His men nodded their agreement.
“Never cry when you can fight,” Catriona murmured to herself, still hearing Connor’s voice in her head.
“We have only one condition,” Kieran said.
“Anything,” Catriona replied, a joyful grin breaking over her face. “Anything at all.”
He nodded toward Simon. “We want him to be our chieftain.”
Catriona’s grin faded. “Simon? You must be joking. Why, he can’t be your chieftain!
He’s not even a Kincaid.”
“And neither are ye, since ye married him,” Kieran reminded her. He sighed. “Ye may be a descendant of auld Ewan Kincaid himself, but we canna have a lass leadin’ the clan. We need a mon.” He folded his wiry arms over his chest, shooting Simon a mocking look.
“And this one’s already proved himself handy with a pistol.”
It wasn’t until Simon took a step backward, holding up his hands as if to ward off a blow, that Catriona realized he looked nearly as horrified as she was feeling. “Oh, no, you don’t! If you think I’m leading this motley band of thieves and pickpockets into battle against a battalion of English soldiers just so you can lay claim to this crumbling pile of rocks, then you’re all bloody daft.”
“He’s right. You don’t need him. You need me!” Catriona cried. “I’ve spent my whole life preparing for this moment! I know the history of the clan. I’ve spent hours studying famous battles fought in these very mountains. You need wits and ingenuity just as badly as you need swagger and muscle.”
Kieran shook his head, the pity in his eyes even more damning than the determination.
“What we need, lass, is a mon. If yers will agree to serve as our chieftain, then we’ll stand and fight. If not, we’ll be packed and gone by nightfall and this Eddingham fellow can help himself to this crumblin’ pile o’ rocks.”
His face might have been carved from those same rocks. Catriona realized with a flash of despair that he was not to be swayed.
She turned to Simon, her desperation mounting. “May I have a word with you, please?”
Feeling the curious eyes of her clansmen traveling from one of them to the other, she added, “In private.”
Seizing his arm, she urged him through the arch at the north end of the great hall where they had stood only the night before and marveled together at the majestic song of the bagpipes.
Once she was sure they were out of earshot of the others, she turned away from Simon to gaze across the sunny vale. She couldn’t bear to look at him in that moment, didn’t want him to see how deeply Kieran’s rejection had cut her. The gusty wind tore at her skirts and whipped stinging strands of hair across her cheeks.
“You heard Kieran,” she said. “They don’t want me, but they’ll take you.”
“I’m afraid my military services are no longer available. I’ve been reduced to playing nursery maid to women who have completely lost their wits.”
She swung around to face him. “If you don’t agree to be their chieftain, they’re going to scatter to the four winds. The Kincaid name and clan will be lost forever.”
“And just when did that become
my
problem?”
Catriona took a step forward and splayed her palms on his chest. The strong, steady beat of his heart beneath her hands felt like hope. “Don’t you see, Simon? This could be your chance. It’s not too late for you to be a hero.”
To be my hero.
She didn’t possess the courage to speak the words aloud, but they were there in the pleading way she gazed up at him, the nearly imperceptible tremble of her lower lip. She was offering him more than just the chance to lead her clan. She was offering him her heart.
Simon gazed down at her for a long moment, then caught her by the wrists and gently removed her hands from his chest. “My chance to be a hero came and went a long time ago, darling. And I’ve never been either fool or dreamer enough to ask for a second one.”
Freeing her wrists, he turned and began to pick his way over the rocks and down the hillside, leaving both the castle and Catriona behind.
Simon didn’t return to the castle until full dark had fallen and the moon had drifted halfway across the sky. There was no joyous skirl of bagpipes to call him home, no voices raised in drunken snatches of song, no merry ripple of feminine laughter to stir both his heart and his groin.
The castle crouched at the edge of the hill, a heap of crumbling stone fit only for the rats scampering through its roofless corridors and collapsed dungeons. Simon felt an odd catch in his heart as he gazed up at the parapet of its lone remaining tower.
He moved as silently as a ghost through the archway and into the ruins of the great hall to find Catriona sitting on the broad stone that had served as her stage only twenty-four hours before. She was sitting with her chin propped on her hand, searching the sky as if its twinkling stars held the answers to every question she had never dared to ask. As he drifted nearer, he could see that her cheeks were stained with grimy tear tracks but her eyes were dry.
“They’ve gone,” he said.
Although it was not a question, she nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words more heartfelt than she would ever know.
“Yes, you are,” she said coolly. She rose to face him and he almost wished she hadn’t. Her eyes were nearly as flinty as Kieran’s. “You’re a sorry excuse for a husband and an even sorrier excuse for a man.”
His father had said far worse to him on many occasions and he had dismissed it with nothing more than a shrug and a mocking laugh, but Catriona’s contempt slid like a rusty blade through his gut. “What did you want me to do, Catriona? Lead them and you to an almost certain destruction? To be willing to watch you all die in a hail of pistol balls or swing at the end of a hangman’s noose, all for the sake of some ridiculous dream that should have been abandoned decades ago?”
“It was
my
dream!” she cried, fresh tears welling in her eyes. “And you had no right to destroy it simply because you were afraid that for once in your life you might have to live up to someone’s expectations of you!”
“Perhaps it wasn’t living up to those expectations I minded but dying for them!”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot you were a self-proclaimed coward without an ounce of honor in your heart. Is there anything worth fighting for in your eyes? Anything worth dying for? Anything noble enough or dear enough to justify risking your precious neck?”
You
.
The word rose from somewhere deep within his soul but never made it past his lips.
“No,” she said when he didn’t answer. “I didn’t think so. Well, in that case, I’m afraid I’m going to have to dismiss you.”
“Pardon?” he asked softly, feeling the edges of his temper growing dangerously frayed.
