She hesitated when he commanded her to hold out her hands. “What do you intend to do?”
“See to it that you don’t run away.”
“How could I possibly manage that?”
“I imagine,” he said in a dry voice as he reached for her fettered hands, “that given enough time you would find a way.”
Raith looped an end of the makeshift rope around her wrists, then over the woolen strip that already bound them together. When he had done tying a secure knot, he gathered up the length of rope, then again rose to his feet. “Get up, Miss Campbell. We’ve still a long way to go.”
He placed a hand under her elbow, helping her to rise, but as he guided her toward his horse, Katrine came to a defiant halt. “I won’t do it! I won’t walk behind you like some cow being led to market!”
“Then I’ll be obliged to drag you behind me.”
She wasn’t certain he would do anything so cruel, but looking up at his hard, dark face, she decided not to take that risk. She did, however, complain very vocally at such treatment as he positioned her behind his horse and played out the rope. Her face flaming with humiliation, she called Raith a thief, a brute and a
bounder, and anything else that immediately came to mind.
He hesitated before mounting his horse. “I presume your tirade means you want to be gagged again.”
His threat made Katrine clamp her lips shut. And when he set out on his horse, leading her behind him, she obediently, if resentfully, followed.
Mostly it was an uphill climb, but it could have been worse. The sky eventually grew lighter and the better part of the fog burned away, allowing her to see where she was going. And Raith at least went slowly, stopping the black horse whenever she had to pick her way through a difficult spot to avoid turning an ankle.
They were headed north, she could tell now, with sometimes a veer to the west. Katrine tried to remember what lay ahead. Over the years she had poured through dusty tomes to discover everything she could about the Highlands, to satisfy the keen interest in her heritage.
But she soon gave up trying to picture a map in her head and concentrated instead on maintaining her uneasy footing. The terrain grew rugged and wild as they climbed, with clumps of yellow gorse that scratched at her bare ankles and gray-green heather bushes as high as her shoulder. Her captor slackened his pace now and then to accommodate her, but the backs of her calves began aching, and her dew-soaked slippers began rubbing blisters on her stockingless heels.
Occupied with her woes, Katrine for once had little to say. She was determined to bear the pain with fortitude, though she stored up an arsenal of names to call her cursed MacLean captor when she next deigned to speak to him. He would answer for this, she vowed as she trudged along. Her green eyes flashed her promise of vengeance whenever he glanced over his shoulder at her.
It became a point of honor with her not to lag. Gritting her teeth against the pain of her protesting leg muscles and chafed heels, she strove to keep up, all the while planting silent curses on the heads of the churls who’d abducted her and the devil’s kin who was their leader. She would show them a Campbell could stand up to any torture a MacLean might dish up!
Perhaps that was why she found it so mortifying when, after nearly an hour of walking, on a relatively flat spot, she stubbed her toe and tripped over a root. Katrine went sprawling, barely managing to thrust out her tethered hands in time to save herself from real injury. She lay there on the damp ground trying to catch her breath, blinking back the sudden tears. A blister had broken on her left heel and she had scraped her right knee in the fall.
And the Highland cur who was the cause of her wounds was simply sitting there on his horse regarding her skeptically. She could feel his dark gaze boring through her as he deliberated coming to her aid.
He must have decided she wasn’t shamming, for she heard him dismount. Katrine tried to rise on her own then, determined to refuse his help, but she miscalculated the extent of her injury and put too much weight on her bruised knee. She sank back down with a soft cry of pain.
The fingers that closed around her arms were surprisingly gentle as he helped her to a sitting position. He saw the weeping blister on her foot then, and his mouth turned grim. “Why the devil didn’t you say something?”
So she was the one at fault, was she? Katrine clenched her teeth, praying for a lightning bolt to strike him dead. When one didn’t, she added one more notch on the tally of scores that needed settling. “You were so eager to put a period to my existence,” she snapped, “that I hesitated to interfere.” When the harshness of her tone made Raith glance up at her, she glared at him. “A Campbell would not mistreat a prisoner so.”
She felt a small amount of satisfaction at the expression of guilt and remorse that flashed across his dark features. But she wanted him to feel totally shamed. “Pray don’t concern yourself unduly,” she said through gritted teeth as he drew her slippers from her feet. “Just because I am cut and bleeding doesn’t mean I require your assistance.”
“Don’t be more of a gomerel than you can help.”
“What is a gomerel?” She knew very well that he was calling her a fool, but she wasn’t about to admit she understood the insult.
He didn’t answer, however, but instead returned to his horse and delved into a leather sporran, the Scots pouch that served as a pocket or purse and was usually worn in front of the kilt. Katrine watched as he unwrapped the seal he had taken from her uncle’s study, and again wondered what he had been doing there. Seeing the grim cast of his countenance, she decided he was unlikely to tell her if she asked. Besides, Katrine remembered belatedly, she wasn’t deigning to speak to him.
She remained determinedly silent as he returned with the linen handkerchief and water flask and sat down before her. And she only allowed a small gasp to escape her when he placed her slim feet in his lap and proceeded to cool her blisters with the dampened handkerchief. She scarcely felt the sting, his touch was so gentle, and yet his fingers on her skin aroused the same devastating warmth as before, like tiny bolts of lightning striking the sensitive nerve endings.
She went totally still. Every time she was near this man, was touched by him, she felt a strange excitement, separate and apart from the fear or fury she knew she should feel.
Against her will, Katrine studied him, watching the thick jet black sweep of lashes that fanned his bronzed cheeks, wondering how she could have found his dark good looks unappealing or frightening. The black stubble on his jaw contributed to his air of fierceness, true, but concern had softened the hard male features, making him seem less formidable, less disreputable, even human.
Then the blue eyes lifted to hers, and her breath caught in her throat; they had gone dark again, the color of thunderclouds in a midnight sky. How could she have forgotten how dangerous he was?
“Your knee is bleeding,” he murmured, his voice sounding as raspy as his beard had felt.