‘Cat, I beg you to listen to me. I know you are not ready to hear me now, but I pray you not to do anything until you hear me out. Please, Cat.’
Once his pleading would have warmed her heart. Once his pleading led to indescribable pleasure. Now, it chilled her from her skin to her soul. She would not answer him, even if she could. Closing her eyes, she prayed he would leave before she lost the last bit of dignity and control she held on to.
The sound of his heavy footfalls echoed into the silent chamber as he left.
* * *
Aidan followed the path back to where Munro stood waiting with Dougal. Without pausing, he punched the man who used to be his friend, knocking him off his feet. Dougal gave him a look of frustration, but did not intervene now. Hidden from view of the rest of the village, Aidan planned to say the things he could not say to her.
‘You had to do that, did you not, Munro? She was your father’s wife. I was your friend.’
‘That gave you no right to her,’ Munro argued back. But it was the tone of his reply, the hints of jealousy and possessiveness that Aidan had never realised before.
‘So you wanted her for yourself and I got in your way?’
The shock of his accusation flashed across Dougal’s face, but Munro’s reaction was more of the guilt he probably wore on his own face.
‘What did you hope to gain from telling her? That she would run to you and beg for your help? That she would be shamed into returning to you?’
Munro scrambled to his feet. Brandishing his fist, he fought with his words this time. ‘But I did not send my father to his death, you did that, Aidan MacLerie.’
‘Did I, Munro? I sent him away, I admit it. I wanted her from the first time I saw her and I sent him on a mission that would keep him away from Lairig Dubh so I could get her in my bed.’ Aidan shook his head. ‘But my aim was never to kill him or harm or hurt her. You did that.’
Munro gasped and shook his own head in reply. ‘I did not. I could not stand by and see my own father turned cuckold by you. So, I summoned him home to see to his own wife and her unfaithfulness.’
‘Munro,’ he said, talking now, not shouting. ‘Did you ever ask her if she’d broken her vows? You were my friend—did you ever ask me?’ He paused. ‘Nay, you did not. Instead you summoned your father back with some stories drawn from rumours and not the facts. Catriona was faithful to your father until and even after the day he died.’
Munro’s face drained of colour as the truth struck him then.
‘Between the two of us, we have destroyed two lives,’ he admitted. ‘I hope that God forgives us, for I doubt that Catriona will be able to now.’
There was nothing else to say now between them. Two men who had been friends and rivals for the same woman without knowing it and now were nothing. Only the thinnest of blood connections remained, leaving them related.
‘Come. Your father will have heard about this by now,’ Dougal counselled. ‘You should speak to him.’
Aidan did not wish to speak to his father—he wanted to go back and beg her forgiveness. He wanted to hold her and tell of her of the youthful madness and indefensible attempts at seduction that had driven him to have her. That he truly had not wished Gowan ill mattered not—he had, directly or not, brought about the man’s death.
Worse, he’d convinced Cat that he was better than the other men who had betrayed her in her own life. Just when she might have believed that he’d helped her, the truth came crashing into everything and she was left with a life in tattered pieces...again.
At least this time she had property and coins saved. At least this time she could walk away and live her own life with no ties to the MacLeries, if she chose to.
But he prayed that she would do nothing until they could talk. He wanted her to stay, to let him explain, but mostly he wanted her to wait until the shock of what she’d learned passed.
Aidan feared for her. He feared for their love even more.
* * *
When she was alone again, all control vanished and she crumpled to her knees and then fell to the floor.
He’d professed his love for her, to her, making plans and begging her to stay at his side. And yet, all the while, he was the one responsible for sending Gowan away. He’d given her the means to an independent life, more than she’d ever had before—property she could have called her own, money to use as she needed. He’d urged her to better herself and even his cousin offered her a place in her household.
She laughed roughly as she remembered the time she’d said something about his guilt driving all his actions and generosity to her, never dreaming she was right.
She’d been about to reveal the one thing to him that would chain her to him for life. At least God had some mercy and this happened first. An ill-begotten child from an ill-begotten love and life.
* * *
Minutes turned into hours and day became night, all without her moving or making a sound. Chaos reigned within her, her thoughts and feelings jumbled together like a tangled ball of yarn. When she noticed that the sun had risen again, she fought her way to her feet, changed her gown to one of the old gowns she’d brought with her and went to ask Ciara to set up a meeting with the laird.
