Angus immediately clamped her wrists and held them away.
She regarded him with questioning eyes, as if gauging his true desires and the strength of his devotion to his wife. Then at last, she stepped back and turned toward the water.
“What am I doing here?” she asked.
“You’re an oracle,” he replied. “Did you not see this coming?”
“See what?” she asked over her shoulder. “That you wish for me to leave? Why? Because your pretty MacEwen wife does not approve of my presence here? Is she afraid that I’ll lure you back to my bed?”
He frowned. “Is that your plan, Raonaid?”
She knelt down, picked up a stone, and tossed it into the water. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Angus watched her as she searched for another stone, found one and picked it up. She turned it over in her palm, dropped it onto the ground, then went looking for another.
Moving forward, he too began searching for a certain kind of stone, picked one up and handed it to her. She inspected it carefully, then hauled back and pitched it upstream.
Angus watched her resume her searching and decided it was time to say what must be said. “You cannot stay here, Raonaid. Surely you know that.”
She swung around and exhaled with agitation. “After I came all this way to keep my promise to you? That is all you can say to me?”
She glared at him like a hissing cat, turned around and waded into the creek. He took an anxious step forward to follow—for he never knew what to expect from Raonaid. She was quick-tempered and volatile. It wouldn’t surprise him if she tried to drown herself right then and there.
But she only splashed water on her face and waded out again.
Sitting down on the grassy shore, she tipped her head back and looked up at the sky, basking in the sun. “Why don’t you come over here,” she said, patting the ground beside her, “and lie down with me. There’s no one around to see. You can slide up under my skirts if you like, or I could do that swirling thing with my tongue that you like so much.” When he did not respond, she added, “A few minutes with me might help you see things more clearly.”
He stood behind her, staring at the back of her head. “How so?”
“If you remember what it was like between us in the Hebrides, you might let go of the foolish notion that your wife is your one and only true love. That’s what you think, isn’t it? When you take her to bed, you believe that you are her true love as well, and always will be.”
His gut clenched with annoyance, and he spoke in a low growl. “She is my wife, Raonaid. Mind what comes out of your mouth.”
She smiled up at him deviously. “But I have so many interesting things to say. I still maintain that she will betray you. When her brother returns, she will choose him over you, and you will be dead because of it. The MacEwens will rule here once again, and when you are burning in hell with that rope around your neck, you will wish you had listened to me.”
Angus rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, and watched the shiny water in the creek churn and flow slowly downstream. After a moment of quiet reflection, he sat down in the grass beside her.
“You truly believe that her brother will return, and that she will take steps to make him chief?”
“I know she will,” she replied confidently. “Which is why you should not send me away. If anyone should be banished, it is the wife you claimed by force, who never wanted you in the first place. You were her enemy, Angus. She wanted you dead the very moment you stormed the castle gates.”
He sat forward and looked at her intently. The loose tendrils of her hair hung in graceful curls around her face, but nothing could soften the shrewd, determined vengefulness in her eyes.
“Why did you not tell me about Gwendolen when you first saw my triumph in the stones?” he asked. “You saw everything else—my father’s death, Lachlan’s arrival, and the faithful army he would help me to raise. You described the battle in great detail, as well as the feast that would celebrate my return. But you said nothing of Gwendolen.”
Raonaid shook her head, as if she did not quite understand it herself. “She was never there. It was as if she did not exist.”
A blackbird fluttered suddenly out of a treetop, and they both looked up in surprise. Then Raonaid inched closer. She reached under his kilt and slid a hand up his thigh, and was just about to enter forbidden territory when he grabbed hold of her wrist. “That’s off limits now, Raonaid. Only one woman is allowed under there.”
Her eyes narrowed with frustration. “You’re a fool if you think you’ll be happier with her than you were with me. You should never have come back here. You should have left this place to rot.”
“And stayed with you instead?”
“Aye.”
He saw the unhappiness in her expression, the malevolence and loneliness, and could not bring himself to be harsh, even though he knew she was not what he once believed her to be. She did not know him as well as she thought she did. And she did not see everything.
“Murdoch is dead,” he told her. “He’ll not be returning to reclaim Kinloch.”
