Eight
 

Two days was long enough.

Hearing the clatter of swords on the opposite side of the bailey beyond the barracks, Gregor quickened his step as he descended the tower house stairs. Although he was curious to see all the improvement John kept talking about, it was Cate—and not her swordplay—that he was anxious to see.

He couldn’t take the tension any longer.

Cate wasn’t ignoring him or avoiding him … exactly. But the way her mouth pursed when their gazes happened to meet, or the way the bland smile never seemed to reach her eyes when he tried to make her laugh at the midday meal, or the way her chin came up as if bracing herself whenever he addressed her directly, told him that she was still furious with him. Maybe more than furious. Maybe he’d finally succeeded in wresting every star from her eyes.

It was exactly what he’d wanted. He should be glad she was no longer going out of her way to try to make him notice her. No longer trying to entice him with those little smiles and gentle touches. No longer looking at him as if she wanted him to push her up against the closest wall and ravish her senseless.

He was glad of it. Just like he was glad she wasn’t trying to interfere in his assignations anymore. Nay, he’d followed one of the maidservants to the storeroom for more wine last night after the evening meal, and no one had come after them. He could have tapped far more than the cask, but it turned out all he’d wanted was the wine.

Guilt, he told himself. That was what was wrong with him. Once he and Cate cleared the air between them, everything would return to normal.

Or would it?

“I said I loved him.”

He could still hear her voice, damn it. The feelings he’d never wanted to acknowledge had been spoken and could not be unheard.

Deep down he knew it would never be the same between them, and that was what really bothered him. He liked Cate. He looked forward to talking to her because she didn’t prattle and pander to him like every other woman. At least not usually. But even the solicitous Cate of the first few days of his return had been amusing rather than annoying. He’d liked prodding her and seeing how far she would go. He’d liked the way she’d tried to mask her rising temper beneath a forced smile.

Aye, he’d liked it a lot. It had made him want to see whether he could make those dark eyes spark with another kind of heat. It had made him wonder whether she would be just as fierce and passionate in bed.

She would. He knew she would, and the knowledge taunted him.

These were the kinds of unwelcome thoughts that had made him so eager to find her a husband. A task that was proving more difficult than he’d anticipated, but not for the reasons he expected. There seemed to be plenty of interest in having Cate for a wife; it was Gregor who was having trouble finding anyone who he thought worthy of her.

Cate was special, and she needed someone who understood that. Who understood the demons that lived in her nightmares and drove her to the practice yard with John. Who wouldn’t push her to be something she was not.

With Christmas in a few days, the Hogmanay feast would be here before he knew it. Time was running out.

The din of swords had quieted. As Gregor rounded the corner of the barracks, he expected to see them taking a break or finishing up.

That wasn’t what he saw.

What he saw was John and Cate circling each other in the frost-covered dirt like two men might do in the wrestling contest of the Highland Games. Neither wore a helm or armor. Cate’s dark hair had been twisted into some kind of knot at the back of her head, and despite the cool winter’s day, she wore a simple belted leine of brown wool that came just past her knees over her thick hose and boots. John had removed his cotun and only wore a linen shirt tucked into his leather breeches.

They were both streaked with dirt, flushed, and a little sweaty, as if they’d been working hard, and something about that set Gregor on edge.

Christ, she looked like she’d been romping in a bed all night!

They were so focused and looking so intently at one another, Gregor didn’t think they realized he was there—except that he knew his brother was too good a warrior not to have noticed.

John feigned a move toward her, trying to get her to react, but she didn’t bite. He was goading her with words also—words Gregor couldn’t hear—but from the look on his brother’s face she was giving them right back.

Gregor felt his temper prick. He didn’t like not knowing what they were talking about. It felt too damned intimate, which was ridiculous given what they were doing.

He never would have believed what happened next if he hadn’t seen it for himself. John lunged for her, jabbing his fist toward her face. Taking advantage of his momentum, Cate blocked the strike by bringing her left arm up and grabbing his wrist as she turned, pulling John’s arm down to roll him over her hip and flip him to the ground. From there, with control of his wrist and John on his side, she jerked the arm back to brace it against her thigh. If she’d wanted to, she could have snapped it. Instead, she pinned him with her knee and feigned a palm thrust toward his face that would have sent John’s nose straight to the back of his skull, possibly killing him, if it had been real.

Gregor was stunned. She’d moved so quickly, and with such certainty. She’d looked … strong. She looked like a real warrior.

Cate—little Cate—was doing some of the same defensive maneuvers that Boyd had taught him, and that he’d passed on to John. Except they looked different when she was doing them. His jaw clenched. Very different. Bodies-touching-too-closely different.

