The Arrow: A Highland Guard Novel (The Highland Guard) (36 page)

Seonaid’s gaze, which had been fixed on her, suddenly shifted to the left, looking past Cate’s shoulder and coming to rest on something.

Nay, on
someone
.

The bottom fell out of Cate’s stomach. The blood in her veins turned to ice. She didn’t need to look behind her to know who it was.

Seonaid smiled. “My laird, I was just congratulating Cate on her coup.”

How long had he been standing there? Cate turned and met his eerily cold and blank gaze. It was like looking into a dark cave. There was nothing there but empty blackness.

Long enough
.

Every word she’d just said came back to her in one shameful wave of horror. She wished she could cut off her stupid tongue. But it was too late for that. How could she have let Seonaid get to her like that?

Gregor wished he’d stayed in the storage room. But Cate had been taking so long, he wondered if she’d misunderstood his intent. He’d heard the voices as soon as he’d opened the door, recognizing Cate’s soft tones and Seonaid’s more grating ones.

He’d been standing there the whole time. But both women had been so focused on the hostile game they played between them, they hadn’t noticed him.

He wished they had.

“
Get the handsomest man in Scotland to marry you … trap him … forced to marry you
 …” He flinched at the
words, unable to accept what he was hearing. And Cate’s response? Boasts and taunts instead of real denials. Then she served the final coup de grâce, the words that left no doubt of what she thought of him,
“… won the man you wanted for yourself.”

Won. Like he was some damned prize.

He felt his insides twist.

Damn it, not her, too? It couldn’t be true. Cate wouldn’t do that. She was too honest for such deceit. She wasn’t superficial and conniving like Seonaid and her ilk—even if for a moment she sounded like her. He didn’t much like this spiteful, boastful side of Cate. Still, he didn’t want to believe it.

Don’t overreact
, he told himself.
Calm down
. This was Cate. His Cate.

But her own words seemed to damn her. Why had she managed only one feeble denial and acceded to everything else Seonaid accused her of? Why was she throwing her “win” back in the other woman’s face? And then there was her expression when she turned to him and gave a startled, “Gregor!”

Horror. Guilt. Shame. He saw the mixture of emotions cross her delicate features and felt the doubt inside him begin to harden.

He glanced over to Seonaid, and the satisfied cat-like smile on her face hardened him a little more. He’d be damned if he’d let the she-tiger see how deeply her claws had scratched. “Coup?” he asked lazily.

Seonaid smiled. “Just a figure of speech, my laird. But it is quite an achievement for a girl like Caitrina to secure a proposal from a man of your … repute.”

Gregor’s fists curled in spite of himself. He knew exactly what “repute” she was talking about. “A girl like Caitrina?”

Seonaid flushed, probably realizing how petty she sounded. “I merely referred to her being an orphan, my laird.”

He knew exactly what she meant, and it wasn’t that.

Cate seemed to have been knocked from her shock. She grabbed his arm, “Gregor, I—”

He cut her off, not wanting to hear her explanation—at least not right now. “I see you let Seonaid in on our wee jest,” he said.

Cate looked just as surprised at seeing him smile as she was taken aback by his words. “Jest?”

He turned to Seonaid. “Cate told me all about your conversation. We laughed about the ironic timing of our announcement, but we never thought anyone would actually believe it.” He gave her a slow, deadly smile. “Do I look like the type of a man to be trapped by an innocent lass?”

Seonaid flushed hotly, her cheeks turning a bright scarlet red. “Of course not. We were just surprised by the sudden announcement, that’s all.”

“So you decided to speculate as to the reason?” His gaze hardened. “I hope you have not been spreading lies and rumors about my betrothed, Mistress MacIan.”

The lass’s eyes widened at the none-to-subtle threat in his voice. “Nay, of course not!”

“Good,” Gregor said, not believing her for a moment. “Then I assume I will hear no more of this. And you will correct anyone who repeats such malicious lies?” He leveled a pointed gaze on the venomous blonde, and then turned to Cate, who was looking at him with a relieved expression on her face.

With a frantic nod, Seonaid muttered something unintelligible and excused herself, seemingly unable to escape the corridor fast enough.

