Highland Master (36 page)

Fin’s action caught Catriona by surprise. When he put her on her garron with enough force to make her teeth snap
together, she drew breath to tell him what she thought of such behavior.

His expression made her think again.

“We’ll talk soon,” he promised. “First we’ll let that lot get well away from us whilst I have a word with James.”

“What about?”

“Aye, what?” James asked curiously.

“Comyn knows about your exalted guests,” Fin said.

“I don’t see how he could,” James said, frowning. “Rothesay rode into the Highlands as one of Alex’s men, and Donald came to us as a mendicant friar. Nae one can have recognized either one of them.”

“One would hope not. Yet Comyn suggested that Rothiemurchus houses ‘grander lairds,’ wielding more power than the Mackintosh or your father.”

James’s frown deepened. Turning to his man, he said, “Ride back and tell the boatmen what just happened here. Tell them to report it to the Mackintosh and Shaw. Tell them, too, that we think that Rory Comyn kens more than he should.”

As they watched the man hurry back, Catriona said gently to Fin, “ ’Twas my speaking to Rory that earned us that information, was it not?”

“It was, aye,” he admitted.

“It is good then that I did annoy him a trifle.”

“The man was angry from the moment he saw us,” he said flatly. “I’d wager that when he departed, he’d have hurled much the same words at us.”

“But he had come to negotiate with my father, so he was
not
really angry until I told him that you and I had married.”

“You made the matter personal, Catriona, a matter
betwixt you and him, Mackintosh and Comyn. A woman telling any man who wants her that he can never have her utters fighting words, words that
beget
trouble.”

He had given her something to think about, but his calm voice did not fool her. She decided that she would keep her thoughts to herself for a time.

When James’s man returned, they continued on their way, watching the now distant Comyn party until all six of them vanished over the ridge north of the loch.

Their own party followed the barely discernible track that she and Fin had followed the day they had met, when she had led him to Rothiemurchus. At the top of the ridge, they headed northwest and downhill to the river Spey. Fording the river, they splashed out onto a wider, more traveled path that followed the river for some fifty miles to its outlet into the Moray Firth near the cathedral town of Elgin.

Fin had not tried yet to open a discussion with her, so as they rode, she mentally practiced what she would say to him. But their party remained tightly grouped, and she had no more desire than he did for James or Morag to hear what she said. So she bided her time.

When she saw Fin look back across the river and then at James, she realized that they had been waiting until the Spey lay between them and the Comyns. At that time of year, the next ford lay ten miles to the north. Moreover, they would soon be in the heart of Mackintosh country and less likely to meet any Comyn.

Armed Comyns would certainly draw notice, and word of their presence would quickly spread until Mackintoshes confronted them in great number.

Fin said, “Do you know the turning we want, lass?”

“Aye, sure, I do,” she said.

“Then you and I will ride on, so we can talk of anything you like.”

His matter-of-fact words had an odd effect on her. Although she had been waiting for such an opportunity, now that he was granting it to her…

“What now?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I was ready and willing to tell you just what I think,” she replied. “But I did not think you would be so willing to hear it. In troth, sir, your invitation has acted like a damper on the heat of my anger. And I am not sure that I like that any better than other things you have said or done of late.”

“Is that all?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.

That look had another effect, a deeper one. But she fought it, determined to hold her own and have her say. “Faith, do you laugh at me?”

“I am not such a fool,” he assured her. “Now, shall we discuss what Rothesay said to anger you just before we left the hall, or have you another topic that you would prefer to offer first?”

She sighed. “By my troth, sir, I think what angers me most is almost the same thing in every instance.”

“And that is…?”

“You used to listen to my opinions and seem to respect them. But now you either ignore what I say to you or you dismiss it as unimportant. But if I do the same to you, you get as irritated as Ivor does.”

“You will have to explain to me how that applies to what Rothesay said about my having been born at Tor Castle.”

“God-a-mercy, you ken fine that you misled me when I asked you if you knew the place,” she said.

With a wry and rueful look, he said, “I did not tell you the whole truth, but we had met just the day before.”

“Then what about when I asked you yestereve, before I agreed to marry you, if you had told me everything about yourself that I should know?
Then
, you made it sound as if the only things you had
not
told me were things that you had not thought of or secrets that belonged to other people.
That
was not true, sir.”

“I should have told you then, aye,” he admitted. “I do see that now. At the time, I was acting on your father’s orders to persuade you to our marriage. The truth is that I wanted to persuade you for my own sake, sweetheart. But I feared that if I admitted that I was born at the very place over which our clans had fought for decades, you would be as irked as you are now. And our fratching over it would have done nowt to change your father’s mind or that of the Mackintosh.”

