Seduced by the Highlander

by Julianne MacLean

  When he did not respond straightaway, her voice grew beseeching. “I am sorry for what I did to you. I beg of you, Lachlan, please, just take me away from here.”

  “It’s not up to me,” he said, turning his eyes to Catherine, waiting for some signal from her.

  She reached for Raonaid’s hand and spoke with compassion. “You cannot leave, not like this. Please stay and give us another chance. Our cousin John is a good man. He had nothing to do with any of that. He didn’t even know of it until recently.”

  “Indeed, Lady Raonaid.” John rose to his feet. “I wish to make amends. You are very welcome here. It is your birthplace and your home.”

  “It is not my home!” she shouted. “It never was!”

  Catherine stood up, too, and saw that her sister’s face was flooding with color. She looked as if she might suddenly bolt.

  “But it could be,” Catherine implored, her heart filling with desperation. “I am your sister, and I want to be a part of your life. My inheritance—half of it is yours. No matter what you decide. I am sure my father would have bequeathed it to you if he had known of your existence. But please, do not go. You have a home here, and a family that wants to know you better.”

  Raonaid laid a hand on her stomach and spoke in a shaky voice. “Lachlan, please take me out of here. Away from these people. I cannot breathe.”

  Catherine watched in horror as he rose from his chair and held out a hand. Raonaid pulled away from Catherine and crossed toward him. Without uttering a word, he escorted her out of the room.

  Catherine and John regarded each other in tense silence before Catherine ripped off her gloves and threw them onto the sofa cushions.

  “Where is my grandmother?” she asked in a voice that seethed with fury. “I wish to speak to her. Right now. And God help her when she faces my wrath, John. God help her!” She turned and strode out of the drawing room, calling over her shoulder at the last second, “Make sure they do not leave! Lachlan and Raonaid must stay here tonight! I will not lose either of them! I have already lost enough!”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “Was I dreaming?” Raonaid asked as she paced back and forth in the garden outside the manor, her fists perched on her hips. “Did you hear all of that? Or have I lost my mind?”

  “I heard it,” Lachlan replied, watching her with some concern. He’d seen this woman tear an entire kitchen apart, and he didn’t want to get in the way if she was so inclined this evening—for he rather thought this estate deserved a good tearing apart.

  “My own grandmother handed me to a stranger with instructions to drown me like a dog! What kind of madness is that? I am glad I was not raised here. I pity Catherine. No wonder she disappeared without a word. She probably ran screaming from the place, and purged it from her mind intentionally!”

  “Try to calm yourself,” Lachlan said. “It’s not all bad. You have a sister now, and a cousin who is a powerful nobleman. Neither of them had anything to do with what happened that day, and they both wish to make amends, so you cannot take your vengeance out on them.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “Did the earl not shoot you? Catherine told me about how you met in the stone circle, and how they sent you off with the magistrate to have you killed. I don’t see why you are defending them.”

  “I cannot blame them for reacting the way they did,” he replied. “I would have done the same. I came after Catherine like a ruthless savage, thinking she was you.”

  “Oh, and that excuses everything, does it?” she scoffed. “People can do whatever they bloody well please to me, because I am wicked and worthless. I don’t deserve anyone’s respect. According to a certain dowager countess, I don’t even deserve to live!”

  “What she did was wrong,” Lachlan agreed, working hard to keep his voice steady and calm. “Everyone else knows it, so you cannot hold the whole world responsible. And surely the dowager feels some remorse in her old age. For that matter, the worst is yet to come now that Catherine knows of it. Your sister was just as horrified as you were, to learn what occurred. I know her. She will not let it rest.”

  Raonaid gave him an icy glare and began to pace again. “What am I going to do? I hate them. All of them.”

