Chapter Six
Mal had been hard from the moment he’d pressed his palms to Catriona’s back—a fierce, acute throb. The wool of his kilt an exquisite torture against his cock. He’d still been hard when he’d walked away from her, which was a little embarrassing—one would hope that one could control one’s bodily reactions a little better than that.
But she’d been so soft beneath him, so pliant, and so warm. And then, when she’d lifted her dress, she hadn’t really been pliant at all, but commanding, while he was content to be commanded, to grovel at her feet. And he wasn’t sure which side of her he liked better.
He’d always preferred to be in charge. To be the leader.
It seemed that wasn’t the case with one particular person, and he didn’t like that the woman he might want to succumb to hadn’t really told him anything about herself. And even if she did, how would he know it was the truth?
She’d simply appeared in the night, like a ghost. Maybe she was a ghost. Maybe one day she would disappear with the sunset, never to be seen again. And he would be left with the memory of warm skin beneath his palms and steady gray-blue eyes, faint as a dream.
He spent a restless night, got up the next morning, and made the coffee even more bitter and disgusting than he usually did. He needed a good kick in the head.
Then he took himself to the stream, strung up a fishing pole with a gut line, and hooked a small grasshopper to the end. They needed food, and while the coffee was making him feel somewhat awake, it wasn’t making him feel alert. This was about all he was good for at the moment.
He took the coffeepot with him and found a spot near the bank with a large, flat rock for sitting. The stream became a small waterfall not far from him, trickling into the fresh, deep waters of the loch. In the glow of early morning, the falling water was lit like scattered gold coins.
Not long after Mal cast his line, he heard a rustle behind him and he glanced back.
It was Catriona, eyeing the coffeepot. The others had still been sleeping when he’d woken, worn out by their game of shinty, but perhaps Catriona was naturally an early riser.
“Help yourself,” he said.
She did, and he tried not to look at her while she drank silently.
“This is worse than yesterday.” He could hear the grimace in her voice.
“I’m a man of bitter tastes,” he said. Then he shrugged, smiling. “Or maybe I just don’t know how to make coffee.” He noticed she was keeping a few feet of distance between them, and he wondered if the previous night had affected her as much as it had affected him. God, he hoped so. He didn’t want to be alone in this…this storm. Because that was exactly what it felt like, a tempest churning in his chest. “Are you still sore?”
There was a subtle but telling pause. “Aye, but it’s better. Is there anything I can get to work on?”
He looked at her, then. She was watching the stream at the point where it rushed over the ledge.
“Where’s your cittern?”
Her head lifted. “What?”
“I wouldna mind a little music while I fish.” And he wouldn’t mind keeping her close, either. He told himself it was because he wanted to keep an eye on her, but it wasn’t the only reason. It might not even be the biggest reason.
He wanted to know her. It was as simple, and as horribly complicated, as that.
“I was thinking of chopping wood, or maybe I could patch some clothes.”
“Miss Macpherson.”
“What?”
He frowned at her. He knew she played—he’d felt the calluses on her fingers. But perhaps she wasn’t very good. He probably shouldn’t be so disappointed by the idea, but he’d liked the thought of them playing together. Music reminded him of home, and it might be a painful remembrance, but it was one he was starting to crave, just the same.
He hadn’t picked up his fiddle at all in the last couple of weeks. He hadn’t even had the urge to until Catriona had come waltzing into the camp with an instrument slung on her back.
“Do you not play well?”
“I play verra well,” she said haughtily.
He shrugged. “I won’t believe it until I hear it.”
She stared hard at him. He knew the moment he’d won—her jaw hardened. He’d noticed during shinty that when she clenched her jaw, she was about to set out to prove something. It was oddly endearing.
“Fine,” she said as she spun around.
A few minutes later, she returned with a six-stringed instrument—though some of the strings were doubled—made of a rich, reddish wood. It was about the size of a fiddle, but fat and shapeless compared to the fiddle’s more elegant body. Some people called it a cittern and some called it a guitar, for lack of a better term. In reality, it was more of a cross between the two.
She sat on the rock next to him, which was large enough that they could sit comfortably with a few inches of space between them, and tested out the strings, tightening or loosening where needed. Then, she simply began to play, with no pause or indication that she was starting.
It took him a few seconds, but the tone was familiar—an older Scots song, “I Love My Love in Secret.” She played smoothly, the fingers on her left hand easing across the ebony fingerboard, the fingers on her right plucking out the notes with quick precision.
She was right—she played verra well.
Mal set his fishing pole down as he listened. The sound of the trickling stream faded, and the slow song carried him away, over the hills and dales of the Highlands to a crofter’s cottage that smelled like peat smoke, livestock, and kelp, and was never quiet. To a little fire and the sound of voices rising in song.
Sometimes, he missed it so much that it took his breath away.
Catriona’s presence drew him back to the present. She hummed softly and tapped her foot. She didn’t move much, but her lips were curved and her eyes were closed, as though she didn’t simply produce the music, but felt it, too.
