They would be good together.
He walked around the common room and put out the candles, banking the fire and preparing to leave. Instead, he sat in the chair she seemed to favour and waited for her to fall asleep. In the silent darkness, her breathing echoed to him. Some time passed and he thought on her reaction to him.
What could have been done to her that she reacted so? Lying like a dead thing, eyes scrunched closed tightly, her body lifeless beneath him? He suspected he knew the truth of it, but it turned his stomach to think of a woman, any woman, being misused like that.
Oh, he could not deny it happened, and happened regularly, for the Church and the law proclaimed a woman was the property of her father and then her husband to do with as he wished. It was the way of things among men and women and the world.
His father took a harsh view, though, of his kith and kin if they mistreated their women. So, either men did not or they kept it hidden from the earl’s gaze and that of his wife and those who served him.
Would Gowan have done such a thing to her? He let out a breath. The man travelled on the earl’s business and spent much time away from her. She never seemed in fear of him, even when Aidan was pursuing her. Nay, from what he’d discovered about Gowan, he seemed to genuinely care for Catriona. Both his mother and father spoke highly of the man and a few casual words shared when they did not know he listened about the couple’s arrival in Lairig Dubh reaffirmed that.
Unless he asked her about it, there was no one else to ask. In spite of Munro having known her for nigh to eight years, Aidan would not bring up his stepmother or her history to him.
That left Catriona and, though he wanted to ask her, her reaction left him convinced she would not speak of such matters with him. Deciding that she must be sleeping, he rose and took careful steps across the floor, trying not to wake her. His hand was on the door latch when he heard it.
Crying. And crying while trying not to be heard. Muffled by the pillow more likely than not. It drew Aidan to her, the desire to ease her pain and her fears stronger than he would have expected towards a woman he wanted for nothing more than bedplay.
Or did he want only that?
He pushed away any ideas of the sort and walked back into the bedchamber. The crying stopped as soon as he entered as though waiting for him to leave once more.
‘Cat?’ he whispered softly enough that he would not wake her if she did indeed sleep.
The fire’s glow cast shadows across the chamber and across the bed, distorting everything around him and making it impossible for him to see her. She turned to face him and the tears streaming down her cheeks let him know he was right—she was crying.
He did not think about what he should do then. Aidan sat down on the bedside, the ropes creaking beneath his weight, and he removed his boots. Then he leaned back against the headboard and pulled her up into his arms, holding her head under his chin and brushing her hair from her tearstained face.
‘Hush now,’ he soothed.
His actions and words had the opposite effect of what he was trying to do, for instead of easing her misery, she cried even harder. So he waited, much as he used to for his sister when she came to him with her heartaches or other feminine disasters that befell younger sisters.
Aidan wondered if she’d not grieved for Gowan’s loss yet. The days and weeks since his death had not been easy for her and she may not not have let her weakness show, even with her friend Muireall. He’d only watched her from afar during the funeral and saw only the stony, shocked façade worn by those who have suffered a great loss.
His conscience bothered him once more. If he had not seen her and decided to pursue her, he would not have sent Gowan away. If Gowan had remained, Aidan would have lost interest at some point and moved on to easier quarries. Even with all of that being true, he still wanted her in a way that was new to him.
She began to quiet in his embrace and, as she relaxed against his chest, he wondered where this would all lead. Somehow, he knew that it would be very easy to get deeply involved with her and that it would not end just as easily. And once more, that thought did not frighten him off as it should.
‘I think you may have got the worst part of this arrangement between us, my lo— Aidan MacLerie,’ she whispered in between sniffling. ‘I have never been good at anything in my life and now I cannot even be a good whore to you.’
‘You are not a whore, Catriona.’ He smoothed her hair again. ‘You could never be any man’s whore.’ She pushed back to look at him then and he released her from his embrace. ‘And what else have you failed at in your life?’
‘But that is what you wanted me to be, is it not? What else do you call a woman who gives herself to a man not her husband, to a man who could never be that?’ She ignored the other question completely, not willing to share her past with him yet. Or ever?
Words flew through his thoughts—words to ease her pain and confusion—but he could not say any of them. No matter how she felt, he would never have thought her his whore.
‘Just so,’ she said with a sad shake of her head before he could explain. ‘I have been thinking about how to end this.’
He sat up then as she sat back on her heels in a shift too thin to hide any of her body from his sight—even if the fire did not light the bedchamber the way he’d like it to be lit. ‘End this? Have we even begun it yet?’ he asked her.
‘No matter,’ she said, brushing off his words. ‘If you would but lend me a small sum of money, I can leave and make my way—’
‘To where, Cat? Where would you go?’ He wanted to know because, at this moment, the thought of her leaving him did not sit well with him.
He wanted her. Damn it to hell, he wanted her!
His question stopped her then. She had not thought it out, that much was clear. She shrugged then and tossed her hair over her shoulder. Her full breasts strained against the thin fabric, visible there to him. His erection sprang to life on only a threadbare hope such as that.
‘I will accept Hugh’s cousin’s offer of marriage, I think,’ she said without a hint of awareness of the danger rising in him about her leaving with another man. ‘He lives in the north and has need of a wife. Well, his five motherless bairns have need of a new mother.’
