A tear spilled from the corner of her eye, rushed down her soft, pale cheek, and all thoughts of theft and treachery tumbled from Lachlan’s mind.
“There’s no need to cry,” he heard himself saying as all his protective instincts came surging to the fore. “You’re going to be fine. I promise.”
“I’m not crying,” she insisted, lifting her chin, but she looked so frightened, he couldn’t bring himself to abandon her just yet.
He gently wiped the tear away from her cheek and looked into her eyes. It would just be for this one night, he told himself. He would give her the benefit of the doubt until she went back to sleep.
She placed a shaky hand on his chest, on top of his shirt, and he allowed her that liberty, covering it with his own to keep it warm. When at last the fear in her eyes began to subside, he led her back to the fire.
“Lie down now,” he said. “You need to rest.”
* * *
Catherine obeyed Lachlan’s quiet command, for she couldn’t seem to think clearly enough on her own. Dropping to her knees, she arranged her skirts, then curled up on her side and faced the fire. Lachlan covered her with the blanket.
“Do you think it was a memory?” she asked. “It felt very real.”
“Dreams often do.”
To her surprise, he knelt down and curled up behind her. He tucked the blanket in all around her and laid his heavy arm across her hip.
“You’ll be all right now.” His voice was unexpectedly soothing.
“After I was missing for two years,” she confessed, “I was presumed dead. My family gave up the search. Perhaps that’s why I dreamed such an awful thing.”
She felt his warm breath against her hair at the back of her head. Soon her fears began to diminish, and she closed her eyes, taking comfort in his warmth—and his surprising, unexpected tenderness as he brushed the hair away from her forehead and stroked a light finger back and forth across her brow.
“You seem very different now,” she whispered, looking over her shoulder at him, as confusion welled up inside her.
“Don’t get used to it,” he softly replied. “We are still enemies, Raonaid.”
Yet he snuggled closer, tucking his hips tight up against her bottom, while holding her securely in his arms. She could feel the beat of his heart against her back and realized he was breathing very fast. So was she. Butterflies fluttered in her belly.
For a long moment he did not move, and it seemed as if the whole world went quiet and still. Then he nuzzled her hair and lifted his head. He paused a moment and slid away from her. “This isn’t wise,” he said.
“Why not?”
“You know why, lass.”
She felt all the warmth and blissful serenity pull away from her as he stood and returned to his own bedroll. Again he watched her from afar with those sweltering dark eyes, until at last she drifted back into a dark and dreamless sleep.
Chapter Nine
Drumloch Manor
John Montgomery galloped down the drive to the groomed path at the lake, where Aunt Eleanor always took her morning stroll. Rain or shine, she packed her two silly lapdogs into the coach, drove to the bridge, where she was let out with her walking stick, and circled once around the lake.
This morning there was a crisp autumn chill in the air, and John sniffled before he trotted up beside his aunt. The dogs yapped and barked at him, and his horse reared up and nearly threw him.
“Quiet, you rascals!” the dowager commanded, pointing her stick at them. “Or I’ll boil you both for dinner.”
The dogs continued to growl at John and his skittish mount, but anything was better than their incessant yapping.
“Have you come with news?” the dowager asked, shading her eyes to squint up at him.
He dismounted and walked beside her. “Nothing yet. Not a single word from anyone.”
They had sent a few of their own men in various directions to search for Catherine, and the magistrate had his people searching as well—those who had survived the Highlander’s escape.
“I am confused, John. How could our girl go missing twice? You don’t suppose this Highlander is the same one who abducted her before? Perhaps it is a scheme to hold her for ransom, now that the inheritance is finally within reach. But no one ever asked for money the last time.”
“It’s impossible to say,” John replied, “for we haven’t the slightest idea what happened five years ago, or how she ended up in Italy. You have your theories, of course.”
“That she simply ran off, for some kind of wild adventure?”
He removed a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabbed the perspiration on his brow. “Yes, but that does not explain her memory loss. Nothing seems to explain it, other than a spell of madness.”
“But we mustn’t ever say such a thing to others. It’s enough of a scandal without adding talk of lunacy. If she is declared mentally unfit…”
“The inheritance will be lost.”