He tried to curb the impulse, because there were too many things he already liked about her, but he was charmed by the way she played. Completely, utterly charmed.
“Well?” she said when she finished.
He nodded. “It was beautiful. You play beautifully.”
Her eyes widened, like she was surprised by his honesty. Or maybe his willingness to praise her after he’d teased her about it. But Mal had always thought that if one saw or heard beautiful things, they should say it.
…most of the time. He thought Cat was beautiful, too, but he didn’t know quite how she’d react if he said that.
“Who taught you?”
“I taught myself,” she said. But he noticed the briefest of hesitations, which left him puzzled. He didn’t have much time to think about it, though, before she asked, “Who taught you to play the fiddle?”
He was startled for an instant—he hadn’t told her he played. But then, he realized she must have seen the fiddle in camp, and perhaps noticed the roughened skin on the fingers of his left hand. He didn’t know whether to be impressed or worried by how observant she was.
“My mother taught me. She was the best fiddler I’ve ever heard. I try, but I don’t think I compare.” The instrument he carried with him now was hers—the one thing she’d refused to sell, even when times were hard. Mal had never blamed her for that, though. Music couldn’t feed the stomach, but it did ease the heart.
She’d given the fiddle to him when he’d joined the army—a gift. The last gift that he would ever receive from his mother.
Catriona looked at him, her eyes bright in the sunlight. And then, slowly, almost reluctantly: “Was?”
“She’s dead now,” he said, unflinching. There was no point in flinching from the truth. “She’s at the bottom of the ocean somewhere.”
At her stunned expression, he continued. “My ma and my three sisters. They were forced from their land when I was away at war. They didn’t have much, and the duke didn’t give them a penny more. They were able to book cheap passage on a ship to Nova Scotia. From what I heard later, the ship was overcrowded and there wasn’t enough food or clean water. Typhus swept through the passengers, and most of them were already too sick from the poor conditions to fight it.”
Here, he had to pause. He had to stop and breathe. This pit of despair was always in his stomach, threatening to sprawl upward and cut off his speech.
“My mother, my sisters. Every single one of them died on that ship.” He looked away from Catriona. “And I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there to help, or to stop it, or to save them. I wasn’t even there to die with them.”
The helplessness he’d felt when he’d returned and learned that all of them were gone, the cottage razed, their bodies somewhere in the depths of the Atlantic, had brought him to his knees. It was as though they’d never even been there, as though they’d been erased from the earth in one crushing blow, as though he’d never had a family at all. He couldn’t even bury them.
All he had were his memories, which faded as surely as physical remains.
And the hole in his heart where they’d once been.
Catriona was silent. She didn’t offer platitudes and condolences, and for that, he was grateful. There was nothing she could say that would ease this thing that threatened to eat him alive, every day and every night.
“Is that why you became a thief?”
He laughed softly, but there was no mirth in it. “Aye, lass. I was going to kill the duke. I was going to strangle him with my bare hands, but by the time I’d reached him, he’d had an apoplexy and his health was failing. I didna think there’d be much satisfaction in killing a helpless man. And after I had some time to think it through, I realized that the problem wasn’t just one duke. It’s all of them. All of the Highland landlords, forcing out their tenants and putting sheep on their land instead. Ruining lives to make a little more profit. So I decided I was going to hit them where it hurts them the most, for as long as I can.”
She was still for a moment, face impassive. He wished he knew what she was thinking, but for the life of him, he couldn’t tell.
“But surely not all of the landlords care more about profit than people?”
“Doesna matter. When things are good, aye, they’ll pretend they care, but they’re the same, in the end. When it boils down to it, when things get desperate, they’ll throw their tenants under the carriage wheels if it means saving themselves.”
And he needed this. He could admit that to himself.
“When I’m out on a raid, when I’m giving directions to my men, I have a purpose again. I have something to focus on. I don’t feel so aimless when I’m thieving.”
And he wasn’t fighting for the men he hated, like he’d done in the war. No, he was doing it for himself. He was doing it for them.
“What you’re stealing can’t always be a landlord’s property,” Catriona insisted. “What about the sheep farmers who lease the land?”
“The lowland sheep farmers? They’re part of the problem. They don’t care about the original tenants any more than the landowners do. If I have to go through them to get to the landlords, I will.”
“But what if you cause tenants to be forced out by meddling?”
“Almost all of the profits we make go back to the tenants. They’re going to be evicted eventually, anyway. It’s happening right now—more clearances each week, each month, each year. It’s the way of progress. It’s inevitable. At least now they’ll have something to fall back on. They’ll have enough money to choose what they want to do, to settle somewhere else in Britain or to pay for passage on a ship that’s clean. My family didna even have that choice.”
“But you can’t possibly sustain this way of life for very long.”
