by Gayle Callen
“I will?” Cat asked. “But—”
“Ye’ll be spending the day with my sister,” Duncan said.
That should have made Cat happy. She wasn’t sure why it annoyed her. It was probably because she was suspicious of him, as if he were dumping her onto his sister while he did something secretive.
Alice suddenly arched her little body and, startled, Cat gasped. The baby cupped her head with tiny fists, still asleep, little elbows by her ears.
“Ye’ve got her just fine,” Duncan said.
She realized he looked down on his squirming niece with an expression that bordered on contentment.
“She’s a feisty one,” he murmured, bending over the babe.
Which put his face far too close to Cat’s own.
“I try to see them as much as I can,” he said quietly. “They might be the only children of my blood.”
She frowned. “Are you trying to say you’ll never marry? You’re the chief—why wouldn’t you?”
He glanced at her, his dark eyes speculative. “I’m a man with a price on my head. I would never offer for a woman and put her in such danger.”
“You don’t know what the future will bring.” Was she trying to console him, inspire him, or alter her family guilt? Guilt—there was enough of that to go around, with the lies she was now telling.
He looked at her, and she just looked back. Lies he’d forced her into, she reminded herself.
“Alice’ll want to be fed soon, I imagine.” Muriel was on her knees next to her little boy, using her wet finger to wipe a smudge from his cheek while he squirmed almost like his sister. “But we can walk a bit.”
Duncan straightened and spoke to Muriel as if his words didn’t affect Cat. “Stay within the village.”
Muriel rolled her eyes. “’Tis where the festival is, aye?”
Duncan lifted a little purse. “Some coins for the two of ye to spend.”
Money from her family whisky, Cat knew. But she’d come prepared. “I have my own coins,” she insisted. “They were hidden within my clothing when you found me.”
Nodding, he glanced at Cat, then cleared his throat. Alice was rooting at Cat’s breast, and Cat looked helplessly at Muriel, who smiled with maternal indulgence.
“I guess the bairn won’t be waiting. Come here, sweetling.” Muriel took her child and retreated into her house, calling over her shoulder. “I won’t be long, Catherine.”
And then it was just Duncan and Cat—and a four-year-old who’d been crouching in the dirt, but now looked up at her skeptically.
Duncan squatted down. “Robby, did ye catch any worms today?”
Cat grimaced, wondering if he was trying to give the little boy ideas. But Robby held up his grimy hand, and there was something dark and squished there. Wincing, Cat couldn’t help staring in shock when Duncan smiled at his nephew.
The tug deep inside her was startling. He smiled in a way she’d never seen on his face before, genuine and full of love. It made him more handsome than dangerous, and she thought that if she’d seen him across a ballroom floor, she would have been smitten.
He nodded at the boy’s little fist. “Perhaps next time ye’d best let him go home.”
“Papa said I need him for fishing. Fish eat worms.”
“They do,” Duncan agreed. “Do ye know what else worms are good for? Gardens. Let’s put your worm there for today. No time to fish during the festival.”
Dumbfounded, Cat watched as Duncan and his nephew reverently placed the dead worm next to the last roses of early autumn. After washing up in water brought up from the well, they sat side by side, discussing the fish in the local streams. She felt like an intruder, but also a curious observer of this man who was her enemy.
Except he was conversing with a four-year-old about how to catch fish to feed one’s family. She thought about Duncan’s parents, locked in a private feud that separated them, eventually permanently, from their children. How little softness he’d had in his life, and yet he could spare time and attention to his young nephew. Confusion, anger, disappointment—they were all wrapped up inside her, and she didn’t know how she was supposed to feel.
Muriel emerged with the now-sleeping baby. “She’s happy now,” she told Cat, smiling. “Shall we go join the festival?”
Robby jumped up from the bench and splayed his clean hands. “Uncle Duncan said we put the worm with the flowers, not just the fish.”
Muriel smiled at her son. “Your uncle knows what he’s talking about.”
