Chapter 10
Alasdair Graham paused when his gaze landed on Cait.
She’d thought she would feel anger, seeing her grandfather for the first time in eight years, but surprisingly, she just wanted to cry with a mixture of emotions.
He looked the same, from the long white flowing hair to the piercing blue eyes set in a face weathered by many Highland winters. The same but different. Older. Wearier.
Their last encounter had ended in harsh language, accusations, recriminations, and tears on Cait’s part. She’d not seen him since then.
“Alasdair,” Iain said. “Welcome. May I introduce Cait Campbell?”
“We’ve met,” Alasdair said, his blue gaze locked on hers.
“You have?” Iain asked in surprise.
“Alasdair is my mother’s father,” Cait said.
A moment of uncomfortable silence stretched between them. Cait didn’t look at Iain but suspected he was having trouble coming up with something to say.
“I didn’t realize you were a Graham before you were a Campbell,” he finally said to Cait.
Cait decided there was no reason now to keep anything secret. Not that she’d kept it secret before. It had just never been something she’d wanted to talk about.
“When John and I decided to wed, we went to Grandfather to ask for his blessing,” she said.
Graham’s eyes narrowed in warning. Cait lifted her chin. His opinion hadn’t mattered to her in a long while.
“I see,” Iain said, clearly uncomfortable. He was probably regretting asking her to dinner. She definitely regretted accepting the invitation. If she had known Graham was going to be here, she would have stayed very far away.
“We’d known Graham wouldn’t be pleased but had hoped he would see how much we were in love and give us his blessing. He refused in a most spectacular display of anger.”
“Catherine,” Graham warned.
She turned to Iain. “All because John was a Campbell.”
At the time Cait had argued that love didn’t care about ridiculous feuds, and Graham had said love was blind and stupid and his granddaughter was not marrying a Campbell.
She and John had left and married anyway, and she’d been very happy with her choice, although she regretted the rift it had caused with her family.
Cait’s throat closed up and she looked away, blinking. Her grandmother had died five years ago, months after Cait had given birth to Christina. It had been her greatest regret that she had not been able to mend the breach with her grandmother.
“I’ll understand if ye don’t want me to dine with ye,” Cait said to Iain.
“Nonsense. We’re all adults here,” Iain said.
Cait raised her brow at her grandfather, who had the good grace to look away.
“Of course,” he said. “What’s past is past.”
She wanted to argue that he was the worst offender of not leaving the past in the past, but she kept her mouth shut. She’d learned long ago that arguing with Alasdair Graham was pointless. Besides, what did it matter anymore? John was gone. Christina was gone. Her grandmother was gone.
They made their way into the informal dining room, laid out with three place settings, one on either side of Iain, who was sitting at the head of the table. They waited while the footmen served them. Nothing but the clink of silverware on the china broke the thick, tense silence.
“It’s sorry I am about yer field, Campbell,” Graham said. “It’s a nasty business, that. Have ye figured out who was responsible?”
“Unfortunately, no. Have you heard anything?”
“Nay. Ye think it’s MacGregor?” Graham asked.
Cait and her grandfather’s gazes clashed and she held her breath, waiting for the inevitable, but it didn’t come. At least not this time.
“That would be my guess,” Iain said, unaware of the silent conversation that passed quickly between Cait and her grandfather.
Graham grunted. “The man is a sheep-shagging bugger.”
Cait smiled. She’d almost forgotten how humorous her grandfather could be.
Graham held no love for MacGregor, even though his daughter had married MacGregor’s son and produced Cait.
The marriage had been an alliance between two of the oldest clans as well as a love match.
Her parents had been so deeply in love that when Cait’s mother died giving birth to her, Cait’s father had taken his own life.
The MacGregors and the Grahams had fought over who was to raise Cait.
MacGregor had claimed that since she was the only child of his only child, she would one day rise to become chief and therefore should be raised as a MacGregor.
Graham had hotly disagreed, saying she was half Graham and should be raised as such.
So Cait had lived a strange life, half as a MacGregor and half as a Graham, traveling between the two houses, loved by two gruff men who couldn’t seem to like each other and two wonderful women who’d been devastated over the loss of their children.
And then she had met John and fallen in love, and if Alasdair Graham had been vocally against the marriage, that was nothing to Wallace MacGregor’s reaction.
He’d instantly and ruthlessly cut her out of his life.