  “Not Catherine,” he said. “You cannot hate her. I know that you don’t.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You are not going to take me away from here, are you?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. You need to resolve all of this and get a sense of who you really are. Otherwise you’ll go on wreaking havoc on the world for the rest of your life. Besides that, Catherine needs your help. She needs her memories back, and there’s a stone circle on the hill that’s calling out to you, I can well imagine.”

  She gave him a mutinous look, as if she was angry with him for guessing the truth.

  “And then what?” she asked. “If I help that chit get her memories back, what do I do then? I can hardly join their ranks, and start living like a bluidy princess.”

  He strode forward and regarded her steadily. “At the very least, you need to take the money. Catherine offered it to you, and by God, after what that wretched woman did to you on the day of your birth, you most certainly deserve to have it.”

  Her eyebrows drew together with disbelief. “Do you really think so?”

  “Aye, but don’t get too excited, Raonaid. It doesn’t mean I like you.” He turned to go back into the house.

  She watched him for a moment, then quickened her step to follow, and gave him a small shove. “Nor I, you.”

  * * *

  Immediately after speaking to her grandmother, Catherine went searching for Lachlan. She was so afraid he had left and taken Raonaid with him. What would she do if she lost them both? She would simply have to saddle a horse and go riding after them.

  As it happened, she found Lachlan in the blue guest chamber, which had been prepared for him. He was sitting in front of the window, lounging back in a chair with his big booted legs resting on the sill, crossed at the ankles. Outside, the sun was setting in splashing streaks of light and color, and the dusky-rose radiance beamed in on his handsome face.

  His targe, sword belt, and pistol were all tossed onto a pile on the bed, and he was relaxing with a plate of pink sugar cakes on his lap. He popped one into his mouth and licked the frosting off his fingers with a loud smack.

  Fully entering the room, she closed the door behind her.

  Lachlan casually dropped his booted feet to the floor and swiveled in the chair to face her.

  “Jesus, lass. You look like you’ve been through a war.”

  “I feel as if I have.”

  He set the plate of sugar cakes on the windowsill. “If it helps you to know,” he gently said, “I convinced Raonaid to stay.”

  Catherine swallowed hard over all the emotions that were mounting up inside her. She was terrified that her sister would not be able to forgive the family and would never wish to see any of them again. But Catherine was equally afraid that Lachlan would simply walk out of her life tomorrow and put all of this complicated madness behind him.

  She must have revealed some of her thoughts, for he rose to his feet and crossed toward her. “You’ve had a rough day, lass.” He slid a hand up the side of her neck and rubbed a thumb over her ear.

  The sensation stirred a pleasant warmth inside her. Oh, how she longed to be held by him. She needed him now more than ever, and it was all she could think of—to lie with him again.

  Closing her eyes, she turned her lips into his palm and kissed it. “I was so afraid you left me.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Catherine opened her eyes. “I don’t want you to leave. Not ever. I won’t survive if you do.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute,” he said. “You’re a survivor, Catherine, no two ways about it.”

  Fighting to stay strong, she nodded and backed away from him.

  “I just spoke to my grandmother,” she explained, working hard to regain
her composure. “I told her that she was no longer welcome in this house. John agrees, and he is making arrangements for her to live elsewhere, on one of his other properties. He will provide her with servants and a small allowance, but that is all. Outside of that, we will say good-bye to her and her wretched little dogs. I don’t ever want to see her again.”

  “How did she take the news?” Lachlan asked.

  “Surprisingly well, as a matter of fact. She didn’t utter a word of disagreement. In fact, she barely looked at me. She kept her back to me the entire time, and simply gazed out the window.”

  “Do you think she might regret what she did?”

  Catherine considered it, then shook her head. “She did not indicate that to me. She offered no apology, so as far as I am concerned, this is the end of our association. I will wash my hands of her. I don’t ever want to see her again, and Raonaid should not have to see her, either.”

  Catherine looked up at Lachlan’s beautiful, arresting face and was again tempted to draw him close, to lead him to the bed and lie with him for a while.

