“Where did you get this?” Catherine asked.
“From Abigail. It’s not fashionable, she tells me, but her mother was willing to part with it, which was good enough for me.”
“She gave this to you? How very kind of her.” Catherine wondered what Lachlan had offered them in return. Perhaps he took his shirt off for half a minute and they all fell over with their legs in the air.
“It wasn’t charity,” he replied. “Her mother made a healthy profit on the sale. Turn around. I’ll help you put it on.”
He draped it over her shoulders, lifted her long locks of hair out from under, then turned her around and buttoned it under her chin. The wool, though mended in places, was soft and thick, and it boasted a wide hood that would keep her head warm and dry in the coming days.
“Thank you,” she said. “That was surprisingly kind of you.”
“So now you think I’mkind?” He gave her a skeptical frown, then turned back to the horse. “Up you go. His name is Theodore.”
Catherine moved forward and mounted the handsome chestnut gelding. The saddle pouches slung across his back were near to bursting with provisions.
“Where did you get the money for all this?” she asked as she gathered up the reins. “You didn’t trade my jewels, did you?”
He swung effortlessly up onto Goliath’s back. “Nay, I have my own money, lass. I don’t need yours.”
“Are you wealthy or something?”
He gave her another look of warning that suggested she stop asking questions, then urged his mount onward.
She, too, kicked in her heels, and was pleased at least to have her own horse, so that she wouldn’t have to feel Lachlan’s big, strapping body rubbing up against hers every minute of the day.
***
By midmorning, the mist lifted. A fresh autumn breeze was gusting through the forest, bringing out the clean scent of the rain-soaked leaves on the ground.
Lachlan rode a fair distance behind Raonaid, watching those long, bouncy locks of red hair. He wondered with more than a little concern what would happen if she never regained her memories or remembered the person she once was. What would he do about the curse? How would he live? He’d be alone for the rest of his days, for if he ever let himself love a woman, he would be forced to relive the pain of his wife’s death.
He simply could not bury another.
All at once, he felt a more urgent need to reach Kinloch as quickly as possible. He needed to know the truth about this woman. Was she playing him for a fool, pretending to be without knowledge of her life as a witch? Or was she truly lost and in need of his help?
Either way, he did not wish to spend any more time alone with her than was absolutely necessary, for she stirred too much chaos in his mind. She reminded him of what he could not have, and it was torture, all of it, especially because she was his enemy. It made no sense that he was attracted to her.
They trotted through a shallow burn, where the horses’ hooves splashed through the rushing water.
“We need to move faster,” Lachlan said, galloping past Raonaid. “Can you keep up?”
She nodded, and he led them deeper into the forest.
***
After a grueling day of travel with few breaks to rest and water the horses, Lachlan and Catherine stopped for the night in a quiet glade near a slow-moving river. Lachlan built a fire and warmed the salt pork in a pan while Catherine, exhausted to her core, laid out the bedroll that was tied to his saddlebags.
While the meat sizzled, she divided up the bread and poured them each a cup of wine. She sat down on the bedroll, sipping the wine slowly and rubbing the sore muscles of her thighs. “I am so tired,” she said, “I can barely move.”
“I’ll not hear any complaints from you, lass,” he gruffly said. “You wanted to come. You begged me to take you.”
“I amnotcomplaining,” she adamantly replied. “I am merely making conversation. It wouldn’t hurt you to try. The way I see it, we are both prisoners here, each of us cursed in our own way, and we have no choice but to be together for the next few days. And I certainly did not accompany you because I imagined it would be good fun. Good Lord! I came because I am desperate to know who I really am.”
He sat utterly still, his eyes almost diabolical. “Do not compare your plight to mine, lass. You may not remember your past, but at least you have a future. Once you collect that inheritance, you can do whatever, orbewhoever, you bloody well please.”
She frowned at him. “Are you jesting when you imply that this is less important for me than it is for you? Or do you genuinely not understand how it might feel to have no identity, and no sense of yourself? I have been told a hundred times that I am Catherine Montgomery, and I yearn to believe it. If only I could. But in fact I believe nothing. Not in my heart. Ever since the moment my grandmother collected me at the convent, I have felt as if half of me was still missing. I see a ghost of myself in the looking glass. I have dreams that I am somewhere else, in another place, in another woman’s body. I’ve had doubts about my home—and how am I supposed to feel about the people who claim to be my family? I feel as if they are hiding something from me—hiding the real me. So when you appeared in the stone circle yesterday, I thought my prayers had been answered.At last, here was a man who knew the truth!” She was growing fevered with frustration and began to shout. “A man who could prove that my feelings were justified—that I was not, in fact, the person they alleged me to be. That there was more of me, yet to be discovered! But now, sitting here with you, I am beginning to think that you don’t know me at all, either, and that you, too, are mistaken. For I am certain that I cannot be a soulless witch.”
Lachlan regarded her in concerned silence from under a deeply furrowed brow. Then without a word, he served up the pork and handed her the pewter plate.