She’d heard that he banished anyone who even mentioned her.
“What have you learned about the droving?” Graham asked.
“Nothing so far,” Iain said. “I’ve posted more men and increased my patrols. It’s slowed the thieving down but not stopped it.”
Graham pointed his fork at Iain. “That has the mark of MacGregor all over it. It’s him, I’ve no doubt. It’s the type of thing he’d do.”
“He needs to stop this ridiculous feud,” Cait said.
Graham shrugged; being an old Highlander himself, he understood the MacGregors’ way of thinking. “Campbell’s grandfather murdered his father after the man asked for sanctuary. That’s wrong, and it deserves retribution.”
“Forty years of retribution?” she asked.
“He seems to think so.”
“So when will enough be enough?” she asked.
“I don’t know, lass. Why don’t ye ask MacGregor?” Graham’s piercing blue eyes pinned her and she looked away.
—
When dinner was finished, Cait’s grandfather insisted on accompanying her.
“I can ride home alone,” she said.
“Nay,” Iain said. “Not with the drovers out there, and we still haven’t caught the person responsible for burning my fields.”
“I’ve been riding between our homes for days to check on the wounded. I’ll be fine.”
“Campbell is right,” Graham said. “A woman should no’ be roamin’ around these parts alone. It’s no’ safe.”
She plunked her hands on her hips and scowled at Graham. “Ye no longer have the right to tell me what to do.”
He scowled right back. “I’m goin’ with ye.”
“I don’t want ye to go with me.”
Iain looked between the two of them, clearly a bit amused and a bit alarmed.
Graham shrugged again.
“Stop doing that,” she said in exasperation. “Stop acting like what I say is no’ important.”
Graham harrumphed and turned to the door. Cait stared at Iain, who held his hands out at his sides. “What can I do?” he asked innocently.
She shook her head and followed her grandfather out, frustrated and irritated.
Despite her exasperation, riding beside her grandfather brought back warm memories of sitting atop a gentle mare, clutching the silky mane until her fingers ached and thinking it was a long way to the ground.
But her grandfather had been beside her, his big strong arms always there in case she fell.
He’d called her a natural on a horse, and she’d been so pleased at his pride.
Later, when she was accomplished enough, they would ride together and he would talk to her about the land and the different plants.
He would discuss the crops, and when she was older he would ask her opinion.
She’d always felt a wee bit honored when he seriously considered her opinion.
Tonight the breeze was warm and the sky clear.
The moon shone down upon them, lighting the path.
She could almost convince herself that nothing had changed since the last time they rode together, long before she wed John.
But things had changed. They were both older.
She had wed, borne a child, and lost her husband and daughter.
Her grandfather was older, a little more stooped, a little thinner, not nearly as large and muscular. But his mind was still as sharp as a dagger and his wit just as cutting. Those blue eyes still missed nothing and said everything he wouldn’t let his mouth say.
They’d left the clearing of the big house a while ago. The woods were quiet but not eerie.
He cleared his throat and shifted in his saddle. “It’s sorry I was to hear about the passing of yer husband,” he said a bit awkwardly.
Cait’s fingers tightened around the reins and her stomach churned. “Thank ye.”
He peered down the path. “I heard about the wee one, too.”
“Her name was Christina.”
“It’s…” He paused, frowning and blinking rapidly. “It’s one of my biggest regrets, not knowing my great-granddaughter.”
“If ye hadn’t been so hardheaded, ye would not have missed out on anything.
” Truth be told, she’d been just as hardheaded.
So many times she’d wanted to take Christina to visit both her great-grandfathers, but she hadn’t because she’d been fearful of rejection and still angry that they’d cut her and her child out of their lives.
“Aye,” he said. “I was hardheaded, and I paid the price for it.”
She looked at him in surprise, but they had rounded the bend and he was looking at her cottage critically.
She could practically read his thoughts.
The Grahams were a powerful clan, as were the MacGregors.
Neither chief had thought that their granddaughter would live in a wee cottage buried deep in the woods.
He grunted and, being sensitive, she took it as criticism of her home. “It’s lovely, and I like being out here,” she said defensively.
“ ’Tis no’ safe,” he said.
“Ye’re the third man to tell me that in a week.”
He slid off his mount, not as nimbly as he had in years past but still good for a man his age. “What three men would that be, lass?”