Iain pulled up his breeches and buttoned them.
“Miss Campbell?” The voice was directly below the hayloft window. Cait and Iain froze and looked at each other.
“I’ll be right there, Sergeant,” she called down.
“Stay here,” she whispered to Iain and scurried down the ladder, having given up on finding her hairpins. She hurried through the barn, shaking out her skirts and throwing her unruly hair over her shoulders.
Halloway was standing just outside the barn, and the shocked look on his face when he saw her barreling out of there, with her hair down and more than likely hay sticking to her in various places, would have been laughable if her heart hadn’t been pounding through her ribs and Iain’s seed running down the inside of her thighs.
“Sergeant Halloway,” she said with a smile and a surprised note in her voice.
“Miss Campbell. Cait.” He looked her up and down and raised his brows in question.
“I was just, uh…” She flapped her hands toward the barn. “In the hayloft.”
“I see.”
An awkward pause followed. Cait cleared her throat. “Is there something I can do for ye?”
“Oh.” He seemed to shake himself from his thoughts. “Yes. I came to check on you. Captain Palmer said he had been by earlier today.”
“He was here,” she said flatly, remembering Palmer’s inquisition.
Halloway seemed taken aback by the coolness of her tone. “I apologize if he offended you. He’s passionate about finding the killers.”
“Did he know them? Is that why he’s so…passionate?” She wasn’t certain that was the correct word. Palmer had been zealous.
“I knew them. They were good men who didn’t deserve what happened to them.”
She bit her tongue from saying,And the Scottish people being hunted by your fellow soldiers deserve their fate?
“Palmer told me some of your conversation, and I wanted to assure you that I told him there is no possible way you could be involved in the murders.”
“I appreciate that.”
The expression in his eyes was making her uncomfortable, and she realized they hadn’t spoken since he’d declared his feelings for her. At first she’d given that conversation a lot of thought and had been worried about what she should do. But since her kiss with Iain, and then the murders and the encounter with her grandfather, Halloway’s declaration had fallen by the wayside.
He took a step closer and reached for her hands, but she quickly folded them in front of her. He hesitated, his face turning red. “I’ve thought a lot about you in the past few days. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come to you sooner.”
“You’re busy,” she said. “It’s understandable.”
His chest puffed up at the implication that he was an important person in the English army. “Have you thought about my marriage proposal?”
She hesitated, struggling with her answer. She didn’t want to offend him and create an enemy, but she also knew that she couldn’t pretend to have feelings for him, even if it helped Sutherland and kept her a bit safer.
“Sergeant Halloway—”
“Francis.”
Francis?
His gaze drifted to a spot behind her and the color drained from his face. Cait closed her eyes, knowing what she would find when she turned around. The heavy fall of Iain’s boots on the hard-packed dirt was enough to tell her.
Iain stepped up beside her, and Cait opened her eyes to see that Halloway’s gaze was jumping between her and Iain, taking in the straw on both of them, her unbound hair, and how close Iain stood next to her.
“Sergeant Halloway, I’d like ye to meet Iain Campbell, chief of clan Campbell.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Iain said.