  He turned his gaze away, however, and she had the distinct impression that he would not welcome her advances.

  Spotting the plate of sugar cakes on the windowsill, she moved past him and reached for one, but took one look at it and felt her stomach turn. So much had happened. She had no appetite, so she set it back down.

  “What do you want, Catherine?” Lachlan asked, striding forward across the carpet. “Why are you here?”

  Her heart throbbed painfully in her chest. She was so desperate for him, she could have dropped to her knees and wept. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me,” he said. “The last time we spoke, I told you that the curse was lifted. Then you were reunited with your sister. We finished what we set out to do—we each got what we wanted—so I believe we are done with each other now.”

  Catherine shook her head. “Please don’t say that.”

  “But you know it’s true. Ours was a strange situation. You were lost, and I was cursed. We needed each other in ways I still do not understand, and probably never will, but it’s over now. And you were right about the proposal. I’m sure that one day, I will thank you for turning me down, and you will be very glad that you did.”

  “You don’t mean that,” she said.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head, as if this was just as difficult for him as it was for her.

  She took a few steps closer. “It’s not that I didn’t want to marry you.…”

  His eyes lifted, and she saw pain and confusion in their depths. “What are you saying now, lass?”

  “I’m saying that I didn’t think you were proposing to me for the right reasons. You thought I was going to carry your child for nine months, and then die. Surely you understand why I said no.”

  He nodded. “I do.”

  But everything was so different now, she thought. There was no curse. There had never been one. Couldn’t they start over? Perhaps he could court her properly. She would have her own money soon, and she was of age. She didn’t care that he was not a suitable husband for her. She would soon be a woman of independent means, and she could do whatever she pleased.

  But did he still want her? That was the question, and there was only one way to find out.

  She took a few careful steps forward and laid her hands on his chest.

  * * *

  Raonaid ran her hand up and down one of the ornately carved bedposts in her private guest chamber and was positively awestruck by the superb workmanship. She’d never seen anything like it before.

  The room was paneled in dark cherry oak, with arched windows that overlooked a small courtyard below. Elegant depictions of swans and peacocks were woven into the drapes and upholstery, and there were at least two dozen candles in gold-plated holders, waiting to be lit.

  How odd it felt, to be surrounded by such opulence. It hardly seemed real to her. She felt like an interloper, and yet she had been born into this world. She had the blood of an aristocrat running through her veins; her father was a famous Jacobite war hero—a nobleman who died on the battlefield at Sherrifmuir.

  Angus, her former lover, had fought in that same battle, and she wondered suddenly if he and her father had had the opportunity to meet. Perhaps they had ridden beside each other into battle.

  It was a strange thought—how they were all connected in the most mysterious ways.

  Tomorrow she would go with Catherine to the stone circle where their mother had begun her labor. There, in that sacred place, Raonaid would try to evoke a vision that might help Catherine regain her memories.

  Raonaid feared what she would see, however. What if she envisioned her mother’s death or a thousand other painful moments from the past? Was it not possible? Now that she knew where she came from, a whole new world of visions might open up to her.

  A knock sounded at the door just then and she realized it was getting dark in the chamber, so she quickly lit a candle.

  “Just a moment,” she answered. When the wick absorbed the flame and a warm, golden light infused the room, she called out to the visitor, “Come in.”

  The door opened, creaking on its hinges, and a stout older woman stepped across the threshold. She was dressed in black, her hair pulled into a tight knot at the back of her head. She regarded Raonaid in the ghostly light of nightfall, then covered her face with a trembling hand.

  “God in heaven,” the woman murmured. “It cannot be.…”

  A sudden chill hung in the air as a stark and bitter realization washed over Raonaid.

  “You are Eleanor,” she said flatly. “My grandmother.”

  The woman’s face sagged with a tomblike expression of contempt. Her jaw went slack, and she reached out a hand, moving forward.

  “Do not come any closer,” Raonaid warned.

