The Pride of Lions (19 page)

Catherine turned her head and leaned slightly forward, the better to identify the muted rushing sound to the left of the knoll. She saw a thin, whisper-sheer cascade of water tumbling over the broken lip of the precipice, spraying a transparent, rainbow-hued mist onto the rocks below.

“It is beautiful,” she admitted.

“Beautiful, indeed,” he agreed softly.

Something in his voice suggested his comment was not directed entirely to the view, and as she settled slowly back she became disturbingly aware that his hand no longer cradled her elbow but was curved firmly around the indent of her waist.

She had not realized she had moved closer to his side or that she had insinuated herself into the protective circle of his arm, but Cameron was very much aware of both
indiscretions. The sunlight was playing with the breeze-blown wisps of her hair, scattering them like threads of spun silk against the dark brown of his jacket. Her violet eyes had absorbed the color of the sky and shimmered with flecks of vibrant blue. She smelled of wildflowers, dewy and fresh, and the effect was intoxicating. It reacted on his senses like a deep drink of sweet wine.

The sudden, awkward silence sent a shiver racing over the surface of her skin, and she extricated herself from his embrace with what she hoped was a subtle step sideways.

“Are we anywhere near this Archberry you keep talking about?”

“Achnacarry. About half a day’s hard ride, perhaps a little more.”

“Half a day,” she repeated wistfully. “And then you will be sending me home?”

The longing in her voice irritated him, and he glanced at the mountain on the left. Fort William was just on the other side, with its fine harbor and stout military ships. “As soon as I think it is safe, yes.”

“Safe? I fail to see where I could be any further threat to you or your furtive little mission. We are safely across the border. The farmers we have seen haven’t spoken enough intelligible English for me to betray you even if I tried—which I haven’t.”

“You have been very well-behaved,” he agreed.

“I have done exactly what you asked of me. I have cooperated and been civil to the point of nausea each time we were stopped by strangers. Frankly, I don’t know what else you want from me, and I think it is vile and unconscionable to keep tormenting me this way.”

“What way is that, Mistress Ashbrooke? Have we not stayed in the finest inns, with the hottest baths and the tastiest foods?”

“Food and hot water do not compensate for boorish company.”

“Boorish?” Alex cast a frown over his shoulder, assessing the rich black and gold livery worn by Aluinn
and Iain, the polished gleam to the carriage, the curried smartness of the new team of horses.

“Your cousin,” she said succinctly. “He stares at me constantly. Glowers at me, actually, as if he would dearly like to do me harm.”

“You did club him rather soundly over the head,” he reminded her. “As for him staring, you are a very lovely woman. I would be more concerned if he didn’t stare.”

Catherine’s cheeks warmed at the unexpected compliment. “He has threatened me. I’ve heard him.”

“You understand Gaelic?”

“I know when a man is threatening me. And I can guess what manner of threat he is promising. Why, he tried to accost me once, in the stables, and if not for the good stout pike providence saw fit to provide, I might well have been …”

He smiled politely and searched out a cigar from his pocket. “Yes? You might have been …?”

“… violated,” she concluded lamely, remembering how close she had come to suffering that very fate at the hands of Alexander Cameron.

He watched the color deepen in her cheeks—all the while wondering if the rest of her body flushed such a gloriously warm shade—then cleared his throat and pointed to where Deirdre had set out a blanket for lunch. “You should have something to eat before we make the walk down into the valley.”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“You hardly ate anything for breakfast.” He blew out a gust of smoke and snuffed the match beneath his boot as he hooked a hand under her elbow again. “I would sooner not have to deal with a woman fainting on me from starvation, thank you very much.”

“I have no intentions of fainting,” she said, resisting his attempt to guide her back down the slope. “I have never fainted before in my life, for that matter. And do let me go. I am not a child to be led about by a string.”

“Believe me, I realized at Wakefield you were not a child, but I do wish you would stop acting like one.”

