Page 47 of Highland Fire

“England!” Caitlin spat out the word as if it were a moth she had inadvertently sucked into her mouth.

“I have no desire to go to England! What would I do there? How would I pass the time?” And how could she face Rand’s family, be they ever so polite, knowing the scorn they must feel for her, an interloper and a foreigner?

Her eyes were eloquently trained on Rand. His attention was not on her, but on the salvers on the long sideboard from which he was filling his plate. Having made his selection, he sat down across from her at the dining table.

“Is that all you are having for breakfast?” He indicated the small bowl in front of her. “That’s hardly enough to sustain a sparrow. You would do better taking a leaf out of my book. This beef steak is not only tender, it will do you good. You could stand to gain a pound or two.”

“Porridge is good for you!” She responded as though he had made an unwarranted attack on everything dear to her. “I’ll have you know that during the wars with England, the Scottish army practically survived on oats in one form or another.”

“Which wars were those?”

“What?” The twinkle in his eyes was confusing her. “I don’t know. William Wallace and all that.”

“Oh those wars! Now let me see…That must be all of…”—he gazed reflectively at the ceiling before bringing his gaze back to hers—“yes, all of five hundred years ago. That’s the trouble with the Scots.

Once they get an idea in their heads, they never let it go.

If memory serves, and I’m trying to recall what my history masters had to say on the subject, William Wallace and his followers were hammered by the English.

I don’t think that says very much for your porridge. ”

Her nostrils were quivering. “Your schoolmasters were Englishmen!”

“Very true. Am I to understand that Scottish schoolmasters give the victory to the Scots in that particular conflict?”

“You know very well that they do not!”

“Ah!”

“But Robert the Bruce soon sent your lot packing when he became king. At Bannockburn, the Scots thoroughly trounced the English. It was a rout.”

She said this with so much relish that Rand’s lips quivered.

When they had steadied, he said reasonably, “Robert the Bruce, like his English counterpart, was a French-Norman knight. So what it comes down to is this: the war for Scottish independence was nothing more than a dispute between two powerful Norman overlords over territorial rights.”

Breathing audibly, she sat back in her chair and regarded him with a reproachful eye.

Summoning her dignity, she said, “We have wandered far from the point. You were suggesting that we remove to England so that you might attend to your affairs there, and I merely pointed out that I would prefer to remain here.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I wasn’t making a suggestion. We are both going to England, Caitlin, and that’s final.”

“You can’t expect me to desert Bocain at a time like this!”

“Bocain? She’s not in any danger. My factor said so. In another week or two, she’ll be as right as rain.”

“Serle! What does he know? He has muzzled her, did you know?”

Rand’s sigh betrayed a hint of exasperation.

“You’ll never give the man his due, will you?

Look, the muzzle is in the dog’s best interest. She has sustained a number of nasty wounds.

You know as well as I do that a dog’s instinct is to scratch and lick its injuries.

If that happens, the stitches will open and infection will set in. Is that what you want?”

“Rand,” she began, trying to get around him.

He stopped her with a look. “Do you mind? I’d like to eat my breakfast before it gets cold.

Eat your porridge, Caitlin, there’s a good girl, else you’ll have my poor chef in a passion.

My valet tells me that poor Ladubec labored for hours to obtain just the right consistency for your demanding palate.

Surely you don’t mean to offend him by rejecting his efforts? ”

Smiling faintly at the jest, she picked up her spoon and obediently began to eat.

She thought it strange and rather daunting that since Rand had become her lover—was it only last night?

—a subtle shift in power had taken place.

It wasn’t precisely that she felt like a chattel or a possession.

It wasn’t that Rand was any more dictatorial than he had ever been. The change was mostly in her.

Their coming together had upset all her preconceived notions about how it should be between a man and a woman.

In her ignorance, she had denigrated the importance of physical love, at best assigning it a place only marginally higher than reading a good book.

Rand had shown her how wrong she had been.

The kind of intimacy they had shared in that long night of passion had surpassed her wildest fantasies.

And herein lay the difference between them.

Something inside her had softened toward Rand.

He, on the other hand, had become more demanding, less giving.

If she wasn’t careful, she could very well end up turning into a doormat.

