He circled around the bottom of the bed and stood at the foot of it, one hand on the corner post, his gaze dark and troubled as he observed the length of her body beneath the covers.
Something prompted her to raise her knee, and his eyes lifted keenly to meet hers.
“Why are you here?” she asked, still angry with him for what had occurred in the solar, while at the same time her insides were careening with both trepidation and desire. She hated herself for feeling that way, after all that had happened.
“Lady Catherine…”His tone was quiet and seductive, and the sound of it matched perfectly with the erotic spectacle of his muscular warrior’s body. His big hand opened and closed around the bedpost. “Do youreallywant to know why I’m here?”
Catherine inched upward on the pillows.“Yes.…”
The word spilled past her lips in a breathless sigh, and she wanted to strangle herself with her own stockings, for she was not some smitten young barmaid in a village inn. She was a lady of noble breeding, and she would not be so easily seduced by his charms.
“But I don’t care what you have to say to me,” she quickly amended. “I will never forgive you for your reprehensible behavior in the solar. You were a selfish brute.”
“Indeed I was,” he agreed, surprising her by lifting a knee and climbing onto the bed.
Her belly swarmed with nervous butterflies, but she fought the urge to blush or stammer. “And that’s all you have to say to me?”
“No, that is not all.” He stretched out on his side beside her, propped up on one elbow, and cupped her cheek in his hand. “I owe you an apology, lass. I should have listened to you in the stone circle when you denied my accusations. I should never have taken you from your home. And while we were traveling, I suspected something was wrong, that you were not the woman I despised, and yet I pushed on. I should have listened to my instincts—and to you—and for that I am deeply sorry.”
Catherine regarded him with shock in the pale afternoon light, and tried to ascertain if he was sincere, or simply trying to charm her into forgetting that he’d treated her like a witch and deserved to have his head soaked in brine.
All her instincts told her that he was genuine, but she wasn’t sure she could trust those instincts—not when her foolish body was melting into a puddle of infatuation at the wonderful nearness of him.
“What about your beastly behavior in the solar just now?” she added, working hard to sound impervious to his apology when she knew how difficult it must have been for him to come here and essentially get down on his knees to grovel. But after everything that had happened between them, shewantedto see him grovel. It was only right. “Do you have anything to say about that?”
He looked into her eyes, then down at her lips. His thumb brushed across her cheek, and she felt a passionate fluttering in her belly.
“That, too, was wrong,” he softly said. “I was selfish and harsh, when I should have been sympathetic. None of this was your fault, yet I have been a scoundrel with you since the beginning, never more so than today. My only excuse is that I desired you, and when I learned that you were not the woman I hated, I could not confront those desires. You have to understand, lass, that I’ve spent the past three years pushing such feelings away. But today, it was cowardly of me, and you deserved better. So I will make my apologies to you, Lady Catherine, and beg for your forgiveness.”
Her heart began to hammer against her ribs as she pondered the fact that he’d just confessed desire, when she’d presumed he felt nothing for her but malice and loathing.
Despite everything, she desired him, too; there could be no denying it. He had lit a fire in her body that first day, kissing her senseless in the stone circle, and she had not been able to quench it since.
Now, here he lay, touching her cheek, begging for forgiveness, and confessing mutual desire.…
Catherine rested her hand on his chest and felt the beat of his heart. He allowed it only for a moment, then took hold of her hand and set it between them, back on the bed.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve let a woman touch me,” he said.
“What about the night I woke from the dream?” she replied. “I touched you then, and you touched me, too.”
“Aye, but I could not stay long beside you.”
A swarm of butterflies fluttered in her belly as she looked at his soft mouth and dreamed of how it would feel to be kissed by him again.
Lachlan gazed languorously into her eyes, and she wet her throbbing lips. A hot ache pulsed in her belly. How was it possible that the mere power of his gaze could fill her with such feverish desire? She wanted overwhelmingly to touch him.
“There is another reason why I am here,” he explained as if he sensed her yearnings and knew he had to interrupt them. “I have information about your twin. Angus told me that Raonaid has been living in Edinburgh.”
Catherine leaned up on her elbow. “He’s certain?”
“Aye. Do you want to meet her?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied.
He reflected upon that for a moment. “As you know, I have my own reasons to see her again,” he said, “so I will be leaving very soon. If you wish to accompany me, I will deliver you to Edinburgh safely, and do whatever it takes to protect you, and help you regain your memories. Perhaps Raonaid can be of some assistance to you. She is a mystic, after all.”
“But if she truly has such powers and sees things in visions, why has she never known that she has a twin? Angus was her lover for a year and she did not reveal it to him. Do you think she knows about me?”