Catherine was so shocked by the blatant reference to what had happened at the inn that she allowed herself to be led to the picnic blanket and to be seated on a conveniently low, flat rock. Deirdre hurried over with the last of the provisions—a wicker basket and cutlery—but at a glance from Cameron, she deposited them on the blanket and returned to the coach.

The Highlander, meanwhile, stripped off his jacket, folded it carefully, and set it beside him on the grass.

“What do you think you are doing?”

“Eating lunch,” he said. “I suddenly find myself with quite an appetite. Will you serve, or shall I?”

She considered elaborating on precisely where he could put the greasy leg of mutton that poked out of its wrapper, but instead snapped open a linen napkin, selected the cleanest knife from the small tray, and transferred a thin slice of meat and some cheese to her plate. Without a thought to Cameron or his empty plate, she broke off a piece of cheese and began to eat.

He grinned hugely, the cigar clamped between his teeth. “Why, Mistress Ashbrooke, how uncivil of you. And all this time you have been condemning me for my bad manners.”

She threw the piece of cheese aside and glared directly into the laughing midnight eyes. Bristling at his arrogance, she reached into the basket, stabbed grimly at two slabs of meat, and thrust the plate in front of him.

“Thank you.”

Seething, she watched as he propped his cigar on the grass and tasted the mutton.

“Delicious. You should try it.”

“I find it difficult to breathe, let alone enjoy the taste of food with the air tainted so. Dare I ask what is rolled into those miserably foul things you smoke?”

“Foul? Never let a Virginia colonist hear you say
that.” He took a long, last draw on the cigar and stubbed it out in the grass. “Better?”

“It would suit me better if we could drop this ridiculous charade once and for all. You have kidnapped me, compromised me, ruined my reputation almost beyond repair, yet you expect me to sit and share a cordial meal. You expect me to answer all of your wretched questions the instant you ask them, yet you haven’t the decency to give an honest reply to anything I have asked thus far.”

He lounged back on one elbow, enjoying the way the sunlight was exploding in tiny sparks in her eyes. “Very well, ask away. I will answer anything you like—providing I am accorded equal time and liberty.”

Catherine tapped her fingertips on the stem of her fork, wary of a verbal trap. “Did you really murder someone? Is there really a reward posted for your capture?”

If he was surprised or caught off guard by the bluntness of the question, it did not show. “Why? Were you hoping to turn me over to the authorities and collect it?”

“There, you see?” She threw down the fork in exasperation. “You always answer a question with another question.”

“Do I?” He made an effort to contain a smile. “I suppose I do. Sorry. Force of habit, I guess.” His eyes wandered from hers for a moment, distracted by a movement from the coach. “What was it you asked? Ah, yes: Did I really murder a man? The direct answer would be yes, I killed two men fifteen years ago, but I do not believe I
murdered
either one of them. And to be perfectly honest there have been a great many more over the years that haven’t earned half so much attention, though they could be considered a more criminal waste.”

Catherine stiffened. “You have killed too many men to keep count?”

“It is difficult in the heat of battle to accurately judge how many of your cartridges strike home.”

“Battles? You were a soldier?”

“For a while. I have been a little bit of everything for a
while. My turn. How long were you engaged to your hot-headed Lieutenant Garner? I only ask because the news seemed to be as much of a surprise to him as to the other members of your family.”

Two bright splotches of crimson stained Catherine’s cheeks in response to his sarcasm. “If anyone looked surprised it was because we had not intended to blurt the news out quite so …”

“Unexpectedly?”

“
Melodramatically
. And certainly not over a spectacle such as a duel.”

“Then you
are
in love with him?”

“What possible business is that of yours?”

“A question with a question, madam?”

She ground her teeth together. “Am I in love with Hamilton? If you must know … yes. Desperately. And if you think he will let this incident go unavenged—”

“Desperately, you say? How does one love someone
desperately
?”

“With one’s whole heart and soul,” she replied tartly. “And to understand that, you would have to
have
a heart, naturally.
My
turn: If you have stayed away from your precious Archberry for the past fifteen years, why come back now?”

“It is my home. Why shouldn’t I come back?”

