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H amish woke the next morning to the splash of water in the basin.

It had been late when he’d returned to the room last night. Cat had been fast asleep in the bed, so he’d quietly pilfered a blanket and pillow, then stretched out in front of the fireplace so the warmth from the last smoldering embers might lull him to sleep.

He cracked one eye open, stifling a groan, and there in front of him was a pair of bare feet peeking out from underneath the hem of a dress the color of spring leaves. Cat was at the washbasin, her pink toes curled against the floorboards, and he stifled another groan, his mouth going dry.

Toes. They were toes , for God’s sake. Toes were hardly the most titillating portion of a lady’s anatomy, but that never seemed to matter when it came to Cat. He was enamored of every inch of her, from the tips of those adorable toes to the ends of each wild auburn curl atop her head.

“Good morning, Miss MacLeod.” He struggled to his feet, his back protesting every minute he’d spent sleeping on hard floors for the past six nights. “You’re up early.”

“I beg your pardon, my lord. I didn’t mean to wake you.” Cat glanced at him over her shoulder, then turned back to the looking glass. “I never heard you come back last night. Were you up very late with Mr. Laing?”

He swallowed. Her face was scrubbed clean, her cheeks as pink as her toes from her vigorous wash with the cold water in the basin.

Damp wisps of hair curled around her face, and the bright shade of her green dress turned her eyes the color of a tender spring plant just emerging from the ground after the last frost, its eager face turned toward the sun.

He’d never seen her wear that dress before. If he had, he’d remember it.

“Late enough, yes.” He hadn’t been in any hurry to spend another night on the floor, and as it happened, Mr. Laing was a fine old gentleman with a sharp memory. “Mr. Laing claims to recall your father being in Tongue around the time of the Skirmish.”

She was paying meticulous attention to her ablutions, taking care not to look at him, but that made her whirl around, the washing cloth still clutched in her hand. “You mean to say he saw my father here?”

“He claims to, yes. I was surprised at it, too, but he was adamant. He said he didn’t know it was your father at the time—Rory’s face wasn’t as famous then as it later became—but he recognized the redheaded man he’d seen in Tongue as the legendary Rory MacLeod after coming across a sketch of him in a broadside some years later.

He said Rory had a memorable face, and there was no mistaking it. ”

All the MacLeods had memorable faces, it seemed. God knew he couldn’t get Cat’s face out of his head. Waking or dreaming, she was there, as if she’d been painted under his eyelids.

Cat abandoned her washing in the basin and sank down on the edge of the bed. He joined her, and they sat there together, their legs nearly but not quite touching, the only sounds the bustle of the inn waking up and the gentle murmur of the water outside the window.

He would have given anything to know what she was thinking during those silent moments, but when Cat roused herself at last, she said only, “If Mr. Laing is remembering correctly, and my father was here in Tongue at the time of the Skirmish, then—”

“Then we have every reason to believe the story Mrs. Geddes told us is true.”

It was not, evidently, what she’d been about to say, because she turned to him in surprise. “What, you mean to say you believe Rory rescued three young Jacobean soldiers aboard Le Prince Charles Stuart from a disastrous fate?”

“Well, we don’t know if it would have been disastrous, but—”

“That Rory emerged from the shadows in a fishing boat at just the right time and made away with three young men with a fortune in gold pieces stuffed in their pockets?” She shook her head. “I suppose anything is possible, but it sounds too fantastical to be true.”

Yet it was true. He’d become convinced of it as Mr. Laing had told the curious tale of what he’d witnessed on the day of the Skirmish of Tongue.

It was as unlikely as she claimed, yes, but there were too many details that corresponded with what they already knew about the lost treasure for it to be otherwise.

Rory’s presence near Tongue at the time, the pact between the four men, the gold coins, and even Rory’s animosity toward Clan Mackay. It was as if Mr. Laing had given him the puzzle’s frame, and all the pieces were now falling into place.

“It might be too fantastical to be believed for another man, but your father’s entire life was made up of fantastical tales, Cat. I daresay this is the least of them.”

“But your father’s wasn’t , my lord. How can we be certain he was even on board the Le Prince Charles Stuart , or in Tongue at all? Even if he was here, it seems far-fetched to think he’d risk his life to steal a portion of the gold. I can believe it of my father, but yours was no smuggler.”