The dowager tapped her walking stick lightly along the gravel path. “Are you paying Dr. Williams well enough?”
“Aye. More than enough, and he knows it.”
“That, at least, is helpful.”
The horse nickered and tossed his head behind them, and they walked on in silence. John watched the two dogs scamper ahead of them, then turned his gaze to his aunt. She had a stern face, lined with years of bitterness and hostility. As a child he had always found her intimidating, and he continued to feel that way now, even though he was earl.
He stopped on the path. “Aunt Eleanor, I must be frank.”
She stopped and turned, and the dogs circled back to wait at her side.
“You know how I feel about Catherine,” he said. “I want nothing more than to bring her home, safe and unharmed, but I cannot accomplish that if I do not know the whole story. For that reason, it must be said … I sense there is something you are not telling me.”
His aunt regarded him with chilly disdain. Her lips curled into a thin, hard line, and the dogs began to bark and snarl. She lifted her walking stick and jabbed him with it, hard in the chest, so that he was forced to take a step back.
“There is nothing,” she said harshly, “that you need to know. Leave me be now. I must walk.”
With that she stalked off, and the dogs growled at him viciously before turning to follow her, tails wagging in the morning sun.
John mounted his horse. The corner of his mouth twisted in annoyance. Catherine was out there somewhere, most likely in the clutches of a brutal Highlander with dangerous intentions. John had seen what the dirty savage tried to do to her in the stone circle, and he’d heard the particulars of the Highlander’s violent escape from the prison coach.
Meanwhile Catherine’s inheritance was at risk as well. If anything happened to her, the funds would be sent to Edinburgh, forfeited to the Jacobite cause.
That John could not allow.
As he galloped off in the other direction toward the manor house, he wondered if it was possible to physically shake the truth out of his wretched old aunt. Someone needed to stand up to her for once. And those exasperating little dogs, too.
Chapter Ten
On the night that followed Raonaid’s strange awakening from the dream, Lachlan could not sleep.
Throughout the day, he had watched her with silent, broody fascination, becoming less consumed by his physical desire for her and more curious about her peculiar state of mind. She had mentioned on more than one occasion that she felt as if she were going mad, and had even referred to herself as a lunatic.
He’d always known Raonaid to be deranged and lacking in what he would call a normal human conscience, but somehow the woman before him—wrapped in a heavy blanket and sleeping in the grass—no longer fit that description.
After two full days of riding with her, he no longer felt that she was the embodiment of pure evil. He felt quite the opposite, in fact, and far less certain that she was lying to him about her memory loss. All he
wanted to do now, as he sat awake by the fire and watched over her while she slept, was help her, and it confused the hell out of him.
How could he possibly feel this way about Raonaid, the oracle, after loathing her for years, hunting her down with an obsession that bordered on madness, and giving up everything—everything—to achieve some sort of vengeance against her?
Suddenly she stirred and whimpered softly in the night. The sound of her voice was velvety and erotic.
Lachlan sat forward, resting an elbow on a knee, watching as she rolled gracefully onto her back.
A light breeze whispered through the grasses and fluttered the bottom of her blanket. He felt a shiver of need rush through him, though he didn’t want to bed her. Not exactly. He just wanted to lie with her and hold her as he had the night before. To feel her soft, lush body against his own, to smell her hair. To experience the intimacy and closeness. It all seemed like a dream to him now. He had not known anything like it in such a long time.
Raonaid lay very still and quiet in the dark chill of the night; then suddenly, without warning, she sat up—her back straight as a spear.
Lachlan did not speak. He remained utterly still, though his heart began to pound like a wild thing in his chest.
Tossing the blanket aside, she rose to her feet, gathered her skirts in her fists, and started walking away from the camp.
“Wait!” he quickly said, shaking himself out of his stupor and rising to follow. “Where are you off to? It’s dark, lass. You’ll get lost.”
Ignoring the warning, she trudged with purpose through the damp, tangled grass, straight ahead, as if she knew exactly where she was going.
Lachlan hurried to catch up. He walked briskly beside her. “Raonaid…”
She continued to ignore him.