“But why now? Why come back to Scotland in the midst of so much upheaval? You don’t believe in the Stuart cause, yet you risk your life to spy for them. You don’t even believe the Pretender has a chance of winning back the throne—I heard you say as much at Rosewood—yet you are carrying information home about troop strength and military deployment. Not the kind of news one gathers if one does not believe a war is imminent.”

“Perhaps not. But then neither is the latest Paris fashion relevant to putting bread and meat on the table when your people are starving and their homes are being burned over their heads.”

“Then you admit you
do
believe in the Stuart cause?”

Cameron pursed his lips and started to reach for another cigar. He saw the look on Catherine’s face and dismissed the impulse with a sigh. “I believe the Scots do not know the meaning of the word
compromise
. Simply put, King James is a Scot. He is the monarch to whom all of Scotland pledged allegiance before the English decided they did not like his religion or his manners. A rather shoddy way to treat a king, wouldn’t you say? To banish him and invite his cousin and her foreign-born husband to fill the vacancy on the throne?”

“It was perfectly legal.”

“It certainly was … after the English Parliament passed the Act of Succession to make it so. But suppose they made a law declaring that all blonde-haired, blue-eyed vixens must remain in a convent until the age of thirty-five? It would be legal to lock you away, but would it be morally right?”

“That is an outrageous example,” she said, scoffing.

“No more outrageous than dictating to a man how he must pray to his god.”

“We are speaking of kings, not gods.”

“Granted, but whatever happened to the divine right of kings, whose ancestors were supposedly descended from gods? I’m not saying all monarchs are holy, but do we have the right to chop off their heads or banish them to perdition whenever one comes along who does not meet our approval? There have been kings through the ages—murderers, thieves, rapists—guilty of far worse crimes than James Francis Stuart, and I’m afraid in that sense I have to agree with the Jacobite standpoint insofar as an oath of allegiance to one king cannot arbitrarily be redirected to another just because you don’t like the first one. The Scots have pledged their loyalty to King James, and it is a matter of honor and pride that they uphold it.”

“As simple as that?”

“War is never simple, nor are the reasons for it.”

“Then you believe there
will
be a war?”

“If certain irritants have their way I can see trouble ahead, yes.”

“But not all of Scotland is united behind the Stuarts.”

“Not all of England is especially pleased with the Hanovers.”

She scowled at his quick tongue and wondered again at the smile lurking behind his eyes. “They dislike and mistrust papists, however. You will never see England accept another Catholic king, divine right or no.”

“My, what religious tolerance you have, dear lady. Do Catholics have horns and forked tails?”

“If you are anything by which to judge, I should say yes.”

“But I am not Catholic, nor is my family or clan.”

“So you are saying you
won’t
fight for a Stuart restoration?”

He sighed good-naturedly. “Religion is not the only issue here. There is also the little matter of summarily declaring Scotland to be part of a union with England; of stripping her own Parliament of any real powers; of placing English mayors in her cities and building English forts garrisoned with English troops to police us. They have stolen our land, taken over our merchant trade, and seek to dictate what we may grow and sell and buy. They lure settlers away to work their colonies, only to have them slapped in irons and indentured to blue-blooded, upstanding English colonists. We are a stubborn lot, we Scots. We tend not to take well to slavery or to having someone else govern our destiny.”

“Even so, the Highlands attempted an uprising thirty years ago and it failed miserably. What makes anyone think another one can succeed now? You don’t believe it. That night at the inn you said something about a world full of righteous fools chasing each other around in circles and you wanted no part of it.”

Alex laughed outright; he couldn’t help it. And under different circumstances Catherine might have enjoyed the deep, lusty sound as well as the complete change it made
in his appearance. The dimple reappeared and the lines across his forehead vanished. His eyes sparkled and a hint of ruddiness crept up beneath his tan, drawing attention to the length of his lashes, the glossy thickness of his hair, even the roguish shadow of stubble on his jaw.

Conversely, of course, it drew the curious stares of both Aluinn MacKail and Deirdre O’Shea, which made Catherine fidget uncomfortably on her rock.