“No,” he agreed. He knew what needed to be done after Ewan’s close call. He wouldn’t see his men harmed or captured because of him. “I’m planning one last raid. I want to make enough to see the men settled.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You said you want to make enough to see the men settled. But what will you do?”
Mal would continue living the only way he knew how. “Don’t waste your worry on me, lass.”
When Catriona didn’t respond, he glanced at her. She was staring at the moving water, her brow furrowed, her eyes intent, and he regretted changing the mood between them. He didn’t know what she was thinking, but the reaction one typically received when revealing they’d lost their family was pity. And he didn’t want her pity.
He sighed, leaning back on his hands. “You know my sorry story and I barely know a thing about you.” It was a fact he wanted to change, rather desperately.
But when she turned toward him, she couldn’t hide the wariness in her eyes.
And not for the first time, he wondered what she was hiding. Maybe she did have a husband, waiting for her somewhere. The thought made his stomach clench. He’d never been a violent man, but he suddenly felt a violent impulse toward someone who might not even exist.
What secrets do you keep, Catriona MacPherson?
“What do ye wish to know?”
Bathed in the warmth of the sun, she had rolled up her sleeves to her elbow, and he noticed she had pockmark scars along her arms, too.
“How old were you when you had smallpox?”
She started and then looked down at her arms with a derisive little smile. “I used to try to hide the scars on my face with powder, you know. I stopped, eventually. They’d been with me so long they became a part of me—like my eye color or the shape of my hands.”
He was glad she’d stopped. He didn’t like to think of her hiding herself.
“I was eight,” she said. “I nearly died. I only remember the first few days…my head was pounding and my body felt too hot, like I was burning up from the inside—I woke up once and the bedsheets were damp just from sweat. After that, it’s all a muddle, but I think…I think I remember my mother crying at my bedside. They didna think I would survive.”
“But you did.”
She nodded. “After, they were so protective of me. They treated me like glass. Like the slightest thing might break me. It felt like I was going to suffocate. It was as though…” She paused, as if gathering her thoughts. “They saw how tenuous life was—how tenuous mine was—and they wanted to wrap it up in feathers and padding and paper, just to preserve it a little longer.”
“And you didn’t feel the same way?” he guessed.
“No, if life was tenuous, I didn’t want to protect it—I wanted to set it free. I wanted to do everything and feel everything. I wanted to suck the marrow from it.” She paused, staring down at her bare hands.
“I still do,” she whispered. “I’m not reckless. Not overly so. I don’t put myself in unnecessary danger. I simply…I like feeling my heart pounding in my chest, and my blood surging through my veins. I like the reminder that it’s all still there. That it’s mine.”
He smiled, and she noticed.
“What?”
“It explains a thing or two about you.”
She rolled her eyes, but she smiled in return, and it was not a half smile. It wasn’t gently derisive. He wanted to touch her lips, to trace their curve until they became a tattoo on his skin.
…
Mal was looking at her mouth. He was looking at her mouth like he wanted to devour it, and Georgina felt a forbidden heat, pooling low in her stomach.
And along with it, a flash of frustration.
Georgina had never met a man who affected her quite this strongly. She’d been sought after in Edinburgh, but none of those men had conjured anything more than mild liking, a tepid sort of want. She didn’t know what the difference was. She’d met rich tradesmen climbing their way to the top, gentlemen and rakes, viscounts and earls—men who wore power like it was their right.
But Mal…Mal was a man who took power in the dark of the night. He stole it like the thief he was.
And she found him oddly fascinating.
Not only because he was a thief but because he was honest, and because he could be kind. He was such a mix of things—truth and deception, rules and lawlessness, kindness and cruelty.
She thought she could spend years trying to unspool him and not quite manage it.
And she wanted him to kiss her. In that instant, she wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything else. There were only a few inches between them now. He could close that distance. Or she could. So, so easily.
She already knew what his hands felt like against her bare back. She couldn’t help but imagine them cupping her breasts, gripping her thighs…
Instead of leaning closer, she jerked back, breathing too heavily, as if she’d just run the length of the isle.
Mal stared at her, bemused.
She couldn’t trust herself around him, she realized. And it was a hard blow to take. Georgina had always had faith in herself, in the decisions she’d made; if she lost that, she didn’t know what would be left of her.
She leaped from the stone—and, sadly, leaped was not an exaggeration. She lurched from the thing like it had suddenly caught fire.
“Coffee,” she blurted out. “I think I need more coffee.”
Perhaps a gallon of it. Maybe the shock to her system would cure what ailed her—though she had the troubling suspicion that the only thing that might cure this want was succumbing to it—and that had as much chance of working as it did of making the ailment worse.
“Help yourself,” Mal said, after a beat of silence.
She stole the coffeepot and strode quickly away from him, though she could feel his gaze, burning holes into the back of her neck.
Resolve settled, hard and burning in Georgina’s gut. She needed to find out where the music box had gone, and good Lord, she needed to do it soon.