“Thank you,” Cate said, putting her hand on his arm.

Noticing his stiffening, she looked up at him questioningly. The guileless set of her adorable features seemed to make it worse.

His expression turned to stone. “For what?”

“For defending me. For trusting in me enough to know
that what Seonaid said wasn’t true. I didn’t intend to trap you, Gregor.”

His mouth hardened, the bitterness rising inside him threatening to pour out in hot molten waves. “Didn’t you? And yet that’s exactly what happened. You seem to have talked about the very thing with your friend—or former friend. She seemed to recall your conversation quite well. I heard a lot of boasting on your side, but not many denials.”

He expected a stream of denials, and assurances that it had all been lies. Instead, she flushed guiltily. “If you don’t believe me, why did you tell her what you did?” Suddenly the reason came to her. “Oh.”

Aye, being duped was bad enough. He wasn’t going to confirm it for everyone else to hear. The very idea of him falling prey to that kind of machination—being tricked into marriage and made a prize to be “won”—made his skin crawl. It was what he’d sought to avoid for most of his life.

It was what other women did. Not Cate.

Her hand on his arm tightened. She took a step closer. The warmth of her body and the subtle fragrance of her hair teased his already on-edge senses. He had to steel himself against the desire that even now—when his gut felt like it was being chewed up—raced through him.

“Please, Gregor, listen to me—it’s not what you think.”

She had no idea how much he wanted to believe her. “Then you did not say that you were going to trap the ‘handsomest man in Scotland’ into marrying you? Did you not try to best her and ‘win’ me?”

He could barely even say the words, it sounded so ridiculous. The thought that Cate could have said something so shallow and deceitful made him ill. She wasn’t like that. She was different.

So why wasn’t she denying it? Why was her face filling
with shame and guilt? Why was she looking at him with panic in her big, dark eyes?

“It wasn’t how it sounded. I never said I intended to trap you. That was Seonaid’s word, not mine.” The sheen of tears in her eyes spoke of her earnestness. “I know I sounded horrible, but you have to understand how it has been with Seonaid and me. She is always finding ways of belittling me and making me feel like I don’t belong. I couldn’t stand hearing any more about how inferior I am, how I act like a lad, and how impossible it would be for someone like you to fall in love with me.

“So when she cornered me in the churchyard, I’d had enough. It was right after that night in the Hall when you held me, and I realized for the first time that you were attracted to me. I knew we were meant to be together, and that seemed to have confirmed it. So when she taunted me that the only way you would marry me would be for me to trap you, but that I lacked the sufficient enticements to do that, I told her she was wrong. I knew it was petty and silly, but I just couldn’t stop myself. Just like what you heard earlier. She brings out the worst in me.”

She blinked back the tears and he could see that her hurt was real. “Haven’t you ever wanted to throw something back in someone’s face who’s been cruel to you? I know it’s childish, but I’d heard so many of the same things when I was younger that when I had the opportunity, I couldn’t resist it.”

She’d been teased as a child, he realized, and the injustice of it made
him
want to lash out for her. So aye, maybe he could understand. If it were just the conversation, he might understand. But it was more than that.

He
had
been effectively forced into marrying her when they’d been found together in her bed—a bed he’d tried to leave the night before until she’d touched him so boldly. Touched him in a way that shouldn’t have been seducing to
a man of his experience, but because it had been Cate, was.

He’d tried to leave again that morning after her strange disappearance and she’d stopped him again. Vehemently. He remembered that now. She’d seemed insistent on him not going. At the time he’d thought she just wasn’t ready for the night to end—nor was he—but was there a more nefarious purpose? And he couldn’t help but recall her strange reaction to his jest about being “trapped.” At the time he’d taken it as innocence, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was guilt?

He wanted to believe her, but there were too many questions to ignore. “So the nightmare was just a coincidence? My understanding was that you hadn’t had one in a while.”

She gazed up at him, the hurt in her eyes making him feel guilty for even asking the question. “I told you why I had the nightmare. It was the man I saw.”

“Aye, that’s what you said.”