Cat glanced at Duncan. “Why aren’t you coming with us?”
He stood up. “I have the assembly to prepare for.”
“Can we attend?”
“’Tis not necessary. Ye’ll have a better day with Muriel and the children. I’ll find ye later when we leave.” With a nod to his sister, he left through her gate.
Muriel looked down at Robby. “Can ye take Mistress Catherine’s hand? There’ll be plenty of people and horses and commotion—we don’t want to lose ye.”
Robby impatiently grasped Cat’s hand and pulled. She picked up her pace, then looked over her shoulder at Muriel, who carried the sleeping baby and gradually caught up with them. They followed the little lane back into the green at the center of the stone cottages. Cat felt shy and uncomfortable with all she knew and wasn’t saying, especially to Muriel. But soon she was tasting the labor of the best cooks in the village, admiring the wax candles and cloth for sale, watching archery contests and rock-throwing, and listening to pipers play. She took turns holding the baby or running after the inquisitive Robby.
Gradually, the villagers became accustomed to her, probably because of Muriel. Their open skepticism and wariness became curiosity, leading to questions about how she fell, how it could be true that she had no memories. Some people talked loud and slow, as if her wits were addled. More than once, Muriel seemed to be overcome with a coughing fit to hide her laughter, which only made Cat feel as if she soon wouldn’t be able to control her giggles.
Occasionally she caught a glimpse of Duncan, always on the edges of the crowd, never the center, though he was their chief. Maybe as chief, he felt it wasn’t his place to become friendly with his people. She knew how important it was for him to project strength, after his father’s failures. Or maybe he simply didn’t know how to be among them.
Maeve was just like her laird, a ghost on the fringes, her plaid worn as a hood about her head, draped to hide her disfigured face.
When Cat saw her and raised a hand, Muriel told her, “She’s always afraid of frightening the children, no matter how I point out that my own children are used to her, and others could be the same.”
“By staying remote, doesn’t she inspire more suspicion or fear?”
“Aye, she does,” Muriel agreed with a heavy sigh.
“She always seems so confident at the cave,” Cat said. “I never would have suspected . . .”
“That she has the same self-doubt as any of us?”
“Not you,” Cat countered with disbelief.
Muriel chuckled. “Aye, me. Our older sister Winifred is far more social and dominating than I. After Father killed Mother—”
Cat tried not to flinch at the bald statement.
“—I didn’t know if I could ever be normal again. Winifred redoubled her efforts to find a husband to escape, but I was too young—and perhaps too overwhelmed—to do that. My grief and guilt almost disrupted my friendship with Maeve, but she was the one who wouldn’t let it. In many ways she retreated from strangers or even acquaintances, but she was fiercely loyal to her friends.”
“She took me under her wing.”
“Aye, ye were an injured bird, were ye not? She could never resist someone who needed her help.”
At last, Cat and Muriel sat on a rock wall in the shade watching Robby play with the other boys. Muriel was nursing Alice again, and Cat found herself glancing at the other woman with envy. Muriel’s little family did not have wealth or fine castles, but she
was happier and more content than Cat had ever been. Maybe it was the love of the men in her life, and the children who completed her world. Cat had intended to flee the Highlands and her pregnant relatives, find her own little world. Instead she was here watching another woman have what she herself couldn’t.
Cat sighed over the conflicting emotions bubbling inside her.
“Be patient with yourself,” Muriel said.
Cat glanced at her in surprise. “I didn’t say—well, perhaps I didn’t have to,” she admitted wryly.
“Whenever things seem to be going badly, I remind myself of the good things, and how it could be so much worse.”
“Aye, I could have become a drooling invalid when I hit my head,” Cat said.
“And if your memories never return, ye have a chance to begin anew.”
“But where? I don’t know where I belong.” And that wasn’t a lie. She did not want to spend the rest of her life in her brother’s household, watching his little family grow. She tried to tell herself she could marry, but explaining her attraction to Duncan seemed difficult.
