She should have felt some relief to know the truth at last, but all she could feel was a wretched loneliness and a terrible grief, as if someone had died.
“You look disappointed,” Lachlan said.
“I suppose I am. Perhaps I have been holding on to some sliver of hope that I was not that vengeful person who put curses on people, and that my family truly was my family, and they were not using me for their own unscrupulous gain.” She looked across him. “I didn’t want to be her,” she admitted. “I wanted to be Catherine.”
There was a spark of some indefinable emotion in Lachlan’s eyes as he regarded her in the morning light. “I’m sorry.”
Catherine lowered her gaze and finished her coffee.
“What will happen when we meet Angus?” she asked. “He will identify me, that is certain now, but will he ever forgive me for all the things I did to him?”
“I cannot answer that, either.”
“Maybe we should turn around,” she said, looking up hastily. “I’m not sure it’s in my best interest to go there.”
Lachlan drained his coffee cup and shook the last few drops into the fire. When he spoke, there was a resurgence of hostility in his voice, and his eyes clouded over with something almost threatening. “You’ll not change your mind now, Raonaid. You gave me your word, and you must get your memories back.”
“So that I can lift the curse.”
“Aye.”
Of course, that was why he had come to Drumloch in the first place. It was why he had taken her with him. He wasn’t here torescueher. Like the Montgomerys, he wanted something from her.
Either way, she still needed her memories back, and for some reason she could not explain, she was certain she would find them at Kinloch. Or at least find something…
“I cannot deny that you have helped me,” she confessed, remembering also the promise that she had made. “You’ve solved one mystery at least. I now know that I must be the oracle. So I suppose I owe you this in return: I will do my best to find a way to lift the curse.”
There was a tingling in the pit of her stomach while his steady gaze bored into her with scorching, impatient resolve.
“Pack up,” he said. “It’s time to leave.”
Chapter Eleven
If Catherine thought the first two days of their journey into the Highlands were an impossible trial of physical endurance on horseback, the days following proved to be a cruel test of human fortitude, deserving of a shiny gold medal.
They woke early each morning, ate quickly, packed up the saddlebags, and rode into parts unknown with a relentless fury, as if the devil himself were hunting them down with his pointy pitchfork and burning flames of wrath.
The horses could not keep up a constant frenzied pace, so they spent much of the time plodding through forests and glens, galloping sporadically, stopping often to eat and drink. In the end, all the hours of the journey seemed to merge together into a single, endless dash toward the absolute outer edges of the world.
On the fifth day, as they trotted through a lush green glen with a river snaking through the center, Catherine looked up at the cloudy sky and tried to shift in the saddle to sit more comfortably, but her legs were as stiff as logs. Her skin felt grubby, and when she looked down at herself she realized that her fine silk and velvet gown had lost all its richness and shimmer beneath a nasty film of grime. She might as well be wearing a homespun rag.
And her lustrous red hair felt like a dirty haystack hanging down her back.
As they crossed the river, the horses fought the current in an onerous struggle to reach the other side. Catherine’s skirts floated on the surface. The icy water reached up to her knees—and she began to wonder if her memories were worth all this effort and turmoil.
Quite a distance ahead of her now, Lachlan climbed the steep side of a ridge, reached the crest, and reined in his spirited mount. The wind gusted through Lachlan’s thick dark hair, and the circular shield at his back bounced upon his broad shoulder blades. His tartan fluttered wildly in the breeze.
He was her only anchor in this storm, she supposed, as she kicked in her heels to join him at the top. He was the only thing keeping her from drifting away into that strange, mysterious dreamworld of stones and spirits.
A moment later, she caught up with him and took in the vast panorama before them—a vista of Highland hills and forests, lakes and streams.
“There it is,” he said, pointing to the distant foothills, their peaks shrouded in a heavy mist that shifted and rolled across the landscape. “Kinloch is there. Do you see it?”
Catherine squinted and picked out an impressive stone bastion of massive proportions, with four corner towers and battlements all around. To the east there was a village with a market square. All of it was difficult to make out, however, on account of the mist.
“I do.” Sitting back in the saddle, she experienced a tremor of apprehension. They had come a long way, and she was about to meet the man who might know all the answers to her past.
Her former lover. A man she had betrayed.