She drew back, the first glimmer of anger and outrage appearing in her eyes. “Good God, Gregor! What do you think? That I made him up, lured you to my bed with a nightmare, seduced you, and then arranged for us to be discovered? You give me far more credit than I deserve.”

Maybe, maybe not. Though it might sound implausible based on the difference in their ages and level of experience, they both knew that he was far from immune to her and had been fighting a losing battle with his desire, which she’d pushed very close to the edge. “And yet that’s exactly what happened.”

She held his gaze. “I didn’t do what you are accusing me of, Gregor. I didn’t plan any of it. What happened just happened. Maybe I wish I hadn’t pushed you by touching you—that’s why I was embarrassed earlier with Seonaid—but I wasn’t trying to trap you into marriage; I wanted you to stop denying how you felt about me. I love you. I would never try to trick or force you into marriage. I would have
hoped you would know that without me having to tell you. I’m sorry about the conversation with Seonaid. It was childish and petty, and I never should have spoken of you as if you were a prize to be won. It was unworthy of me, and the love I have for you. But I did not deceive you or dupe you into anything.”

She stood there as regally as any queen, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t speak right away, she lowered her gaze, as if he’d disappointed her. “Think about it, Gregor. In your heart you know the truth. I am not Isobel.”

No, she wasn’t. He watched her walk away, head high and spine straight, wanting to believe her despite everything he’d just heard. She sounded so sincere, and everything he knew about Cate to this point—or thought he knew—told him she was speaking the truth. She loved him; she
understood
him; she wouldn’t have done something like this, knowing how much he despised such machinations.

But love didn’t preclude betrayal. And it wouldn’t mean a damned thing, if he found out she was lying to him.

He took a few moments to let his blood cool and let the sting of the conversation he’d overheard fade. He would give her the benefit of the doubt—for now.

But there were too many things about that night that bothered him. And he wouldn’t be able to put his questions to rest before a few of them were answered.

Gregor’s questions were answered sooner than he expected. The first person he saw upon reentering the raucous Hall was his brother. In one carelessly spoken sentence, John crushed the last hope that Cate might be telling the truth.

“She sent for me,” John said without hesitation when Gregor asked him why he’d appeared in Cate’s room that morning. John had been enjoying the free-flowing
cuirm
of the feast and grinned, not realizing the impact his words were having. “Said it was something important.”

“And it couldn’t wait until morning?”

John shrugged. “I was worried. The boy mentioned something about blood, which is why I woke Ete and Lizzie.” He frowned. “I wonder what it was that she wanted?” He smiled lopsidedly. “Ah, well, I guess it worked out all right.”

It
had
worked out all right—just as she’d planned. The bitter taste of betrayal filled Gregor’s mouth … his lungs … his chest. It burned like acid in his gut. He called for the whisky to put it out. But the flame only grew hotter.

It wasn’t until that moment that he realized how much he’d wanted to believe her. John’s confirmation of her perfidy made it all that much worse. Gregor had known something was wrong about that morning. Now he knew why. She must have sent for his brother when she’d left the room for so long. That was why she’d been so anxious for him not to leave when she returned.

What a damned fool! How could he have let himself think even for a minute that she truly cared about him?
Him
. Not his reputation and all the other shite that went along with him.

She was just like Isobel, and he’d been just as blind. Instead of using him to make his brother jealous, Cate had used him as some “coup” to laud over her friends. And she’d done it. Aye, the little “orphan” who’d seemed so genuine and artless had trapped the man who didn’t think he could be trapped. She’d turned a jaded, cynical man into a temporary believer.

Gregor would laugh if his chest didn’t feel like someone was standing on it. The hurt was what angered him. He didn’t want to admit it, but she’d gotten to him. Christ, he’d actually thought he might be falling in love with her.

Isobel had stung his pride, but Cate had done much worse. She’d made him feel. She’d made him want. And if
that was what “love” was about, he didn’t want anything to do with it. He’d been fine the way he was before, but he’d let himself get caught up in a young girl’s game.

No longer. His eyes were open—
wide
open, damn it. And soon enough hers would be as well. She might have forced him into marriage, but she hadn’t “won” anything else. She could take him as he was or not at all—he no longer cared.