Caitrin slid around beside Jamie and turned to face him. Taking his hands in hers, she steeled herself against his reaction to her deepest secret. Her old nurse’s warnings echoed in her head.Ye canna frighten people when ye reach yer new home. Do ye wish to be left all alone? Ye willna have any friends.Now that she had decided to expose what she could do, nerves make the words pour out of her in a torrent. “But I can. It’s something I’ve always been able to feel. I ken when someone lies. I kent ye and Toran lied to me about the bridge, but I didna wish to be left behind, so I played along. I kent ye lied when ye told me ye didna care when they sent me home.” She bit her lip against the memory and heaved a breath. “But there was naught I could do, and so I accepted yer words.”
Caitrin suddenly wanted to cry. From the moment she started speaking, Jamie had moved his head from side to side, slowly, signaling nay. He did not believe her.
No one did.
“There are ways, without auld talents, to do that, lass. The way someone speaks. Their expression. The way they move. Contradictions…”
His words stung, reasonable though they were. “Aye, and those ways will work, to some extent,” she admitted. “But Ialwaysken a lie, Jamie.Always. Try me.”
He studied her for a moment, and the corner of his mouth quirked. “Yer hair is green.”
She laughed softly, relieved he was willing to play along. Tiny bees buzzed along her skin. “Ye’ll have to do better than that.”
He thought for a moment.
She saw him tense a moment before he spoke.
“I killed my sister.”
“Ye didna!” She shook her head, concerned over what she felt. He knew he had not, yet he still spoke with conviction, as though he felt responsible. Why? “Try again.”
He grimaced. “I want ye to marry the MacGregor.” The bees grew angrier, prickling her skin, irritating her. Or was irritation her reaction to the idea that Jamie could want her to marry someone other than himself. Nay, irritation was too mild an emotion for such as that.
“Ach, Jamie. Ye canna lie to me. Ye do think ye want me to, I imagine, for the sake of my da, and to prevent a war, but at the core of it, what I sense deep within ye, is that ye dinna want anyone else to have me, save ye, and especially no’ Alasdair MacGregor.”
He pursed his lips and for a moment, his chin crinkled like a child’s will who is fighting hard not to cry.
“I dinna love ye, Caitrin.”
Bee stings exploded along her skin. She ignored them. Her heart lifted at the admission, for surely he meant it that way. If he believed her. If he believed in her talent. Else why would he say such a thing? “Again, ye lie. Ye do love me. Ye canna hide it, no’ from me.” Her Jamie loved her.
His mouth found hers in a heartbeat, blindly, his eyes already closed against the wetness she’d seen there. Aye, he loved her, though he despaired of it. That despair stung, but she understood there were reasons for it—reasons she might even share. Such as the situation they were in. The wasted years they spent apart. Their chances of spending any of the future together. She tugged him into her embrace and held him while he kissed her lips, her bruised face, her throat, then again, her lips. “Ye do love me, Jamie. Ye always have. As I have loved ye. Though I never thought to see ye again. I ne’er forgot ye and ne’er stopped loving ye. The lad ye were, and the man ye have become. I never will.”
He rested his forehead on hers. “And if that man has to give ye to another to wed?” His tone was weighty with despair.
“We’ll find a way. We will.”
“We must.” He lifted his head and leaned away from her as he stroked her cheek with one finger.
Her heart leapt to her throat as she felt him withdrawing, not just his embrace, but the warmth, the feelings he had for her. Somehow, he could hide them. Bury them deep. Was she so much a burden to him, then? That he must lock his feelings for her away, even from himself? His next words cut her to the core.
“If it comes to war,” he said, pinning her with his gaze, “I will give ye up. I must. Do ye ken I speak the truth?”
Caitrin fought back tears, searching his face for the part of Jamie that loved her. But his eyes had gone dark, deep blue, impenetrable. “I ken ye believe it now,” she said, fighting to keep her voice as steady as his gaze. “But when the time comes?” She shook her head. “I pray ye canna do it.”
****
Jamie didn’t know what to believe. Caitrin told a fantastic tale, and yet he’d seen strange talents proven again and again—first Aileana’s amazing ability to heal. It had saved his life. Then Ellie’s Sight. Now this. It had seemed Caitrin could see into his soul. And that had frightened him. His soul was a very black place, one he’d kept buried under a veneer of reason and joviality, to protect his friends and family from what had dwelled there for most of his life. He would not inflict that blackness on Caitrin, no matter how much she loved him. She could not love him enough to face that. No one could.
Could she simply be very good at reading people? And if so, did she read MacGregor correctly? She certainly seemed to believe what she said about him. Could he believe her? MacGregor had already proven he was not above violence against women. Of what else was he capable? It had already occurred to him that Fletcher—both her clan and her father—would not be safe with Caitrin wedded and bedded by that man.
The thought of Caitrin sharing a wedding night with anyone other than himself turned his stomach, but he forced himself to consider it. Once consummated, the marriage would be unbreakable, except by death. MacGregor would be Fletcher’s heir, by marriage to his only child. The possible bad outcomes kept piling up in Jamie’s mind. Fletcher dead, then Caitrin. MacGregor had much to gain and little to lose.
But even if MacGregor did not intend anything so dire, and in his gut, Jamie knew he did, what good would the Lathan treaty be when MacGregor could not be trusted to uphold it?
If Caitrin spoke the truth—and lacking the ability she claimed, he had no way to be certain—then he wasted his time negotiating for the MacGregor’s signature on Toran’s behalf. He’d be better off spending his time with Fletcher, turning him away from his insistence on making this match.
Confused and frustrated, Jamie stood and moved from the cot and the woman on it. He dared not share his thoughts. She had suffered enough already. He would not add to her worries unless he could not avoid doing it. He knew she watched him pace, but he kept his thoughts on the dilemma before him, rather than on the woman he wanted.
