Instantly Catherine gave up any hope of appeasing him.“Let go of me!”
She spit in his face and kneed him in the groin. He doubled over in pain.
Bolting toward the manor house, she shouted,“Help! Someone help me!”
She barely reached the other side of the stone circle before the sound of the Highlander’s heavy footsteps pounded fast in pursuit. She glanced over her shoulder, and the slight twisting of her body caused her skirts to tangle around her legs. She flew toward the ground, scraped the heels of her hands on the grass, and split her lip open.
He came down on top of her, then flipped her onto her back.
“You’re insane!” she cried, fighting to shove him away, glaring at him with fierce and vicious determination. She slapped him across the face, kicked at his legs, and scratched his neck.
“Lift the curse!” he demanded.“Do it now, woman, or I swear, by all that is holy…!”
“I cannot!”she insisted.“I cannot remember anything! Let me go!”
For a moment, the whole world went quiet, and the Highlander paused, suspending the attack. He stared down at her in a cloud of hazy shock; then his eyes focused on her bloody lip. It seemed almost as if he were seeing her for the first time.
Catherine lay motionless beneath him, afraid to move, lest he grow violent again. All she could do was stare up at him in bewilderment, waiting for him to do something, to say something.Anything.He squeezed his eyes shut and touched his forehead to hers, grimacing as if he was in terrible pain.
Catherine slid out from under him and scrambled backwards. He withdrew onto his haunches, gaping at her with dark, suffering, bloodshot eyes.
“Look what you’ve done to me,” he growled, shaking his head. “I despise you, Raonaid.”
“I’m sorry…,” she replied, even though she had no memory of what she had done. And it was ridiculous for her to be apologizing tohim,under the circumstances.
He watched her with a strange mixture of shame and desperation, then spoke quietly, through gritted teeth. “I beg of you—just lift the curse, and I’ll leave you be.”
“I assure you, I would have done so already if I’d known what you were talking about, but I have no memories. I don’t know who I am.”
His eyes darkened. “You are Raonaid, the oracle. The witch who put a curse on me three years ago. You are not the Drumloch heiress.”
All the blood in Catherine’s body rushed to her head as she tried to comprehend what he was saying. Was it true? Was she some kind of mystic, and had she unknowingly been deceiving the Montgomerys all this time? Half the servants believed she was a fraud. But why would her grandmother lie? Or was the woman simply in denial, refusing to believe that her only granddaughter was still missing, or possibly dead?
Just then the resoundingcrackof a gunshot ripped through the air. Catherine jumped back while the Highlander fell to his side, cupping his upper arm.
“Shit,” he groaned, utterly defeated as he rolled onto his back and grimaced up at the sky.
Catherine rose to her hands and knees, just as her cousin John came striding into the interior of the stone circle, reloading his pistol.
“I heard your screams,” he explained as he dismounted. “My apologies, Catherine, for taking so long to arrive, but I needed a clear shot.”
Lying flat on his back, moving his legs about in discomfort, the Highlander swore something in Gaelic. Catherine could not understand the words, but she recognized his tone of self-recrimination. Blood seeped through his linen shirt and dripped onto the grass.
John finished reloading his pistol, cocked it, and strode closer. He stood over the wounded Scot and pointed the gun at his face. “I am John Montgomery,” he said. “Fifth Earl of Drumloch. This woman is my cousin, and I would be within my rights to shoot you dead, you vile savage.”
Catherine rose quickly to her feet and laid a hand on John’s arm. “It’s all right,” she told him. “He didn’t hurt me, and look, he is wounded. You can lower your weapon now.”
John refused to do so. “This dirty Highlander tried to disgrace you, Catherine.”
“Indeed,” she replied, “but he regained control of himself before doing so.”
And she could not let him die, for he was the first person she had met who seemed to know something about her whereabouts over the past five years.
“I cannot let him go free,” John declared.
The Highlander’s lips pressed together in a thin line while he glared up at her cousin with contempt. “She’s not who you think she is.”
John raised the pistol again. “And how would you know anything about it?”
