Chapter 18
Riding back to Kinlochlie was—to say the least—challenging for Thane.
Holding Cat close on horseback was bad enough.
Holding her after losing his mind, and kissing her in the bothy, was maddening.
Well, he’d done more than kiss her. He’d offered to rid her of her virginity, which was the stupidest thing he could possibly have done.
And yet it felt so natural to have her in his arms, and she had reacted with such absolute candor and enthusiasm that it had quickly spiraled out of control.
He hadn’t thought she’d even let him kiss her again. He hadn’t thought at all, actually. He certainly didn’t count on her allowing him to be as bold as he was.
But he should have guessed, because when did Cat ever do what was expected?
And now he’d gone and made everything more difficult for them both. All because he’d let his cock do the thinking.
It was still working against him. He wasn’t quite hard anymore, but Cat’s hip was rolling into his lap with every stride the horse made, and yes, it felt good.
He shifted slightly, trying to lessen the contact. No help.
Cat turned her head to look at him. “Is something wrong?”
What was wrong was the way her clear blue eyes made him want to tell her things, things he could never ever tell anyone, least of all her. Only the way the tiny charm on the chain around her neck glinted in the sunlight stopped him.
“I’ll be fine,” he grunted.
“Are you cold?”
“No.” If anything, he was too damn hot. In more ways than one.
“Should we stop for a moment?”
“No!” he snapped, then added, “We’ve got to get back. That last thing I need is for you to take ill because I was riding you all over the Highlands in a rainstorm.”
“You couldn’t have predicted the weather.”
But he was from here. Thane knew the risks, and he still allowed it all to happen.
“I should have! I should have planned for the possibility. And I never should have let you go instead of m—” He broke off, appalled at his near slip. He reminded himself where he was, who he was talking to. Cat, not Brodie.
“Instead of who?” Cat frowned.
Thane scrambled for a suitable explanation. “Instead of what,” he said. “Instead of staying at the house, where you’ll be safe.”
“Ah, back to my gilded cage.” Her face grew tight, angry. The same face she wore the night he met her. This was the Cat he needed her to be, because the open and soft and giving Cat was far too dangerous.
“Don’t flatter me. Kinlochlie is many things, but gilded isn’t one of them.”
“It’s a very grand place,” Cat said defensively. “It just needs a little attention. No surprise, since the master of it has been gone for so long.”
“It’s falling apart.” Thane didn’t know why he was being so petulant about his own home, other than talking with Cat always made him contrary.
“Only some of it! The oldest bits anyway. And it’s not as if you need the archers’ towers anymore. You’re not making war on your neighbors, are you?”
“My nearest neighbor is Effie, so no.”
“Well, then. You’ve nothing to worry about. Repair the structure as you can, and eventually no one will mistake it for a ruin.”
“Easier said than done, kitty cat.”
She stiffened at the pet name, but didn’t make a fuss about it. Thane liked to think it was because she secretly enjoyed it, but it was more likely that she was merely too wet and cold to argue anymore. He pulled her a little closer, and felt the moment that she softened against him.
“I still hate you,” she mumbled. “Don’t forget that. I’m just chilly. I don’t want to be near you at all.”
“I know, kitty cat,” he told her, smiling despite himself.
They returned to Kinlochlie, and Thane barely had to start explaining what happened (leaving out the time in the bothy) when Effie swept into the courtyard and threw a blanket over Cat’s shoulders, cooing over her like a mother hen.
No one questioned why the two of them had been alone—apparently, the storm had been even worse at the castle and the consensus was that the lord and his guest were lucky to be alive.
Thane took that small mercy as a sign, and decided not to push his luck. He let Effie take charge of Catriona while he went up to his own bedchamber. He changed quickly out of his wet clothes, but told the servant not to bother with a bath. Thane needed to stay cool after that ride with Cat.
Which reminded him. There was something he wanted to find.
Where had he put them all? After looking all around his desk, he remembered that he’d stashed it in a small campaign dresser that he’d sent home ahead, as soon as he knew he’d be resigning his commission at last. It was meant to be portable while moving from camp to camp, but now he hoped it would never see another battle.
Still uncomfortable with the memories that anything from the war stirred, Thane had put it behind a heavy curtain that covered an alcove in the room, and used it for storing items that he never used but for one reason or another needed to keep.
It was a beautiful object of fine-grained oak, with engraved patterns all around the outside.
Two doors at the front opened to reveal several small drawers for paper, pens, ink, and other little necessities.
The insides of the doors were painted with the images of two angels, one bearing a letter and the other holding a quill.
Above the first angel was the word veritas, and above the second caritas. Truth and love.
Oh, yes. That was the real reason why he’d hidden it. Thane didn’t want to be reminded of his lack of both those things just now.
