Tender Feud

“Meggie didn’t do anything wrong! Indeed, it’s my fault that she’s here. She wanted to leave, but I made her stay and talk to me. If you must punish someone, then it should be me. I’ll eat only oats again if you say so.”

Raith ignored her plea, but gentled his gaze as he focused it on his ward. “Meggie, lass, you shouldn’t be here. Why don’t you go find Flora?”

The child only looked up at him, her eyes huge and haunted again.

“Meggie, go now.”

She gave him one last anguished glance, then slipped by him and fled the room. When she was gone, Raith turned his hard gaze on Katrine. “Keep away from her,” he said in a voice so soft and deadly that she had to control the urge to shiver.

“I wasn’t about to harm her,” Katrine muttered. “I wouldn’t ever hurt a child, no matter what you think me capable of.”

“I don’t want you near her,” Raith repeated in that same lethal tone.

“But why? I think you’re being totally unreasonable. All I did was try to talk to her—”

“She doesn’t talk.”

“You mean she doesn’t speak English? But she seemed to understand—”

“I mean, she doesn’t speak at all.”

“Not to you, no doubt! I wouldn’t speak to you either if I were a little girl and you looked at me so fiercely. No doubt she’s frightened of you. How can you treat the poor child so wretchedly? She’s your ward, she’s your responsibility. You should take better care of her.”

Raith clenched his teeth, the muscles in his jaw working grimly, as if he were fighting for patience. “You’re mistaken on all counts, Miss Campbell. I don’t mistreat my ward, and she can’t speak to anyone, including me.” He paused, looking at her with contempt. “You have the Sassenach soldiers to thank for her condition.”

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; The caustic derision in his tone grated on Katrine’s nerves. “Oh, of course, blame it on the Sassenachs! And just what are they supposed to have done to a harmless child?”

When he spoke, his barely audible tone was all the more chilling for its lack of volume. “They raped and killed her mother while she watched.”

Katrine stared at him in shocked silence, her mouth half-open. Shamed by her earlier righteousness, she swallowed hard, her conscience flaying her.

“How—” she began, and found that her voice was a mere croak. She stopped and swallowed again. “How could such a thing be allowed to happen?”

The stony chill of Raith’s dark stare penetrated her like ice. “Allowed? Pray tell, where the devil have you been, Miss Campbell? Hiding your head under the covers? Rape and murder are commonplace in the Highlands—the English way of meting out justice. Since the Forty-five, those of us loyal to the true king have been treated like animals.”

His face was like granite, but the bitterness in his tone vibrated in the air between them. It was the look in Raith’s eyes, though, that chilled her blood. This time Katrine did shiver. Even in her sheltered English world, she hadn’t been shielded from the talk of Highland pillage, but she had thought the atrocities exaggerated. It had been hard to reconcile accounts of wounded men put to the sword, of rebels burned alive in their huts, of women and children attacked and savaged, with the beauty she remembered. But perhaps she hadn’t wanted to believe such horrors.

Yet Meggie was too young to have been caught up in the retaliations after the Forty-five. Indeed, she wouldn’t even have been born.

“When did it happen?” Katrine asked, remembering the tormented look in the child’s eyes and wishing to understand.

“You want the details? What morbid curiosity you have.”

Katrine stiffened at his tone. He obviously didn’t intend to explain a thing to her, a Sassenach Campbell. “No,” she said quietly, “it isn’t morbid curiosity. I only wanted to know more about Meggie.”

Raith’s dark eyes narrowed at her. “It doesn’t concern you. She doesn’t concern you. I want you to keep away from her.”

She might have retorted that she only wanted to help, but her temper had already gotten the best of her twice that day. Recalling her earlier thoughtless remark, Katrine regarded him impotently. “I’m sorry…for my thoughtlessness. I spoke without thinking.”

“You do that rather frequently, don’t you? Perhaps you should try exercising the broom awhile instead of your tongue.”

Some of her contriteness faded under Raith’s sarcasm. Turning her back on him, she took up the broom and began sweeping with grimly determined strokes.

She expected him to leave then; indeed she hoped he would. But a moment later she could still feel his dark gaze boring into her. She couldn’t fathom why he was still there, or even what had brought him to the kitchens, unless it was merely to torment her.

Her anger renewed at the thought, Katrine increased the violence of her stroke, sweeping so furiously that she stirred up a cloud of dust. It was with grave satisfaction that she sent the cloud whirling in the direction of the laird of Ardgour. She hoped he choked on it.