With that, he released her. Catherine swung around to face him in the eerie candlelight. Rubbing a hand over her neck, she fought to catch her breath and calm the frantic beating of her heart.
“That was unnecessary,” she said. “And why on earth did you come back here? If my cousin sees you, he will shoot you dead on the spot.”
The Highlander sheathed his knife in his belt. “I’ve been hunting you down for three years, Raonaid. I’ll not give up now.”
“You are still certain that I am her.”
“Aye. Whether or not you’re telling the truth about your lost memories I don’t know, but one way or another, you’re going to remember the night you cursed me. I’ll find a way to make it so.”
She swallowed uneasily. “How do you plan to do that? The doctor has been thoroughly unsuccessful in helping me to remember.”
“Your doctor doesn’t know how to apply pressure like I do.”
She mulled over his meaning and spoke with seething hostility. “You’re going to threaten me again with ravishment, and try to frighten the truth out of me. Is that it?”
“Whatever it takes.”
She wanted to know the truth herself, desperately so, but she would not stand for abuse.
Taking a closer look at his black eye and the blood seeping through the front of his shirt, she asked, “How did you escape the prison coach?”
He put his finger to his lips again, as if he’d heard something. With light, swift movements, he crossed the library and peered out into the corridor. Reassuring himself that no one was about, he answered the question. “They tried to kill me on the way to the village.”
“Who did?”
“The magistrate and his thugs. He said they were to make it look like they were just doing their jobs, so they let me out of the coach, loaded their pistols, and told me to run.”
“And that’s what you did?”
“Nay, I didn’trun,” he practically spat. “I kicked the weapons out of their hands and used my fists.”
She glanced down at his big hands and saw that his knuckles were nicked and bloody. “But there were four of them,” she said with disbelief, not wanting to admit to herself—or to him—that she was impressed by such a feat.
“Aye,” he said. “Although there might not be quite so many of them now.” He peered out the door again to make sure no one was coming. “I might have killed one or two. Inadvertently.”
She pointed at the wound on his stomach. “What happened there?”
He glanced down and seemed to notice for the first time that his shirt was soaked with blood. “Ah, ballocks.One of them knifed me, but it’s just a scratch. I’ll live.”
They stood for a moment, staring at each other in the tense, heart-pounding silence, until he cocked his head at her shrewdly.
“If you’re thinking about screaming and turning me in,” he warned, “you ought to think again. Something’s not right here, witch. I believe they’re using you as much as you are using them.”
His eyes dipped lower, and he seemed to take in all the swells and curves of her body, awarding special attention to her neckline and breasts.
For a shaky moment she didn’t hear a single word he said, for she was growing weak in the knees under the stormy heat of his gaze. Everything about him was darkly sexual, burning with angry need, and she couldn’t deny that although he frightened her and made her fear for her safety, on some basic level, he fascinated her.
Catherine shook herself out of that treacherous fog, and worked to sort out what he was trying to say to her.
“I told you before,” she replied, “I am not using them.” She paused and shifted her weight from one foot to the other and recalled her constant suspicion that her grandmother was hiding something from her. “But what makes you think that?”
“You’re worth a lot of money, are you not? Or at least, Catherine was. Everyone in Scotland knows she’s about to receive a considerable inheritance, and from what I’ve heard, if she’s not alive to collect it, it will be forfeited to the Jacobite cause.”
She nodded her head. “Yes, but Iamalive, and it’smymoney. At least it will be in six weeks’ time, when I turn five-and-twenty. You think they are using me to gain access to it? To keep it from landing in the hands of the Jacobites?”
“Someone ordered me dead today,” he said, “because I know who you are. I wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to you, lass. Not before you lift that curse.”
“But Ican’tlift it,” she insisted.
