Munro.
He thought he might get Catriona away before she saw him, but she lifted her head at the wrong moment and he knew from her stumbling step she’d seen him. Hatred filled the man’s eyes and he fisted his hands as he saw them leaving the hall together.
Catriona stopped then, out of surprise or some other reason, and the hall fell into silence, waiting to see how this encounter would go. Munro took a step towards them but Young Dougal and Angus intercepted him then, drawing him away with boisterous talk of food and ale and women.
He owed Dougal a debt of thanks for that. As he headed once more for the stairs, Catriona stood frozen, a desolate expression in her eyes.
‘Come now, love,’ he whispered, taking her arm under his. ‘We can speak more about this in private.’
That seemed to move her along so he led her up the stairs and into the tower where his chamber was. Twice they climbed until they reached the floor where his room sat. Opening the door, he allowed her to enter first.
Cat circled the large, very large, chamber, taking in the comfortable luxury in which the earl’s heir lived. She thought her cushioned chairs were so, but his furnishings put her modest ones to shame. She paced mostly because of seeing Munro here—or rather him seeing her on Aidan’s arm.
The hatred shining in his eyes was too much to bear and thankfully one of Aidan’s friends had stepped in to ease the tension of it. But now, her stomach threatened to empty and her head ached. She thought she might shatter from within. Cat stopped walking and looked for a chair on which to sit before she toppled over.
‘Here, sit,’ Aidan said, holding her and guiding her to one of the chairs. ‘I did not know he would return this day or I would have warned you.’ He left for a moment and returned with a fine glass filled halfway with an amber liquid. ‘Sip this, it will clear your head.’
The powerful whisky he favoured burned a path down her throat and into her stomach, sending fire, then warmth throughout her body. He sat next to her, watching her every move.
‘So you knew where he was?’ she asked.
‘Aye. He was assigned to guard one of my father’s allies—a man from Flanders—back to the coast.’
‘Did you send him?’ she asked. It would make sense. Once Catriona had moved into the house Aidan set up for her, Gowan’s son had disappeared from the village, easing things as he made her his leman in fact. ‘Is that what you do? Send people away when they are inconvenient?’ An impossible thought tickled the back of her memory, but she brushed it aside.
‘He made things difficult for you, Cat. I did not wish to see you distressed by his presence and his actions. You saw what happened just now. He believes you were unfaithful to his father and nothing will convince him of the truth,’ he argued.
‘He made things difficult for you...for us,’ she said. ‘Is that what you will do when I become a difficulty for you? Send me away?’
She did not know why she asked that question, for she had already decided she would leave him when that time came. Some strange mood held her in its control and she could not banish the worrying thoughts and feelings from herself.
‘I want you to stay with me, Catriona. I want you with me.’
‘And your new wife? She will accept this?’ Catriona knew how wives felt. She knew Gowan sought comfort in the harlots’ beds and she knew how humiliating it felt to her—even when his doing so was her fault. High-born or low, no woman liked it.
‘It matters not. You are the woman I love and I will not set you aside.’
The devil teased her now, prodding her to say things she should not. Or mayhap the whisky or the strange mood had loosened her tongue and the words she’d thought about during the hours he was not with her. Once he married, he would be spending those hours with his wife. The woman who would bear his name and his legitimate heirs.
‘So you will keep me in the village and come to me from your wife’s bed? Will you wash her scent from your skin before you do? Or will the taste of her yet be on your tongue when you come to claim me?’
The words poured out then—all of the feelings and fears she kept within, exploring them only in the dark of night and all the while knowing in the light of day how it would be.
‘Catriona,’ he said, walking towards her. ‘This can work between us. Any wife will know of your place in my heart before we marry. She will have to accept it, for I will not let you go.’
She pushed out of his embrace and walked to the other side of the chamber, crossing her arms over her chest and rubbing her arms.
‘I knew that Gowan slept with the harlots to find the pleasure he could not find in my bed. I knew it was my fault,’ she stated plainly. ‘Yet that did not ease the humiliation from knowing it.’ Then the deepest truth pushed its way out. ‘And I did not love Gowan as I love you, Aidan. I know I have no right to say this, but it will kill me to share you, even with your lawful wife.’
She sank to her knees, unable to stop sobbing into her hands, as she admitted her greatest failing—not that she had failed Gowan as a wife but that she’d allowed herself to fall in love with a man she could never claim. She should never have come here this night.
He wrapped her in his arms and held her there, kneeling next to her, as she cried. All the feelings of hopelessness and pain and guilt and sorrow bubbled up and tears flowed. He whispered words and held her until the worst had passed. Then he lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bed. But, when she thought he would lie down, instead he held her on his lap.
‘You love me?’ he asked quietly.
Of everything she’d said in her emotional tirade, those words were what he’d heard?
‘Aye, you daft man,’ she whispered back, touching his face. ‘I love you. In spite of my efforts not to.’