But he couldn’t deny that she’d impressed him.

“Perfect,” John said. “No hesitation, with plenty of intent. If you are going to get in the fight, you have to be ready to hurt someone.”

She grinned and started to get up. But as soon as she removed her knee, John grabbed her wrist and pulled her down on the ground, rolling on top of her and pinning her hands above her head.

Gregor’s heart was in his throat with what could only be called fear. God, was she hurt? He started forward, but his brother’s laugh stopped him.

“Now what?” John challenged.

“You cheated!” she said, struggling, her eyes shooting daggers at him. Clearly she wasn’t hurt; she was furious.

“I what?” John said, leaning down to pin her harder.

Gregor’s hands fisted at his sides, unable to pull his eyes away from the way her body was straining against his brother’s …

Bloody hell, John looked like he was thinking about kissing her!

Gregor’s mouth fell in a hard line. Perhaps his brother hadn’t seen him, after all. It seemed like John was oblivious to anyone else in the world but the lass underneath him.

She mumbled what Gregor suspected were a few decidedly un-maidenly words, and then to his surprise, started to laugh. “There is no cheating in warfare,” she said, mimicking his brother’s deep voice. “I know.”

I should have been the one to teach her this. The knowledge landed somewhere in his gut and twisted. She was his responsibility, not John’s. But John didn’t look as if he knew that. John was looking far too possessive.

“So what are you going to do?” John taunted.

Gregor was going to put a stop to this. John had made his point. Cate was helpless. She would never be able to overcome his strength and weight. John was nearly as big as Gregor. Damn it, he was probably crushing her. If there was one bruise on her body …

“This,” she answered. With John’s legs positioned on either side of her hips she used her right knee against his arse to knock him forward, wrapped her arm under his chest, and then brought her heels under her bottom to lift her hips up and roll him so that she was now mounted on top of him.

Bloody hell. Gregor couldn’t believe it. She’d extricated herself with shocking ease.

His brother had taught her well. Gregor had underestimated her and never imagined that a tiny lass could fight a trained warrior—despite what he’d said.

“That’s my lass,” John said with a smile.

The hell she was. Gregor’s reaction was so fierce and instantaneous that had he been thinking rationally, it might have concerned him. But he wasn’t rational at all. He was furious. There was something about the way his brother was looking at her that sent warning bells off in Gregor’s head and made him want to go over there and rip them apart. Actually, what made him want to rip them apart had been seeing his brother on top of Cate, and now seeing her on top of him.

He didn’t like seeing that one damned bit. It was too reminiscent of a position that had nothing to do with fighting. And if his brother’s expression right now was any indication, he was aware of it as well.

Cate wasn’t for him, and Gregor was going to put a stop to this before his brother started to get other ideas. If anyone was going to train her, it would be him. John was about to be relieved of duty.

“I think that’s enough,” he said, stepping forward.

Both Cate and John startled. That obviously neither had been aware of his arrival only made him angrier.

John must have caught something in Gregor’s glare, because he frowned.

Cate was frowning, too, as she stood and reached a hand down to help John to his feet.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No,” he snapped.

“Then why are you glowering?”

“I’m not glowering.”

She acted as if she hadn’t heard him. “Didn’t I do it right?”

She sounded so anxious for praise, he felt like an arse. She’d done fantastically.

Of course, his bloody brother came to the rescue first. “You did it perfectly,” John said, glaring at him.

Gregor glared back. “My brother has taught you well, but there are some things he doesn’t know. If you’d like, I can show you.”

John looked like he was about to argue, but then Gregor shot him a look that said he would be happy to prove it.

Cate’s eyes sparked, her eagerness to improve her training apparently outweighing her recent aversion to him. “Really? When?”

“Tomorrow. Right now I need to talk to you.”

“But I promised Pip …” Her gaze slid over to the boy who was sitting quietly on a rock, hidden in the shadow of the barracks, and who until now Gregor hadn’t noticed. Christ, dark and sinister, the lad was like MacRuairi slinking in and out of the shadows.

Pip stood. Though he didn’t look in Gregor’s direction, Gregor could feel the animosity pouring off him. Apparently his “son” didn’t harbor any lost love for him either.

“I need to find Eddie anyway. I promised I’d let him kick the pig’s bladder around today if he made it to the garderobe every time he had to go yesterday.”

“It was a brilliant idea,” Cate said. “I never would have thought of it.”

The boy shrugged as if the compliment hadn’t meant anything to him, but Gregor could see that it had. It had meant a great deal, suggesting that the boy had received very little praise in his life. Gregor almost felt sorry for him, until he reminded himself that the lad was here under false pretenses.

