Chapter Two #2
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, lass,” he replied, working hard to ignore all the aching sensations down below, “but Raonaid has been living in the Hebrides all her life. When she—” Again, he had to stop and correct himself.
“When you left your home to follow Angus back to Kinloch, it was the first time you had ever set foot on the Scottish mainland.”
She frowned. “How do you know this? Is there proof of Raonaid’s childhood on the islands?”
“Aye. You’ve always been known to the people of the Western Isles because of your strange gifts.
Your reputation as an oracle was known throughout the Highlands as well, because you had visions of the future.
” He paused, taking note of the discontent in her eyes.
“But why am I explaining all this to you, when you already know it? It is your own life, lass, and I don’t believe for a single minute that you don’t remember.
You’re a fraud. These people have been tricked.
It’s a case of mistaken identity, from which you clearly stand to profit.
Aye, I know all about your inheritance. You’re due to collect it soon, are you not? You must be almost five-and-twenty.”
“You offend me, sir,” she argued. “It is not my intention to mislead anyone, and if I am not Catherine Montgomery, I will not try to take an inheritance that does not belong to me. I only want to know the truth.” She paused. “It’s just that…”
“Just what?” he prodded, fighting any urge to feel sympathy or compassion, for he could not let himself fall under any more spells.
While she circled around the table again, he felt her inexplicable power and tugged fiercely at the bonds. This was all too familiar—to be held hostage by her—and he certainly didn’t want to listen to her tragic story. He just wanted to be rid of the curse, one way or another.
And to get off this damn table.
“I find it difficult to believe,” she said, “that I could be the woman you describe. First of all, I cannot see the future, or even the past for that matter. I do not have that gift. Nor can I imagine putting curses on people, and my doctor assures me that a loss of memory does not change a person’s character.
” She looked down at him. “And what kind of curse is it? You never explained.”
Growing impatient with the conversation, he continued to tug at the leather straps. He tried to tear at them with his teeth. When that didn’t work, he regarded her snidely. “You know very well what it is.”
“If I did, would I be asking the question?”
He shook his head in utter disbelief. “Who knows why a witch does anything?”
“Stop calling me that. Tell me about the curse.”
Lachlan scoffed. “You don’t remember drugging me, and throwing me into a pit? The bones were a nice touch, the curse itself especially twisted. What better way to curb my sexual exploits than to promise that any woman I bedded would die in childbirth and take the innocent bairn with her.”
Raonaid’s lips parted, and she frowned.
“What’s wrong, Lady Catherine? Does the idea offend you? Do you find it cruel?”
“Of course I do.”
“But you are the one who concocted it.”
She spoke with a rising pitch of anger. “How many times must I say it? I remember nothing.”
“And I believe you are a liar.” He stared up at the ceiling and lay still for a long moment as he contemplated his life since the curse.
“I once scoffed at such tales of magic,” he quietly said. “But each time I wanted to bed a woman…” He glared at her. “I thought of you, and what you did to me, and I could not take the risk.”
A flood of loathing moved through him as he suddenly recalled the death of his own wife and unborn child, and all the grief and guilt and inescapable regret that came with it.
“Where is my horse?” he demanded to know.
“He’s in the stable. He has been fed and watered.”
“Untie me. Let me go before the magistrate arrives. It’s the least you can do.”
“The least I can do?” she snapped back. “You tried to ravish me and make me a victim of that curse.”
“But I didn’t ravish you, did I?”
She regarded him with uncertainty.
Lachlan stopped struggling and worked the situation through in his mind. There had to be a way out of this.
“When you first kissed me in the stone circle,” Raonaid said, “I thought we were old lovers.”
He turned his head to look at her, and scoffed. “Hardly.”
“Then why did you kiss me like that?”
He fumbled for an explanation when he didn’t even understand it himself. “I was desperate. I would have done anything to make you lift the curse.”
“And you thought that I would be so overcome by lust for you that I would simply swoon, and beg you to take me?”
He shrugged, for that was usually the effect he had on women. Or it used to be, at any rate.
“Aye.”
“Well, you were off to a very good start, Highlander, until I asked your name.”
Lachlan darted a surprised look at her, just as the earl returned to the tack room.
“Whisky’s on the way,” Drumloch said. “And the magistrate should be here at any moment.”
“Wonderful.” Lachlan winced at the pain in his shoulder, which he had forgotten about while the earl was gone.
“You still haven’t told us your name, savage.”
Lachlan gritted his teeth. “No, I haven’t, and I’m not telling you anything.”
“The magistrate will wish to know it. He might even ask you to spell it, in which case you might have a problem. Can you even read? Ever seen a pen before?”
Lachlan gazed up at the rafters. “It’ll be the magistrate’s problem, not mine, because he’ll have to beat the information out of me—and if it comes to that, someone might get hurt.”
A footman entered the tack room just then with a bottle of whisky and two glasses. The earl swiped the bottle off the silver tray, uncorked it, tipped it back, and took a swig.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said, “This isn’t my finest, but I could hardly waste the good stuff on the likes of you.”
Raonaid strode forward. “Hand me the bottle, John.” She took it from him and poured a drink. “Can you lift your head?” she asked Lachlan.
He shot her a frosty look. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you untied me?”
“I don’t think that would be wise.”
“Certainly not!” Drumloch agreed.
She ignored her cousin. Cupping the back of Lachlan’s head, she held the glass to his lips.
He gulped it down in one swallow. She poured another, and he gulped that down, too.
Then a third. With any luck, it would dull his senses enough to forget what had happened between him and Raonaid in the stone circle.
“You certainly can drink, Highlander,” she said with a hint of amusement as she stepped away from him.
“So can you, Catherine.” He spoke her name with sardonic bite.
“Is that a fact?”
“Aye.”
Without the slightest hesitation, she tipped the bottle back and guzzled.
Lachlan grinned with satisfaction. Now there was the Raonaid he knew—wild and uninhibited, exposing herself at last.
“Catherine, what in God’s name are you doing?” The earl stalked forward and snatched the bottle out of her hands. “Don’t let him manipulate you! He just wants to undermine your good judgment!”
She choked and rasped on the potent spirit, and sucked in a few tight breaths. “He says I know how to drink. I want to see if it’s true.”
“Nothing he says is true,” the earl argued. “He cannot be trusted.”
“How do you know?”
Drumloch lowered his voice. “Because he called you a witch.”
A horse whinnied somewhere nearby.
Raonaid was silent for a moment. “How do you know I’m not?”
The earl had no answer. He merely stared at her in bemused silence.
Lachlan rather enjoyed watching them quarrel. Again, it was a hint of the old Raonaid coming out of her snake hole, and the earl seemed quite taken aback.
“Because you are Lady Catherine Montgomery!” he finally replied.
“Indeed!” she shouted. “A woman who has been missing for five years, and has returned as a ruined lunatic who cannot remember a single thing about her life!”
“You are not a lunatic, Catherine. Do not speak that word again.”
Lachlan watched with curious interest as Drumloch moved forward. He was about to reach out to her when the sound of hooves and an approaching carriage interrupted the sudden hush in the stable tack room.
“The magistrate has arrived,” the footman said, stepping into the doorway.
Lachlan shut his eyes and listened to the ominous sound of the heavy prison coach rumbling to a slow halt outside. The horses nickered and shook in their harness while Lachlan made one last attempt to fight against his bonds.
It was hopeless, however. He could not escape.
“This isn’t over,” he growled at Raonaid as the magistrate and four Lowlanders armed with swords and muskets filed quickly through the door.