“You heard me the first time. You’re dismissed. Your services are no longer required. I’ll find my own way back to London, thank you very much, even if I have to walk every step of the way.”
Simon felt something within him grow deadly cold and hot all at the same time. “You owe me,” he said.
Shaking her head as if she couldn’t quite believe his audacity, she marched over to where Robert the Bruce’s chicken crate sat. It was fortunate the cat was not in residence at the moment because she heaved it upside down with a frustrated grunt and tugged at the bottom of the crate until it popped off to reveal a secret compartment.
She tore fat bundles of pound notes out of the compartment and hurled them at him until they rained down like confetti between them. “Take it! Take it all! Your half of the dowry. My half of the dowry. I don’t care anymore. You can spend it on your liquor and your gambling and your whores. I hope you squander every halfpenny of it and die of French pox in some opium den somewhere!”
Tossing the crate back to the ground, she turned and marched toward the archway.
Striding over the veritable fortune as if it were so much garbage beneath his bootheels, Simon caught up with her halfway to the archway, grabbed her by the upper arm and dragged her around to face him.
Gazing deep into her startled eyes, he said, “I wasn’t talking about the money.”
C
atriona gazed up into Simon’s heavy-lidded eyes. They’d never looked quite so green.
Or quite so ruthless. His grip on her arm was equally implacable, offering no compromise or hope of escape.
She licked her suddenly dry lips. “I paid you what I promised you. Every penny of it and more. What else could you possibly want from me?”
“You owe me a wedding night, remember? It was part of our little devil’s bargain and you can’t make a deal with the devil without expecting him to show up to collect one day.”
The husky note in his voice deepened. “Or night.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Surely you don’t mean—”
“And why not? Didn’t you just take great pains to remind me that I’m a man without honor? Without scruples? Unfortunately, you can’t say the same for yourself. Which is why you have no choice but to honor the promise you made to me.”
Catriona felt the steely jaws of her own self-righteousness snap neatly shut around her heart. Knowing his answer could very well break what was left of it, she asked softly,
“And if I refuse, will you take what I owe you by force?”
He studied her face as if giving serious consideration to the notion before finally shaking his head. “No, I won’t.” He leaned down, his lips brushing a tingling swath across her ear as he whispered, “But I will know you’re an even bigger coward than I am.”
He released her arm and stepped away from her, giving her every opportunity to bolt.
She stood her ground, glaring at him defiantly. “May I have some time to prepare myself?”
“Of course,” he replied, both gentleman and rogue to the bitter end. “Take all the time you need.”
******************
When Catriona finally worked up her courage to approach the moonlit grotto she and Simon had shared the night before, it was to find it transformed. Simon had combined their blankets and laid them over a thick bed of moss to make a cozy bower. He’d even managed to find several stubby tallow candles left behind by Kieran and his men and planted them on top of the tumbled stones. Their flickering golden glow mingled with the silvery spill of the moonlight.
He turned as she approached, unable to completely hide the flicker of surprise in his eyes.
Despite his preparations, she knew that he had not really believed she would come.
She drifted toward him, nervously smoothing the simple linen skirt of her nightdress.
Her skin was still slightly damp from bathing in a nearby spring and the gown clung to her in unexpected places. Given its chaste white hue, she expected him to make some clever quip about Joan of Arc going to the stake. But he simply watched her, his eyes shadowed by those thick gilt-tipped lashes she had always both adored and envied.
He wore only a pair of buff trousers and an ivory lawn shirt hanging open to the waist.
His long, narrow feet were bare and his tawny hair hung loose around his face. Despite the scars and shadows life had etched upon it, the masculine beauty that had so beguiled her as an innocent girl was undiminished. She feared that if he offered her even one tiny morsel of tenderness, her hungry heart would forgive everything, resist nothing.
Keenly aware of his gaze following her every move, she brushed past him and lowered herself to the bed he had prepared for her. She tried not to remember all of the romantic fantasies she’d once had about going to her husband’s bed for the first time. Especially since in most of those fantasies, Simon had
been
that husband.
She reclined on her back, fixing her gaze on a star that hung just below the graceful curve of the moon. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather you have done with this as quickly as possible. I know you’re supposed to be some sort of master of the art of love, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon dispense with the…pleasantries.”
“Pleasantries? You make it sound as if I were going to invite you to come ’round for tea, then leave you with my calling card.”
“You know what I’m talking about. I’d rather you just take your satisfaction and go.”
She could almost hear the frown in his voice. “With absolutely no thought to yours?”
“Isn’t that what men prefer?”
“Not this man.” Simon lowered himself, prowling over the top of her like some sort of great, golden jungle cat until his face replaced the moon in her vision. “So what you’re asking me to do is just lift the skirt of your nightdress, take my pleasure, then cover you back up when I’m…finished,” he said, repeating those naïve words she had spoken to him at her uncle’s house.
“Yes, please,” she said fiercely. “That’s precisely what I’m asking you to do.”
He studied her thoughtfully before nodding. “Very well. God knows I wouldn’t want to disappoint you again.”
Drawing in a shuddering breath, Catriona turned her face away and closed her eyes.
Spying on her uncle’s tomcats and stallions might have taught her the mechanics of what he was about to do to her, but its dangerous power remained a mystery to her.
She did her best not to flinch when she felt the warmth of his knuckles brush her calves.
He caught the hem of her nightdress and slowly folded it back, leaving her naked from the waist down.
She heard his sharply indrawn breath, felt the heat emanating from his body. A helpless whimper escaped her as his hands glided down to the inside of her knees, gently lifting and parting them until her thighs fell open.
As the cool night breeze caressed her like a lover, she realized she had made a terrible miscalculation. She was even more vulnerable now than if she had been naked in his arms. There was nothing she could do to stop his eyes from drinking their fill of her in the moonlight.