John gave Gregor a look that said they would talk later, and put his hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Come, Pip. I’ll show you a field just beyond the wall where my brothers and I used to kick the ball around.”

“Make sure to stay away from the water,” Gregor said sternly, having no idea where the compulsion to say that had come from.

John raised his brow, and Cate glanced up at him as if he’d just slain a dragon.

Perhaps some of the stars were still there after all.

For the past couple of days, Cate had thrown herself into her practice and her duties around the tower house to avoid thinking about what had happened in the barn. Though she would rather not have had an audience the first time she told Gregor her feelings, she knew the words had needed to be said. Besides, as she’d told Seonaid, it was hardly a secret how she felt, and she wasn’t ashamed of her feelings.

Nay, it wasn’t Seonaid’s cruel attempt to humiliate her that made her want to avoid thinking about it; it was her own confused emotions. What she’d witnessed between Gregor and Seonaid had shaken her faith and made her wonder whether she was wrong about him. Was she deluding herself that a man who’d had women throwing themselves at his feet for his whole life would ever be content with one woman, let alone her? Was he just as attracted by superficial charms as the women he discounted for the same thing?

And the question that haunted her more than anything: was he a man she could rely on, or was he like her father?

She saw similarities between the two where she’d never seen them before—or maybe hadn’t wanted to see them. Handsome, charming, noble, bigger-than-life, intense and driven—the kind of men who never did things halfmeasure—they changed a room just by entering it. Was Gregor no more than a re-creation of the great noble knight to fill the gaping hole left in her heart by the one who’d abandoned her? Would he love her and then leave her when someone better came along? Or would the “heartbreaker” be able to give her the kind of commitment she needed?

The questions pecked away at her confidence, leaving her feeling vulnerable and unsure of herself. The man who she thought would never disappoint her had done just that. Gregor had been the anchor in her mind for so long that without him, she was foundering.

Although she might feel like she was drowning, Cate wasn’t ready to give up. The hard part about faith was believing even when there wasn’t a basis for it, and she believed in him—in them—even if he didn’t.

And that faith had just been rewarded. Cautioning Pip not to take Eddie too close to the water might seem like nothing, but to Cate it was a sign. She hadn’t been wrong about him. He cared even when he didn’t want to care. He was a natural protector and nothing at all like her father. Gregor had taken her in and never turned his back on her—even when she’d given him plenty of reason to do so. He would bluster and complain, but he wouldn’t turn his back on the children, either.

She had to be patient. Perhaps it had been unrealistic to expect him to change overnight. This wasn’t a faerie tale. He wouldn’t take one look at her and never look at another woman again—no matter how much she might wish it. But once he realized his feelings for her, it would be different. Good gracious, he hadn’t even kissed her yet!

Yet.

As soon as John and Pip had walked away, she turned to face him. Sometimes she forgot how handsome he was and other times—like now—it would strike her somewhere between the ribs like a thunderbolt. Golden-brown hair shimmering in the sunlight, eyes such a deep sparkling green they looked like emeralds, a face so strong and perfectly formed it would make the angels sing—God, was she fooling herself?

She took a deep breath. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Perhaps “want” was the wrong word. Although the white lines around his mouth and tightness in his jaw had started to dissipate (he’d been angry about something, but whatever it was, it seemed to be directed at his brother and not her), there was a certain resolve and determination to his expression, like that of a man about to perform an unpleasant task that had to be done.

She being the unpleasant task.

Still, the gaze that met hers was not without compassion—not exactly what she wanted from him, however.

“About what happened in the barn the other day. I don’t want there to be any …” He hesitated. “Awkwardness between us.”

She tilted her head to the side and held his gaze. “Then what would you like there to be between us?”

For one moment something hot and possessive flared in his eyes. Something fierce and primal that sent a shudder of awareness racing through her. Something that left her a little shaky and wondering if she really had any idea of what she was asking for.

The flare quickly turned to irritation, however. “Nothing, damn it.” He dragged his hand through his hair as if were exuding all the patience of Job. “Christ, Cate, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t.”

He shot her a glare and ignored the comment. “What you want is impossible.”

“How do you know what I want?”

One side of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. “What do all young girls who fancy themselves in love want? The faerie tale. Marriage. Children. A husband who loves them back. But that isn’t me, Cate. I’m not the settle-down-with-one-woman type. When you are a little older you will understand.”

Now it was Cate who was angry. “Do not patronize me, Gregor. I’m twenty, not a fifteen-year-old girl anymore. I’m old enough to know my own feelings. I do not ‘fancy’ myself in love. I love you, whether you choose to accept that or not. Although the rest sounds nice, and I do think you are the settle-down-with-one-woman type—the right woman—all I want from you right now is to acknowledge that you feel something for me.”

