am not,”shereturned.