  Eleanor shivered, as if she was holding back a violent urge to spit out a mouthful of poison, then stopped mere inches away. “I knew it was you,” she said. “For years, I heard tales of the Witch of the Western Isles, with the mark of the devil on her neck, and I knew it could be no other.”

  “And you were correct,” Raonaid said with an unexpected surge of pride as she lifted her chin. “I am that notorious witch, but only because you made me so. I know what happened on the night of my birth. I know you tried to have me drowned in the river. But I survived, Grandmother, and here I am—home at last—about to claim half of your only son’s fortune. What say you to that?”

  Eleanor’s mouth twisted with loathing. “I should never have trusted that midwife. I should have drowned you myself, or put you in the fire to burn.”

  Raonaid felt strongly inclined to grab the woman by the throat and toss her out the window, but she fought to keep her anger in check. Perhaps it was something about this room. Or the fact that someone had addressed her as Lady Raonaid earlier in the day. She did not think throwing the dowager countess out the window would be the appropriate response.

  “Get out,” Raonaid said simply. “Or I will drop you into the fire.” It was the best she could do.

  Eleanor backed up a few steps. “No need. I only wanted to see your face. That is all. I wanted to see if you were truly diabolical, or if it was all just a lot of nonsense.”

  Raonaid frowned. “You weren’t sure?” She strode forward aggressively, forcing her grandmother to quicken her pace as she backed into the doorjamb. “You sent a baby to be drowned when you weren’t even certain it was true?”

  “It was not worth the risk,” Eleanor replied, “and I see now that I did the right thing. You are most certainly diabolical.”

  Raonaid stopped and glared sternly at the vile woman. “No. You are the diabolical one, and one day, you will discover I was right—when you are screaming through the gates of hell. Now get … out.”

  Eleanor bristled with indignation. “No need to ask twice. In fact, I am being forced to leave this house because of you.”

  “I’m so sorry to
hear that. Now get out of my sight this instant, you wretched woman, or I will turn you into a garden snake.”

  Eleanor’s eyes grew wide as saucers just before Raonaid shoved her out and slammed the door in her face.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  As Catherine slid her hands up over Lachlan’s broad shoulders and touched her lips tentatively to his, she realized he was the one and only person who made her feel like herself. Her life had been turned upside down and she had lost her identity in every sense of the word, but whenever she was with him, she knew what she wanted and understood her feelings. Everything made sense.

  It made even more sense now that she was kissing him—for the instant their mouths touched, his passions exploded. He swept her into his arms and returned the kiss with wild abandon. His hands roved over her body, and he groaned with urgent need.

  “I need you, Catherine,” he said, his lips parted, his breath hot against her neck. “I cannot bear to be away from you. I’ve been in hell since we made love, knowing I could not have you again, and regretting how I made such a mess of it. I did not love you properly. You deserve so much more. I could give you everything.…”

  “Make it up to me now,” she pleaded, cupping his face in her hands. “There’s no curse. We can have each other tonight. We can do whatever we want.”

  His mouth covered hers again, fiercely and hungrily, as he carried her across the room to the bed. He laid her down, then went to lock the door. There was a firm click as the key turned, and then he was standing over her again—her beautiful Highlander—crawling onto the bed, and lowering his heavy body onto hers.

  A breathless sigh escaped her. She was in heaven, holding him close, knowing that he still wanted her—and she wanted him with an unstoppable fury that overwhelmed her. She needed to open herself to him, to let him inside without fear, to hold nothing back. It was all she’d ever wanted, and now, at last, she would have it.

  Wrapping her legs around his hips, she wiggled to lift her skirts while he fumbled with his kilt, pushing it out of the way. Everything was a heart-pounding, blinding blur of movement and desperation. She reached down and took hold of his manhood, guided him to her throbbing, greedy entrance. He looked her steadily in the eye and was inside her a second later, pushing very deep, as far as he could go, stretching her wide until everything went quiet and still.