“Ye’ll never be alone in the world,” Muriel said, her voice suddenly sober. “Duncan’ll see to that.”
Cat couldn’t help the frown that lowered her brows. “No, I will not burden him.”
“He is the Carlyle, our chief. ’Tis his duty.”
“I will not be some man’s duty,” Cat insisted angrily.
Robby, on his hands and knees in the dirt, turned and looked at her wide-eyed. She must have spoken too loudly.
With a contrite glance at Muriel, she murmured, “I’m sorry. I know Duncan is a good chief, and that he means well.” For others, not her. “I am just . . . frustrated.”
When Muriel put a comforting hand on Cat’s arm, Cat felt her deception like bile at the back of her throat. Duncan had started this farce, but she was continuing it.
At last she was distracted from her self-absorbed thoughts by a glimpse beyond the cottages of a manor on the far side of the village.
She stood up to get a better look, but the cottages blocked it. “Is that another manor?”
Muriel didn’t even bother looking. “Oh, aye. That’s the home we grew up in.”
“So that’s Duncan’s manor?”
“The one he won’t live in?” Muriel asked wryly. “Aye, that one. Right now he prefers the cave, for all the reasons ye already know. But someday . . . someday I hope he’ll be able to live a normal life again.”
Knowing she should reassure the woman, Cat said, “He will, I’m sure. When this is all over.”
Muriel nodded, her eyes a little sad, until she looked down into the face of little Alice, who smiled up at her. Cat suddenly realized that the crowd had thinned, and most of the men were gone. Duncan’s clan assembly. She wanted to be there.
She told Muriel she needed a few minutes of privacy, but instead, moved quickly from cottage to cottage until she found the largest one, where people of the clan were entering by twos and threes. It was easy enough to wait until the entrants thinned, then slip in and stand behind them at the back, peering between broad shoulders to see. Melville frowned at her, but he didn’t make any move to send her away.
Duncan sat at a table in front, papers and accounting ledgers spread before him. Ivor stood to one side, intimidating with his sheathed sword at one hip, his pistols tucked in his belt. Other young men of the clan either stood behind him or in the first rows. The rest of the benches were filled with villagers, both men and women.
For a long while, Duncan took care of clan business, dealing with tacksmen who oversaw the land leased from the clan, and negotiating the exchange of lands so that everyone had a turn at the best tacks. Then to her surprise, she watched the men begin to line up, and Duncan began to hand out coins to each, while Ivor meticulously recorded everything in a book.
She suddenly realized what was happening—Duncan was partitioning out to each villager a share of the whisky smuggling money—her clan’s money. She sat still and shocked, knowing that represented money that her clan had sweated and toiled for—but whose labor had been paid for by her father. This wasn’t money out of her clansmen’s pockets, but her brother’s. Did Owen even know about the illegal whisky, or was it someone below him who managed it?
But here, in Clan Carlyle, the people were able to see up close that their laird provided for them, even though he was a wanted man. It was hard to blame him for helping his people. There was much to be admired about a man who sacrificed his own well-being and comfort to see to the poor and weak.
She wouldn’t admire him, but thought grudgingly that he was more than the man who held her captive.
Next there were the disagreements to be mediated, and Duncan showed himself to be a stern but fair man. She remembered someone telling her that Duncan had once been young and impulsive; that man had grown up. He listened to both sides of a disagreement, consulted his gentlemen, and rendered as fair a verdict as he could. Not everyone left happy, she realized, but the respect he was granted was obvious.
She wondered what would happen if she brought her own complaint to the assembly. Who would punish the chief for kidnapping an innocent woman? But she was a Duff, after all, an enemy.
Would he be treated as his father had, as if his verdict was divine, granted from generations of chiefs before him? Didn’t Duncan see he was doing the same thing as his father had done? He was taking the punishment of her father into his own hands, and didn’t care who was hurt as he pursued his vengeance. His blindness both frustrated and exasperated her.
