Tender Feud

“Yes…yes, of course I will.”

“Very well, then.” Raith tendered her a brief smile as he rose to his feet. “You can begin tomorrow, if that’s agreeable to you. I’ll instruct Flora to give you anything you need.”

Katrine nodded dumbly, not even replying when he gave her a slight bow and wished her good-day. She watched him stride away across the yard and disappear into the stables, and still she sat there unmoving.

She greatly regretted this change in the laird of Ardgour. For when he behaved toward her like a civilized gentleman instead of a callous brute, when he wasn’t treating her to his fierce antagonism, she found it far more difficult to resist her increasingly powerful attraction to him.

Chapter Ten

It was a mistake to have come here, Raith thought as he gazed up at the branches of a rowan tree, watching the pale light of dawn chase away the last of the night’s shadows. He was sitting beside the rushing burn in the glen, several yards upstream from where the burn plunged into the shimmering blue waters of the loch.

Most definitely it was a mistake…and he was daft to have come. But he hadn’t been able to stay away. For the past three mornings he had watched from his window as Katrine Campbell disappeared into the silver-gray mist, headed for this glen. Three times he had managed to suppress the urge to follow her, just as he’d scrupulously managed to suppress the urge to follow her on countless other occasions since their conversation in the stable yard. Yet today he’d awakened before dawn with a restlessness that was like a physical ache. After several moments of struggling with himself, Raith had belted on his hunting plaid and made his way here, half hoping she wouldn’t come to watch the sunrise, half afraid she would.

His back was partially toward her so he didn’t see her approach, but he could hear her above the musical splash-gurgle of the water. She was humming to herself as she climbed the rocks behind him.

The humming abruptly ceased when she spied him. Slowly, Raith glanced over his shoulder. She was barefoot again, her fiery hair loose and flowing. The old skirt she had donned without hoops was looped up at her hips, and a sprig of heather was clutched in her fingers. She stared at him, her green eyes wide and questioning, looking as if she might bolt.

“Don’t let me frighten you away,” Raith murmured dryly.

Nothing he could have said would have been more effective, for Katrine took his calculated remark as a challenge to her courage. “I didn’t know anyone ever came here,” she replied pleasantly, but her tone indicated very clearly that if she had known, she would have stayed away.

“My brother and I used to fish here when we were young.”

Katrine hesitated, having difficulty focusing her thoughts on the conversation. The lean, muscle-strapped perfection of Raith’s shoulders was having a strange effect on her pulse rate, and so was the glimpse of naked, sinewed calves beneath his green plaid. Biting her lip, Katrine scolded herself for her reaction. Defiantly, just to show she wasn’t afraid of the Laird of Ardgour, she moved closer. “You have a brother?”

“Had a brother. And a sister. Neither of them survived childhood illnesses.”

&n

bsp; “Oh. I’m sorry.” She gazed at him thoughtfully, wondering if he ever grew lonely now, without parents or siblings or even his beautiful late wife to provide him companionship. She couldn’t imagine not having her sisters to confide in and fuss over. But at least Raith had his clan and his ward and his cousin. And he was the kind of man who wouldn’t need the company of other people, the kind who would make his way alone through life if necessary—aloof and proud and quite self-sufficient.

So why was he here? She might have expected his roguish cousin to seek her out, but Callum had left the previous day on some unspecified, no doubt nefarious mission and hadn’t returned, as far as she knew.

Belatedly then, Katrine recalled Raith’s saying he used to fish here, like any normal boy. She found it hard to picture Raith MacLean as having had a normal childhood. “I never thought of you as having a family.”

Her comment made Raith lift an eyebrow. “Even black-hearted villains have families, Miss Campbell.”

A faint, reluctant smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “You don’t have a totally black heart, I suppose,” she acknowledged magnanimously.

“No? To what do I owe this generous judgment? Your promotion to governess, perhaps?”

“Well, it is a vast improvement over scullery maid, I admit.”

His answering grin was brief and gone all too soon. Yet he was almost pleasant this morning, Katrine thought with a vague sense of pleasure. If she could overlook his near nakedness, if she could manage to slow the rapid beating of her heart, she might actually hold a civilized conversation with him for a change. She needed to speak to him about his ward, in any case.

Heartened, she closed the distance between them and settled herself next to Raith, on the carpet of moss that grew beside the burn. She thought he would ask her about Meggie, but he remained silent, his gaze trained on the water.

“Meggie has done quite well these past few days,” Katrine offered.

“I didn’t doubt she would.”

“I’m teaching her how to use a needle…just for a few hours each day so far. She’s still young, and I don’t want to push her too hard at first.”

When Raith didn’t answer, Katrine glanced at him. He was sitting very still, but the muscles of his jaw were taut, as if he were angry at something, or as if he were holding himself under tight control.

“Flora said you sometimes read to Meggie.”

Raith nodded briefly. “She likes poetry. It seems to soothe her.”