But Caterine scarce heard their grousing.
She only heard another woman’s name.
She swung round to face her champion. “You will think me devilish bold, sir, but I am not a woman prone to courtly airs,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “I have little patience with such foolery and prefer plain speaking. Thus, I must say, for whatever purpose you dragged me up here, I shall make poor company lest you tell me who-”
“Who Arabella was?”
“Was?”
“Sadly so, for she lives no more.” Stepping closer, he cradled her face between his hands, a wealth of loss and empty years mirrored in the depths of his good eye. “Arabella MacKenzie was my liege laird’s sister, and she was my wife.”
“Oh.” Caterine gulped back the cold shame swelling in her throat. Guilt because his answer both sorrowed and relieved her. “Will you tell me of her?” she asked, wincing inwardly when a shadow of discomfort crossed his face.
Ill-ease swept over her, too, for the intimacy of the laird’s lug and the warmth of his large hands on her face stirred disturbing emotions deep inside her, and left her more open, more vulnerable, than she’d ever been.
“I do not often speak of her,” he said as he slid his hands behind her neck and began caressing the sensitive skin of her nape. “Even so, she is never far from my thoughts.”
“I understand.” Caterine sighed, her shame falling away, washed free by the bliss of his touch, banished by the tingling warmth his gently massaging fingers sent spilling through her.
“I would still hear of her,” she said after a few moments. “I would know of your late wife.”
“As you wish,” the English knight agreed. “My Arabella was a proud and passionate woman,” he began, the words overlaid with a dark, hollow tone as if wrenched from the very depths of his soul. “She died because she overheard a plot to murder her brother, Duncan MacKenzie. The perpetrators were my lord’s own lady wife and his half-brother, the harlot’s lover. They poisoned Arabella to still her tongue.”
“God’s mercy!” Caterine gasped. “Were they punished?” she asked in a tight voice, her conscience smiting her for encouraging him. The pain on his face shattered the casing of her heart with more effectiveness than any silvered words.
“They are both dead,” he said after a long moment. “And I have no doubt they’ve had to account for their wickedness before a greater judge than man.”
Staring past her, he heaved a great sigh. “The strife they caused has long been laid to rest and is best forgotten. Life goes on and it is the privilege of the living to make the best we can of each new day.”
“You speak like a holy man.”
“I am no monk, that I assure you,” he said, a trace of amusement in his voice.
“Nor am I am fool.” He let his fingers light briefly on the scar slashing across his cheek. “As you see, I was left with a living reminder of the dark deeds done that day, but I learned well from the errors I made-”
“That is when you were scarred?”
He nodded. “My own foolhardiness damned me as much as my opponent’s mastery with a sword,” he said, and blew out a breath of clear frustration. “So outraged was I, that I ignored the most elemental rule of swordplay and let my emotions make me careless. The mistake cost me dear.”
“I am sorry.”
Caterine looked at him in the muted light, seeing not the Englishman, but simply a man.
One who’d lost much.
“What has gone before cannot be undone,” he said, his tone indicating he meant more than his own ill-starred past. “Nor are all hurtful experiences entirely bad if we learn and grow from them. The burdens I’ve carried have made me a wiser, more cautious man.”
He paused, waiting as a particularly boisterous clamor from the hall below swelled into the laird’s lug, then slowly ebbed away. “I will not allow you to fall prey to the same underhanded machinations that cost Arabella her life.”
“That is why you wished to speak to me here? To caution me that you fear a traitor moves amongst us?”
“I do not fear it, I am certain of it,” he said. “James was indeed fallen upon by two intruders, though I would ask you to keep the knowledge to yourself. Someone in your household aided the second miscreant in his escape.”
He stepped back from her then, and the sudden withdrawal of his warmth, his strength, left her almost shivering.
Clasping his hands behind his back, he began pacing the spy chamber’s scant length. “I’ve sealed off the cliff-side latrine chute, thus rendering that access useless, but such precautions are of little avail if someone within your walls would throw wide the gate for your enemies.”
“Mercy. I do not like the sound of that.”