At that point, their gazes chanced to meet. She stiffened. Did he see the irony of what he did here?
She went back outside, leaving him to his lofty position and its responsibilities—including the ones he betrayed.
Out in the dirt lane, she was so preoccupied, she ran right into Finn when the girl went running by.
Cat caught her by the shoulders. “Finn? What—”
“Get back here, ye devil!” someone called.
Wearing a grin, Finn shrugged off Cat and kept running. Cat realized that she was following Logan, and that Muriel and Maeve were bearing down on them behind an elderly woman who was red-faced with anger.
“Catherine,” Muriel called with relief. “Take Alice, will ye?”
Cat found the baby in her arms once again, and this time she wasn’t peacefully sleeping. She’d been jarred by her mother’s abrupt departure, and now she screwed her face into a little red wrinkled tomato and began to howl.
Cat jostled her carefully, up and down, like she’d seen mothers do. “You’ll be fine, little Alice, just be patient.” She tried to see what was going on in the parade of two children and two adults that had just passed her, but they were already out of sight around a cottage. Cat wanted to follow them, but the baby howled louder, and she didn’t know what to do.
“She wants to be up on your shoulder,” said a deep, patient voice.
She whirled around to see Duncan straightening after having ducked beneath a low doorway.
“On my shoulder?” she echoed, dumbfounded as to how she could accomplish that and still support Alice’s head, as she’d been warned.
Duncan took the baby out of her arms, and put her right up on his chest, where her little face could peek over his shoulder. Alice calmed down immediately, put her fist in her mouth, and sucked.
Cat let out a relieved sigh, then admitted, “She likes you much more than me.”
He arched one brow. “Much more than you like me?”
She could feel a hot flush of outrage work from her chest up into her face. “A lot better than she likes me,” she quickly clarified. “You know how I feel about you. You may have your people enthralled by your performance at the assembly, but I know what you’re truly capable of.”
“I enthralled them?” he said, ignoring her condemnation.
“You cannot be asking for a compliment from me.”
“Nay, but ye seemed to be offering one.”
“Believe whatever fiction you want.”
He continued absently rubbing Alice’s back. “I was doing my duty to my clan. They deserve the best I can give them.”
Regardless of who gets hurt, she thought. But he was standing there holding an infant with the same ease he held a sword. He seemed good at everything he tried—except dealing with his father and hers.
Thinking of his father brought a sudden flash of memory—the letters she’d found several weeks ago in Duncan’s trunk. She remembered that bold “A” by the man who’d threatened Laird Carlyle. Now she thought she might recognize the handwriting—and felt a surge of nausea. Did that “A” stand for Aberfoyle? If those threats had been made by her father, those letters were proof.
And then all she’d learned about Duncan’s father swirled together in her mind. Duncan didn’t respect him—but if he’d read those letters, he would have known his father had tried to stop the kidnapping of innocents, too. Suddenly she knew she needed to see the letters again.
Duncan looked around. “Why do ye have the bairn again?”
Cat was startled back into awareness of the present. “Oh, it’s Finn! Something happened with him and Logan and a clanswoman. I have to know what’s wrong.”
“Catherine—”
Ignoring Duncan, she picked up her skirts and began to run in the same direction that Finn and the women had gone. She didn’t see them at first, and passed a second cottage. Upon hearing raised voices, she turned down another dirt path and found a group gathered about Finn, whose folded arms covered her chest, and her head hunched between her shoulders, turtle-like. Logan stood at the girl’s side, looking bewildered.
Maeve’s expression was patient as she said something to the angry older woman. As Cat approached, she could hear the retort.
“The lads should be switched, and I’m the one who can do it,” said the woman, stepping toward Finn and Logan menacingly.
Finn, trapped at the back of the building but still uncowed, stepped forward as if to shield Logan. Muriel tensed, probably wanting to do the same.
“Mistress MacFarlane, it was a foolish prank on the boy’s part,” Maeve said calmly.