“Are you dreaming?” He studied her profile in the bluish light from the moon. “You need to wake up. You’re walking in your sleep.”
He hurried a few steps ahead of her, then turned to walk backwards in front, keeping a steady pace.
Though her eyes were open, she did not see him. There was a strange barrenness in those bottomless pupils. It was as if she were not even present in her body. He waved a hand in front of her face. She showed no awareness of him.
Curious as to where they were heading, he followed until she began to run. He stopped for a moment and spotted the striking silhouette of a single standing stone at the crest of a hill, with the full moon behind it.
Raonaid ran faster, as if drawn to it by some invisible force. When she reached it, she fell to her knees and sat back on her heels.
Lachlan was out of breath when he caught up. He bent forward and rested his hands on his knees, watching her. He glanced at the stone, then sat down in the grass beside it.
Raonaid stared blankly at the standing stone for a full hour. Soon it became increasingly difficult for Lachlan to keep his eyes open. He wanted to sleep, his lids felt heavy, but he could not rest. Not yet.
At last, she reached out and touched the rough gray ridges of the rock, running her fingertips lightly across the surface, picking at the grooves with her thumbnail.
Sitting forward, Lachlan studied her vacant eyes more closely, then turned to the stone. Was she trying to spell a word?
She began to slap her open palm against it, as if it were a locked door and she needed to escape through it, but no one would come and open it. She smacked it hard with all her might, over and over, then sat back on her heels again and stared at it, frozen in silence like a statue, for another hour.
Lachlan did not wake her.
When the first light of dawn brightened the sky, she gathered her skirts and stood up, then made her way back to the camp. Without uttering a word, he walked beside her and stood over her as she climbed back into her bedroll and calmly went back to sleep.
* * *
Catherine woke to the smell of salt pork sizzling in a frying pan.
Groggily she sat up, and within seconds became aware of a terrible stinging sensation on the palm of her hand. She held it up in front of her face and frowned when she noticed that it was chafed and red. “Did I burn myself?”
Lachlan set the frying pan down on a rock. Without answering right away, he picked up the coffeepot and poured her a cup, walked around the fire, and handed it to her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, squinting up at him in the bright morning sunshine. She tossed the blanket aside and accepted the hot coffee, careful not to wrap her sore hand around it. “Now you’re scaring me.”
“Well, you deserve it, lass. You gave me a bit of a scare last night.”
“How?”
He returned to the other side of the fire, but remained standing. “Do you not remember anything?”
She looked down at the coffee and searched her memory, which was usually a futile exercise. This morning, unfortunately, was no different.
“No,” she replied, “but I hope you will be able to tell me something. I cannot cope with any more mysteries about my actions or whereabouts.”
He poured a cup of coffee for himself. “You walked in your sleep. I couldn’t wake you, so I just followed you.”
A slow surge of apprehension made its way through all her nerve endings. “What did I do?”
“You walked to a standing stone on that hill”—he pointed—“and sat in front of it, staring at it for most of the night. You scratched at it with your fingers and smacked it with your whole hand, which is why you’re sore this morning.”
She stared up at him in disbelief. “That is very disturbing.” Her stomach began to roll with nausea. “To think that I was out there, wandering around in the dark, pounding on a stone…”
He grimly shook his head. “You weren’t just wandering. You knew exactly where you were going. You were drawn to that stone.”
Catherine frowned. “But how? Why?”
He looked at her squarely. “I cannot answer that. It’s not something I ever understood, but I can tell you this: Raonaid always had her most powerful visions at the stone circle at Callanais. Angus said she was drawn to it, and he would follow her there. That’s where she saw his triumph at Kinloch, and sure enough, he later reclaimed his castle from the enemy invaders who took it from his clan.”
“What are you saying? That I was having some sort of vision? But I don’t remember anything. I didn’t see the future.…”
“Nay, I don’t think you did,” he agreed. “It’s why you were pounding on it. You seemed frustrated.”
Catherine stared at him mutely. “So this is proof … that I really am her.”
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 curs
e.”
“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 to rescue her. 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.
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