She turned back to the potato and chopped it in half with a violent flick of her wrist. “I don’t need yer help.”
Chapter 4
It couldn’t have been any more obvious to Iain that Cait didn’t want him there than if she’d stabbed him with that damn knife she was brandishing. And yet he didn’t leave.
He was caught in his web of memories. It had been a different house, a bigger house, one that John had been proud of and one he had earned for his dedication and loyalty to Iain. Cait had been a different woman then, and Iain…Well, Iain would like to think he’d been a different man, but had he been?
There had been a child. A little girl whose name escaped him. The three, John, Cait, and the child, had been a happy family. Now there was only Cait, and something in Iain didn’t want to leave her out here at the edge of the woods.
He watched her cut the potato in short, angry bursts of movement. Her shoulders were tense and her face was pinched. Her hair was bundled into a knot, all willy-nilly, as if she’d had no time to think about herself. Rogue strands of fiery red hair had escaped to travel down a slim, pale neck. As she had yesterday, she continuously swiped at the piece that fell into her eyes.
She was older now. They were both older. Only four years had passed, but he felt a hundred years older in his bones.
He was walking a fine line, hated by his follow Scots who had no idea that he was playing a game with the English, discovering their secrets and passing them on as he could, ambushing them if possible. Was it enough? Was he fighting a losing battle? Should he give up and just live peacefully in the home his grandfather built and let things happen as they would?
And then he saw the devastation wrought by the English. He’d witnessed what they’d done to Colin MacLean when they took over his home, and to Sutherland’s English wife, Eleanor. He saw it in the faces of his fellow countrymen, displaced and hunted by the redcoats, and he knew that his weariness was nothing compared to theirs. So he continued to be the villain, hated by all of Scotland, so he could gather the information he needed to work for a better, more peaceful Scotland.
It was people like Cait who paid the ultimate price. People like him survived.
He thought of the seven people he’d seen leave in the wee hours of the morning. Was Cait fighting this battle with the English in her own way? He’d heard rumors of a secret tunnel system that was spiriting the worst of the displaced and hunted out of Scotland. He’d purposely not sought information on it, because the less he knew, the better. But now he wondered if what he’d seen last night had something to do with that. Yet he’d decided he wouldn’t confront Cait until he had more answers. He didn’t like thinking that Cait Campbell had secrets that could possibly harm him, but he wouldn’t draw conclusions until he knew the facts.
He stood, the scraping of the chair loud in the silence. “I’ll chop some wood.”
“As ye wish,” she said tightly.
What he wished was that she would forgive him for John’s death. What he wished was that he could forgive himself for John’s death.
What he wished would probably never happen.
—
What Cait wished was that Iain Campbell had picked a better place to chop wood. Did he purposely position himself right outside her window, halfway between the house and the barn? He’d found her ax, set up a wooden block, and carried a mound of sturdy logs to the block.
And then he’d taken off his shirt, and Cait had abandoned any pretext of baking.
He lifted the ax high above his head, rippling torso tensing, revealing a stomach laddered with well-defined muscles. Shoulders flexed as he swung the ax down, cleanly slicing the log in half. He bent over to toss the pieces to the growing pile of kindling and started all over. Cait’s gaze traveled over wide shoulders that tapered to a thin waist. His trousers hung loosely, clinging to his hip bones and revealing the dip of muscles that arrowed down to…
Cait’s fingers dug into the bread dough. If she were a fair person, she would admit that Iain Campbell was kind on the eyes. But she’d met many men in her life who were easy to look at. It was what was on the inside that mattered, she tried to remind herself as she watched those stomach muscles tense before the ax swung down to cleave the next log.
She missed having a man in her bed. She missed a man’s hard, warm body pressing her into the mattress.
She’d not been entirely celibate during her widowhood; she’d had a lover for well over a year. Cormac had been kind and gentle and the perfect man to ease her from being a grieving widow to being a woman who still desired a man in her bed. He’d not asked anything else of her, possibly knowing that she couldn’t give him anything else.
Cormac had died at the Battle of Culloden, and it was then that Cait vowed she was finished with men. They all left her to die.
The battle had been months ago, and she still missed Cormac. Not nearly as much as she missed John, though the dull ache occasionally took her by surprise. But she no longer desired a man’s presence in her life.
She was honest enough to admit that Iain was nice to look at as he chopped her wood. Surely there was no harm in looking when she wouldn’t be doing anything more than that.
He leaned on the ax, wiping his brow with his forearm and breathing deeply as beads of sweat slowly rolled down his heaving chest. Unconsciously, Cait pressed harder on the dough, standing on her toes to put all her weight into it.
A sharp stab of need raced through her, and she grabbed the rag to wipe her hands, breaking the hold that Iain’s nearly naked form had on her.
She put the loaves to baking, then tidied up her sitting room even though it needed no tidying. She rarely used it because she was busy either baking and cooking, hiding fugitives, fixing the sick and wounded, or sleeping. She was happy with her life, proud that she could contribute in some way, but that didn’t mean she didn’t miss the little family she had created. The loss of John was like a giant hole inside of her, never filled and always painful; the loss of Christina the year before John’s death was so much worse.
It was her biggest regret in life that she hadn’t been able to save her little girl from the awful cough that had racked her small body. Had Christina lived, she would be six years old now, running wild on her short little legs, chasing after horses, or learning to knead dough at her mother’s side.
Cait swiped at the hair that had fallen out of its bun and was tickling her eyelashes. Black Cat appeared and sat in front of her. Black Cat always knew when Cait was feeling low. Otherwise, the aloof cat was usually sunning himself or hunting.