“What I feel is lust, but I care too much about you to give in to it. Damn it, I’m trying to protect—” Suddenly, he stopped and looked as if he’d just been shot with one of those arrows he was so good with. “How old are you?”

She winced a little sheepishly. “Twenty.”

His gaze narrowed. “Why did you let me think you were younger?”

She shrugged. “You never asked. Your mother thought you’d guessed but didn’t want to know.”

He swore again, dragging his fingers through his hair again but this time more harshly. “Christ, twenty?” He dragged out the word accusingly, scanning her up and down as if she were some sort of strange creature from a menagerie that he’d never seen before.

“Is it really that important?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “No! I’m still your guardian, and you’re still too young.”

Cate’s nose wrinkled. Was that what this was about? Was that why he was fighting his attraction so hard? Because of some misplaced sense of responsibility toward her? She was no longer a foundling in need of rescue. “As you have just seen, I don’t need a protector anymore, Gregor. I can take care of myself.”

“Like you did with young MacNab? Do you know his father wanted to arrest you?”

“For what, defending myself?”

“For humiliating his son.”

She gaped at him as if he were jesting. “So I should have let him strike me?”

“Of course not. You shouldn’t have intervened in the first place.”

“He was hurting Pip.”

“There were a half-dozen of them, Cate. You should have gone for help. What would have happened if I hadn’t shown up when I did?”

She would rather not think about that. “Have you never fought when the odds were against you?”

His mouth fell in a hard line—a hard defensive line. “That isn’t the point.”

“What is the point, then? We are not talking about my fighting, we are talking about why you won’t act on this … lust.” She moved closer, putting her hand on his chest—which he promptly removed. “You don’t need to feel responsible for me.”

“I am responsible for you, and taking advantage of your youth and inexperience would be wrong.”

Cate clenched her teeth to keep her temper in check—barely. She wanted to touch him again, but squeezed her fists at her sides in frustration instead. “Yet you had no problem kissing Seonaid, and she is a year younger than I am. What about her youth and inexperience?”

He clenched his teeth right back at her. “That was a mistake.”

That he knew it just as well as she made it somehow worse. She stared up at him. “How can you do that, Gregor? How can you share intimacies with women when they don’t mean anything to you?”

He barked out a sharp laugh. “Quite easily. The fact that you can ask that question shows just how little you understand of lovemaking. Believe me, caring is not required.”

Cate hated the flush that rose to her cheeks—hated that he could make her feel so silly and naive. “It doesn’t sound like lovemaking at all if you don’t care about the people you are making love to. Does it not bother you to break all those hearts?”

He laughed, actually laughed. “Oh, Lord, you are sweet. Do you think the women I take to my bed care about me? I assure you when a woman is making herself available two minutes after meeting me, it is not me she has fallen in love with but ‘the most handsome man in Scotland.’ ”

“Because that is all you ever let anyone see.”

He smiled, that dazzling roguish smile that had probably felled many a heart but to her felt like a slap. “And you think there is something else?”

She held his gaze steady. “I know there is.”

Her quiet certainty seemed to bother him. He frowned. “Don’t look for something more, Caty. You will only be disappointed. I am quite happy with my life as it is.”

She stiffened at the childish diminutive. “It doesn’t bother you to have them use you like that?”

“Use me?” He laughed again, shaking his head, and then in mock seriousness said, “Aye, it’s a hardship having women eager to jump in my bed, but somehow I manage to carry on.”

But she knew it did matter to him, and that he was making fun of her made her want to lash out and prove it. “And when your sister-in-law used you to make your brother jealous, that didn’t matter either, did it?”

His expression went so cold for a moment she felt a whisper of fear. She thought about stepping back, but his fingers latched around her arm like a vise. The change that came over him was blood-chilling. Gone was the handsome heartbreaker and in his place was a deadly warrior. “Who told you about that?”

She bit her lip, not wanting to give away the confidence.

Guessing the source of her conflict, he pushed her away disgustedly. “Mother. She’s the only one who could. John and Padraig know nothing about it. What did she tell you?”

“Enough to know that it wasn’t your fault. That you cared for Isobel, and she manipulated you.”

He laughed harshly. “So being stupid and gullible is an excuse for bedding my brother’s future wife?” Cate’s eyes widened, and he laughed harshly. “Aye, I’d wager my mother didn’t know about that. But that’s the risk when two young people start playing a game in which they don’t know all the rules.” That warning was directed at her. “She played me perfectly. I thought she loved me, and she thought flirting and allowing a few liberties to the laird-to-be’s ‘useless but beautiful to look at’—her words—younger brother would make Alasdair jealous. Imagine her horror when we were both carried away by a few liberties. More than once. But her plan worked. Alasdair heard the rumors—or some of them—and came home.”