His explanation took the wind out of her sails. But she soon rallied, saying, “That is all very well, sir. But when you told me that you had only
heard
of Tor Castle, that was deception, plain and simple. How can you expect me to believe what you tell me when you do such things?” Tears welled unexpectedly into her eyes and she stared straight ahead, hoping that he would not notice them.

He reached over and caught hold of her hand. “Look at me, lass.”

She ignored him. She would not let him see that her own words had stirred such foolish emotion in her. When he squeezed her hand, a tear spilled over. But it fell from her left eye, and he was on her right, so he could not see it.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “I wish I could promise never to do such a thing again, but I cannot. Sithee, I serve a
man who behaves impulsively and holds his secrets close. That means that I often have to keep my activities secret, too. I have spent years keeping personal secrets as well. Sakes, I thought that even Rothesay knew nowt of them. I was wrong about that, as we have seen, but even he knows nowt of one dilemma that I failed to resolve before I met you.”

“You did resolve it then?”

“I did, aye, and I am sure that I chose the right way.”

“Will you tell me what the resolution was, and why it was such a dilemma?”

“A fortnight ago I’d have said that I could never speak of it to anyone,” he said solemnly. “I am still not persuaded that telling you would be the right thing to do. But that is not because I don’t trust you, so I make you this promise. I will never forbid you to ask me about it, and mayhap the day will come when I can tell you.”

The tear dried on her cheek as she considered his promise.

At last, still watching the road, she said, “I must be able to trust you. But how can I when I’d often wonder if you were parsing your words or just lying to me?”

“Will you agree to let a matter drop if I tell you that I cannot discuss it?”

She glanced at him, saw him looking intently at her, and could not look away. Something in his expression challenged her to think before she replied.

At last, licking dry lips, she said, “If I say that I agree, will you promise never to say those words just because you don’t
want
to answer me?”

“I will promise that without hesitation.”

His voice sounded hoarse, and his gaze was more
intense than ever. The way he was looking at her sent new sensations surging through her, touching her in the very places that had reacted earlier when he had stroked her breasts.

She muttered, “Will you promise never to mislead me again?”

“With respect, Catriona, I did not really mislead you about Tor Castle. You asked me if I knew of it, and I said that I did and that I knew its exact location. We were on the loch trail then, and we met Comyn, which ended our conversation.”

“But by not being forthright…”

“That
was
just after we’d met. Recall that I still did not know how the people of Rothiemurchus felt about members of the Cameron confederation. I had good reason to tread cautiously.”

“We do have a truce,” she reminded him.

“Aye, but truces are not set in stone, lass. Men break them all the time.”

“Men break many things,” she said. “How will I know I can trust your word?”

“Because I will trust yours if you say that I should. Should I?”

Fin saw color fire her cheeks and knew that he had touched a nerve. He decided to press the advantage. “We need to be able to trust each other, lass. I know that it angered you when we met Comyn today and I told you to stay on your horse.”

“And I irked you when I dismounted and said what I did to him.”

“Aye, but I quickly saw that you could manage him, so I let matters be. Then you began to contradict him about his so-called negotiations, and I could see that you were going to make him even angrier than he had been.”

“By my troth, sir, had I not been thinking as much about how you would react to my defiance as I was about what I should say to him—”

“Don’t you see, sweetheart? That is just the sort of thing we need to learn about each other. Until we do, I would ask that you obey me when I make it clear that I expect obedience, if only because I have more experience of the world than you do. In return,” he added before she could argue, “I will do my best to give you the same respect when we speak of things about which you know more than I do.”

“What if I don’t obey you?” she asked, regarding him now from under her lashes. “Sithee, sometimes I just act because it seems right to act.”

“Then I fear you must accept whatever consequences I impose. I am your husband now, Catriona. So, law and tradition accord me certain rights and likewise certain duties. The greatest of those is the duty to protect you from others. And from your own folly,” he added bluntly.

When she licked her lips, his body stirred in response, making him wish James and Morag to perdition. What he wanted to do was snatch his defiant, beautiful wife off her garron, carry her into the nearby woods for privacy, and master her so thoroughly that she would know forevermore that she was his woman.

Catriona could not mistake the heated desire in Fin’s eyes, and since her own body had reminded her any number of
times that they had consummated their union too hastily, his desire and even his threat stirred other, much stronger feelings.

Preferring not to think about those consequences he had mentioned, because she knew he would never approve her habit of taking her own road whenever she could, she was glad to see the turning they wanted ahead. As they ascended the steep, wooded trail into the mountains, she remembered his penchant for waterfalls.