All he had to do was think of his married brethren to know that it was. With the exception of MacLean, who’d been estranged from his wife since the start of the war, every one of his fellow Guardsmen was faithful to his wife. Even Raider and Hawk, and they had nearly as many women throwing themselves at them as he did.
Of course, they were “in love” with their wives, which was an emotion Gregor didn’t know whether he was even capable of feeling. He’d cared about Isobel—and sure as hell lusted for her—but the kind of flowery romantic love the bards wrote about, or the powerful this-is-the-only-woman-for-me and I’ll-do-anything-including-die-for-you emotion his friends had found? He’d never felt that.
You’d die for Cate.
The voice at the back of his mind jarred him. But that was different, wasn’t it? She was his responsibility, his family—he was supposed to feel that way.
She was hisfamily.
Ah, hell. His heart sank like a stone in his chest. She was his family, and he’d tried to get rid of her with no more thought or care than he would have given to a stray cat—or dog, he thought, recalling his words to Pip earlier. Worse, he suspected he’d unintentionally hit a tender spot with respect to the father who’d abandoned her.
The father he hadn’t known about. He’d been surprised—and not a little angry—to learn about her lie, but perhaps he shouldn’t have been. He’d always sensed something wrong when Kirkpatrick’s name was mentioned. Now he understood why. He didn’t like that she’d lied to him, but he supposed he couldn’t blame her for trying to erase the “stain” of her birth when given an opportunity. Though he didn’t care about such things, she wouldn’t have known that at the time.
Actually, he felt more outraged on her behalf. What kind of man could abandon his own child like that? No wonder she hated him. Gregor would kill the bastard himself if he could.
Yet she probably thought he was trying to do the same thing by getting rid of her—walking away from her, just as her bastard of a father had done.
He crossed purposefully to the bed and forced himself to lie down.
Cate wasn’t just family, and he knew it. What he felt for her was different. Confusing, frustrating, and maddening perhaps, but different. He didn’t know what it meant, but he suspected that if he ever wanted another peaceful night of sleep, he might indeed have to marry her.
For the first time that night, he closed his eyes and the images did not return. He might have been able to sleep if the screams hadn’t torn him from his bed.
“Stop!” she tried to shout. “Get off my mother!”
But the soldier kept thrusting, his mail-clad form moving between her mother’s legs. He turned, the dark, refined features that should be handsome twisted in an ugly, taunting smile that dared her to try to stop him. She struck him with the hoe over and over, but all it did was make him laugh harder. The maniacal sound rang in her ears, mixing with her mother’s screams.
Make it stop! Please, make it stop!
Strong arms grabbed her, and she tried to wrestle free. “No!” she cried. “I have to help her!”
“Cate!” a deep voice penetrated the darkness. She was shaking. Nay, someone was shaking her. “Wake up, sweetheart. You have to wake up. It’s just a dream.”
She opened her eyes. Gregor’s face stared back at her in the shadows. She was sitting up on her bed in his arms. It was he who was holding her, not the soldiers.
She leaned into him, burying herself against his chest, taking refuge in the protective strength of the arms around her, and letting him comfort her. He murmured low, soothing words against her head as he gently rocked her sobs away. Gradually, the breath returned to her lungs and the panicked race of her pulse began to slow.
It was just a horrible dream, a return of one of the nightmares that had haunted her for years after that horrible day. There were different versions, including the one she’d just had where the soldier was raping her mother, and she kept hitting him over and over but he wouldn’t die. Another was of Cate in the well, starving and dying of thirst. All the joy and relief she experienced when she heard the rescuers turned to horror when the face that looked down at her wasn’t Gregor’s, but the soldier’s. The worst was the nightmare that actually happened, the replaying in her mind of those hideous seconds of her mother’s death, in slow, precise detail.
She thought she’d rid herself of the nightmares for good, but all it took was seeing that man today to bring them back. Deep down, she knew they wouldn’t be gone until the soldier paid for what he’d done.
Suddenly, angry at herself for the weakness, she drew back from the wall of Gregor’s chest—hisbarechest, as she was just noticing—dabbing her eyes on the sleeve of her linen chemise. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
He released her. “You had a nightmare.”
His gaze turned to the open doorway. Her embarrassment increased tenfold. It seemed like half the household was standing on the small landing outside her room. In the stream of light coming from the torch mounted outside her chamber she could see the concerned faces of Ete, Lizzie, Pip, and two of Gregor’s guardsmen, Bryan and Cormac.
“It’s all right,” Gregor said. “Return to your rooms. I have her.”
I have her. Though she knew it meant nothing, her heart tugged sharply nonetheless.
The light dimmed as the crowd dispersed. Gregor stood to light a candle from the brazier, taking the time to add another block of peat to the fire. Before returning to sit beside her on the bed, he closed the door.
Suddenly self-conscious, she felt her cheeks grow hot under his steady gaze. The temperature in the room seemed to have shot from the dead of winter to the height of summer in a few seconds. She was hot, and she knew it wasn’t from the peat; it was from the intimacy of being alone with him in her small bedchamber. Of course, the broad, muscular chest shimmering in the candlelight that seemed to fill every inch of her vision wasn’t helping matters.
Good gracious, how did it get so defined like that? There didn’t appear to be any spare flesh on the man of which to speak. She could count the lines crossing his stomach, for heaven’s sake.
He truly was magnificent.