Thane wrenched open the drawer, cursing the damp weather that always made the wood stick, even on a carefully constructed piece of furniture like this. As soon as the drawer opened, several folded-up letters flew out and scattered over the floor.
He turned and quickly gathered them, then halted when he saw his name scrawled over the front of each one in the painfully familiar handwriting. Brodie’s letters. He’d saved them, as he saved most of his letters. But he’d put them out of his mind after Brodie’s death.
Slowly, he unfolded the first one, and read again the news and musings of his friend.
By the time you receive this, I expect leave will be over and I’ll be on a ship back to the Continent, but as I write now I have just come home.
It’s glorious in Edinburgh in summer, and Cat and Mama are like two bees, always buzzing about me.
I make an unlikely flower, but I shall play the part for them.
Cat asked after all my comrades, and I again remembered that you’ve not yet met her.
You really ought to come with me on the next leave.
I think you would find Cat highly amusing. She loves a good fight, and so do you.
Well, that was true, Thane thought.
He opened another, dated a few months before Brodie’s death. He’d been with a detachment helping to secure supplies for the army’s next planned advance.
…think we’re almost done here and I should be en route back to the company within a few days.
Not that I should tempt fate by writing this!
I suppose it’s just as likely that I’ll be here another six months, or dead.
Sorry, old man. Ignore that. No chance of dying on this detail—I’m so far behind the battle lines I may as well be back home in Edinburgh.
Lord, it’s hot here. What I wouldn’t give for a proper Scottish summer, wool scarves and all.
Brodie
PS: If anything does happen, which it won’t, you’ll look after my mother and Cat, won’t you? I know you will. I asked the others as well, of course. But I think you’re the only one who might hold his own against them.
Thane folded the letter back up, his eyes pricking with unshed tears. Brodie’s voice was so strong, his personality shining through every word he wrote. His joking manner, his easy way of putting up with boring, yet still dangerous duty.
“Shouldn’t have been you,” Thane said quietly.
Before he could do anything else with the letters, a servant entered with a small tray. He took several letters off the tray and handed them to Thane.
“Just arrived, sir. The rider must have been held back at the village due to the storm.”
Thane thanked him and sorted through the various letters. Most were typical correspondence from his family solicitors and his man of business in town, but there were also a few from the men.
Thane opened Duncan’s first, and read a thorough but depressing report which ticked several names off their list, but found no positive leads.
Calan wrote that he and Struan had spent time in the park where the killer attempted to shoot Cat during the rally in an attempt to find witnesses, but without any real luck.
Calan had also gone to the ladies’ league to ask about other threats made against the members; most of them had received cruel letters, but no one else had reported anything like what Cat had suffered.
Calan added that several ladies, including Miss Fairchild and Mrs Roberts, had inquired about Cat’s whereabouts.
(I told them nothing, of course. But we’ll have to decide on a plausible story for when we return her to her home.
Gossip is the real killer for a lady.) Thane laughed at Calan’s typically wry insight.
Struan wrote merely to say that by the time Thane received the letter he was holding, all the men would be on a ship heading north, escorting Tacita to rejoin Catriona.
“Thank Christ,” Thane breathed. He needed the distraction of the others to keep him from losing his mind over Cat.
There was one letter left, from Kai. Thane opened it and read.
It’s not much, but I wanted to report that I located that jilted suitor you mentioned earlier: Patrick Melrose.
It wasn’t difficult, but I don’t think he’s our man.
He married about a year ago, and they’re expecting their first child.
He sounds utterly content with life. Unless he’s completely fooled both me and Calan during our interview, he is not a man who’d pick up a gun and begin firing it at anyone, let alone more than once, or into a crowd.
Thane pondered that. Kai sometimes seemed naive, but he also had a knack for discovering things. And Calan…very few people fooled Calan. Fewer lived to tell about it.
He read on.
Melrose laughed when I asked about her. Admitted he’d been completely in love with her.
“Head over heels,” in his words. A youthful infatuation that led to a quick proposal, which Miss Ross accepted.
But he said that less than two months later, she broke it off.
He said he was shocked by it, and did get into a confrontation with Brodie when he went over to the house to argue his case.
But in hindsight, he realized she was right.
The engagement was his idea, and it was really just his pride that suffered when she told him that it was over.
Thane was still surprised that she ever accepted, considering her views. He’d ask her, because something about the whole betrothal, brief as it was, irked him.
He went in search of her, and was told that she was on the western lawn. It was safe enough to go to her there. It was a common area, and they’d be in full view of anyone the whole time.
He stepped outside. The clouds had mostly blown over to the east by now, and the sun had sunk beyond the furthest hills, leaving the sky a riot of color—reds, oranges, blues, purples. Cat stood at the stone wall, staring out, looking as if she wanted to take wing.