Wasn’t he? There must be a reason why the rumors of Archibald Muir’s reckless youth had persisted for all these years, but he didn’t know if the rumors about his father were true, and he likely never would.

“We can’t be certain of anything, Cat, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find my father was involved in the Skirmish and never told me.

He was a Scot, remember, and a rather fierce Jacobite in his earlier years, but he became less forthcoming about his past after he married my mother.

My grandfather was an English aristocrat and not an admirer of the Old Pretender. ”

“No, I imagine not.” Her brow puckered. “If we’re correct about the pact, then the other two men who escaped on the fishing boat that day must have been Malcolm Ross and Angus Dunn. ”

“They must have been, yes. It seems likely the lifelong friendship between Malcolm, Angus, and my father started on board the Le Prince Charles Stuart and was strengthened by their shared experience during the Skirmish of Tongue.”

“Then you think the four of them hid the treasure here twenty-nine years ago, and Rory came back five months ago to retrieve it?”

“After my father died, yes. It fits with everything else we know to be true.”

For the past week, as they’d made their way from Ballantrae to northern Scotland, his instincts had been telling him they’d find the answer to the mystery here in Tongue. Now he was more convinced of it than ever. There were simply too many coincidences to believe otherwise.

“Mr. Laing didn’t happen to catch sight of my father here in Tongue five months ago, did he?” Cat asked, with a hopeful look.

“No. I think he would have mentioned it if he had.”

“I suppose that would be too good to be true. Why do you think they went to all the trouble to make the pact, Hamish?” Cat tapped her lower lip, thinking. “If Mr. Laing’s story is true, they had the gold right in their hands. Why hide it, when they could have just taken it with them then?”

“I daresay it was too risky. The crew from the Sheerness was chasing them, remember, and that’s to say nothing of Captain George Mackay and his men combing every inch of dirt from the shore of the Kyle of Tongue to Lochen Hakel for them.

If they did get away with a significant portion of the gold, it would have been heavy and difficult to carry. ”

“They must have decided it was safer to leave the treasure behind and escape with their skin while they had the chance. Twenty-nine years, Hamish! It’s as enduring a promise as I’ve ever heard of.”

“Indeed. We may never know the whole if it, but my guess is the pact was in part a promise that none of them would come back on their own to steal the treasure. The money was never theirs. It belongs to the clans.”

“All this time I thought Rory had gone off on one of his usual quests after a ship laden with tea or rum when he’d only been trying to right a wrong done to the clans.”

“Yes.” It was fitting, really, that her father should have been the last to survive, and the one to go after the treasure. Rory MacLeod had been a smuggler, right until the very end, when he’d become a hero.

“Who’s to say the treasure is still where they hid it, though? It’s been twenty-nine years, Hamish. Surely someone else has found it by now.”

“Perhaps, but just five months ago, your father believed it was still here.” He hesitated, clearing his throat. “I, ah, I did your father a terrible injustice, Cat, and I beg your pardon for it.”

She turned to him, startled. “What injustice?”

“From the moment the coin arrived at my townhouse in London, I was certain Rory had broken his promise and taken the gold for himself, but for such an infamous smuggler, your father was a man of conscience. He kept his word.”

And in the end, keeping his word was what had led to his death.

Perhaps she was thinking the same thing, because she rose from the bed and went to the window, her back to him as she gazed out at the water. “I did him an injustice, too. I believed the worst of him, and it’s too late to beg his pardon for it.”

Her voice broke on that last word, and a roar of despair echoed inside him. There was nothing he wanted more than to go to her, to cradle her head on his chest and help soothe her battered heart, but if there was ever a man who had no right to touch her, it was him.

He’d lied to her. He’d taken away everything that mattered the most to her, and now there seemed to be no way for them to get back to where they’d been that morning in Ballantrae, when he’d woken beside her. Had that only been six days ago?

Six days, since he’d held her in his arms.

It seemed as if he’d lived a dozen lifetimes since then, and with every hour that passed, she only slipped further away from him.

What a terrible irony, that the man who could talk his way into the good graces of every debutante, matron, and grandmamma in London couldn’t find a single word to say to earn him the forgiveness of the lady he’d fallen in love with.