Cate reached for him, but he shrugged her hand off.

She tried to ignore the stab of hurt provoked by the rejection. “He didn’t know that you and she …?”

The gaze he turned on her was full of pain and self-loathing. “Not right away. I left to fulfill my service for my uncle, thinking I would be announcing our engagement when I returned home; instead she was married to my brother. But he must have learned the truth at some point. The brother I’d idolized could barely stand to be in the same room with me.” He shrugged as if it didn’t mean anything, but she knew it meant everything. “He left not long after I returned and was killed during the siege of Bothwell Castle a few months later. My father blamed me, of course.”

“That’s ridiculous! You had nothing to do with it!”

His eyes were hot and empty as he glared at her. “Didn’t I? The truth destroyed my brother. You see, it turned out he really did love her. She needn’t have used me at all—he’d intended to marry her all along. Her betrayal—my betrayal—drove him to the edge, and he volunteered for every dangerous job he could. Eventually one killed him.”

“That isn’t your fault, Gregor. You cannot be responsible for your brother’s actions—or Isobel’s.”

He held her gaze a long time. Eventually his mouth quirked. “My father didn’t agree. After we buried my brother it was as if I ceased to exist. Turns out disdain was better than being invisible. So when Bruce was looking for men to join him, I left.”

“What happened to Isobel?”

“She died in childbirth a few months after we buried my brother. In case you were wondering, it wasn’t mine. She and Alasdair had been married for over a year before I returned.”

“You cared for her, Gregor. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

He gave her a long, slow, wicked look meant to scare her away. “As I said, caring had little to do with it.”

“So because you care about me and don’t want me to get hurt, you will not act on your ‘lust,’ but because you do not care about those other women it’s fine to take them to your bed? Do you not think that is a bit backward?” She moved closer. “Why don’t you just pretend I’m Seonaid?”

He obviously didn’t appreciate her sarcasm. “You are nothing like Seonaid.”

That they could both agree upon. But the tension she could feel rolling off him in hot waves egged her on. She wanted him to take her in his arms and show her all the passion her body was clamoring for.

“If caring is not required, what is required?” she challenged, standing so close to him their bodies were almost brushing. “Are my breasts not large enough for you? Is my face not pretty enough?”

He uttered a curse she’d never heard from him before. She could feel the tension reverberating off him like a drum. The tic in his jaw pulsed angrily. “Stop it, Cate. It won’t work. I told you I am not the man for you.”

She heard the heavy warning in his voice, but she did not heed it. He was close to giving in; she could feel it. She pressed the tips of the breasts he seemed determined not to look at against his chest, forcing him to try to deny the attraction sparking between them. “Why am I so different? Am I not willing enough? Must I throw myself down at your feet like everyone else?”

He grabbed her arm, jerking her against him, his eyes hot with anger—and something else. “Is that not what you’ve been doing since I returned?”

Cate gasped. Was that what he thought? She’d never meant … She hadn’t thought he would see it that way. She didn’t want to be anything like those women. “I was trying to get you to notice me because I love you.”

“As if I haven’t heard that before.”

He glanced down at the breasts poking into his chest, and the heat of it scorched her. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her. She thought his body was drumming with a need as powerful as hers. That the pull would be as irresistible for him as it was for her. That she had what it took to attract a man like him.

Instead, his mouth curved in a slow smile. “I’m not so easily trapped, little one. Believe me, if a pretty face and a pert pair of breasts were all it took, I would have found myself standing at the church door years ago.”

Cate wrenched away, drawing back in horror. My God, what had she been thinking? She hadn’t been trying to trap him into anything except maybe a kiss. But had she actually thought to use her body to do so?

She wasn’t sensual or entrancing. She didn’t captivate or intrigue. She wasn’t the type of woman men couldn’t resist kissing (as evidenced by the fact that she was twenty and had never been kissed!). She was “cute,” not beautiful. Her body was taut and strong from fighting, not soft and lush for lovemaking.

And his rejection reminded her of that. It crushed her womanly confidence, and worse, made her feel silly for trying.

She hoped the tears choking her throat hadn’t reached her eyes. “I wanted you to kiss me because I love you. Because every time I close my eyes and dream of what my first kiss will be like, yours is the only face I ever see. Because I’m twenty years old and I’ve never wanted any other man but you. And because I thought you wanted to kiss me, too. So if you are going to accuse me of anything, have it be for being a fool to think I had what it takes to tempt you.”