A picture, a pathetic picture, took possession of her mind: Caitlin Randal begging for a man to notice her.

It hurt. As clear as crystal, it came to her.

She was robed in the diaphanous attire, what little there was of it, of a slave girl, some woman of the East, whose only object in life was to gratify the slightest whim of her lord and master.

He wouldn’t care what she was feeling, what she was thinking, so long as she kept her thoughts to herself.

If she never had an original idea, it would be all the same to him.

Her place in his life would be negligible, while for her, he would be as necessary as the very air she breathed.

Her spine stiffened in resentment, and she glared across the table at the man she had no difficulty imagining in the role of potentate.

She decided, then, that his face was too aggressively masculine for her taste.

It wasn’t the first time she had detected an edge of cruelty in the curl of his finely molded mouth.

His eyes could be as hard as chips of sapphires, as cold as ice.

No one who knew him doubted that he possessed a formidable will.

Such a man would bend a woman or he would break her.

“Hah!” The word exploded from her lips, startling her.

Rand looked up with faint alarm. “What is it?”

Her eyelashes lowered, concealing her murderous expression, “This porridge is too hot,” she mumbled.

“Too hot?” He looked puzzled. “I would have thought it would be cold by now.”

It was cold. Blowing on it, she said ungraciously, “Who is eating this porridge, you or I?”

“Mmm. What’s got your dander up?” Recognizing that light in her eye, he made haste to head her off. “You seem to think of England as some exotic foreign country.”

“It is a foreign country, and one I have no wish to visit.”

“Nevertheless, a wife’s place is with her husband. Where I go, you go.”

“As you wish,” she said, striving to emulate that expression which was peculiar to the English, evincing a certain balance between indifference and imperturbability. Inside, her Scottish temper was on a slow simmer.

His smile was not quite a leer. “I am delighted when you give in to me. But don’t become too docile, my love, or I shall scarcely know you.”

Her smile held. “That will be the day,” she murmured.

When she rose to leave the table, he captured her wrist. “What are your plans for this morning?”

“If we are leaving tomorrow, there are a score of things I must attend to.”

“If you leave the house, for whatever reason, I want you to take MacGregor with you.”

She frowned down at him. “I won’t go further afield than Glenshiel House.”

“Caitlin,” He sighed. “Just—”

“I know, I know. Just do as you say. Well, allow me to put you right about a few things, Iain Randal. You are not an Arab sheik, and I am not your slave girl. I am a Scottish lass, a Highland lass, and where I come from it’s the lad who does the running, not the other way round.

So don’t let last night go to your head.

Last night I gave in to you because I wanted to.

Don’t expect to have everything your own way. ”

As the door slammed at her exit, Rand sat back in his chair and dabbed at his lips with his table napkin. Crushing it, he flung it on the table. “Now what the devil brought that on?” he demanded of the empty room.

Rand spent the morning with his factor, going over the scene of the attack. The casual attitude he had taken with Caitlin was not evident here.

“Foxhounds don’t usually attack people unprovoked,” he said.

“No, your lordship, but they will set upon any stray dog that doesn’t belong to the pack.”

“So you think it was Bocain they were after?” When Serle nodded, he said, “How is she, by the way?”

“She’s lost a lot of blood, but there’s no fever that I can detect. In a few weeks, with care and rest, she should be on her feet. Yet…” His voice faded as he reflected on the dog’s progress.

“What is it?”

Serle shook his head. “She’s restless, shivery. I don’t know how to explain it. The slightest noise will set her off.”

“After what she’s been through, who can blame her?”

“Aye. That must be it.”

He waited for his factor to elaborate. When Serle remained silent, Rand said, “You do realize that you will have the care of the dog while we are away?”

“Aye. There’s no way ye can take her with ye. Does her ladyship know it?”

Rand was examining the tree where the bullet had struck. He nodded absently. Through his teeth he said, “If and when I find the man who fired this bullet, I think I shall set Bocain on him to tear his throat out.”

Serle’s hand absently went to his neckcloth. “Ye think the bullet was meant for the dog?”

Rand’s head snapped round. “Don’t you?”

“Aye. I suppose. Nothing else makes sense.”