Page 32 of Keeping Kate

Chapter 10

“Alexander Fraser. Such an ordinary name for a madman,” Kate grumbled as they walked. “You are surely mad to drag me about like this. What do you want from me?”

“I am not so very mad, by the standard of my family,” he said blithely.

She felt an urge to stomp on his foot out of sheer frustration. He was so consistently unruffled that she found it irritating. She was much the opposite, being high-tempered, direct, expressive. Serenity of character, such as her sister Sophie possessed, eluded Kate. She craved peace, but landed in the fire more often than not.

“Our branch of the Frasers,” he went on, “is said to contain both ‘mad’ Frasers and ‘staid’ Frasers. I am not one of the wilder ones.”

“Really,” she said sourly.

“When I was a lad, my Highland nurse dubbed me AlasdairCallda in the Gaelic.”

“‘Dull Alexander?’ I can see it. Though Jack says you have wildness in you.”

“I make up for staidness in other ways.” His fingers flexed on her arm. An unbidden thrill poured through her like a spiral of flame. “More to the point here is learning your name, Miss Hell, not mine.”

“Alasdair Callda...You may call me Catriona Allta,” she replied.

He chuckled. “Wild Katherine. Alas, not quite what we were hoping for.”

“Alas,” she echoed.

Soon he led her along a diagonal path over the slope, far from the drover’s track, below the level of the military road. As they mounted another hillside, Kate yanked out of his grip. Fraser let go long enough that she stepped away, but he took her arm again.

She twisted. “Please, just let me go.”

“If I did, you would soon be lost out here.”

“I know the area too well for that.” Instantly she regretted the words.

“Do you? So your home is near here?”

“No,” she denied. “I have been through here before, going south to—shop.” What was she saying? Surely she was tired.

“Shopping! So the laundress does her marketing in Edinburgh? Or would that be the fairy queen? The mysterious Miss Kate,” he went on. “Even if you know this area, if you were to wander alone, Grant’s men would find you, I promise you. They will search the roads and the hills.”

“And the inns,” she pointed out.

“Let us take that risk together.”

Together. A feeling stirred in her, a deep and real need for companionship, for a partner, for love. Captain Fraser was not the remedy for that, she told herself. Indeed she was tired, to feel so vulnerable.

“We?” she asked defiantly. “I would not go anywhere willingly with you, nor with Grant’s soldiers.”

“An odd remark for Katie Hell,” he growled.

Without thinking, she paused, turned, slapped his face.

Angling his head to one side, Fraser stared down at her in silence. In the moonlit gloom, she saw the flushed mark of her hand on his cheek. Heart pounding, she stared upward in silence, breathing hard.

“I am not a whore,” she said between her teeth.

“And I am usually a gentleman. I beg your pardon.” He took her arm again and walked onward.

Over the shoulder of a hill and along a weathered track that led beside a burbling stream, Kate let him guide her. After a while, she tried to pull away in another futile attempt. Though she was determined, he was simply stronger.

“Please, you must let me go.”