Chapter 13

"So?" Tightening her hands on the reins, Kara cantered level, the nag's hooves splashing in the water frothing at the loch side. She attempted to anyway. In addition to being fickle and overweight, the creature was so ancient it needed dragging. But at least she was on its back. This was her chance to start finding out some things."You've still not said, sir—"

"Said what?"

She tossed the hair back from her face. Of course it could have done with combing with more than her fingers this morning but her fingers were all she had since he'd taken her comb, along with everything else she had with her, except for the nag. No wonder.

"How far it is to McDunnagh Castle?"

A cold glimmer of irritation escaped him. Actually, she had caught him up because he had begun to do what he had accused her of yesterday—plod. Why was that? Because she hadn't just aroused his suspicions, she'd set fire to them? Certainly she hadn't caught him up because the old nag could canter. Canter? It was in danger of dropping where it stood.And the more she looked at him she was too.

"Far enough."

Kara wound her fingers even more tightly around the reins. Wound them so her glove seam whitened. To have ridden for two jarring, brittle, biting, silent except for words exchanged with Snosh, with the Murdies, with everyone but her, hours, to discover so much.

It would be helpful to know exactly. The sky was a clear, cloudless blue; the wind had finally dropped and with it the scattered snowflake squalls. The sun would still have to melt a ton more snow than it presently had for this to be all right. The last time she'd run away with this amount of snow on the ground, she'd been with Lachlan. They'd thought, dear lord, talk about young and stupid, they could actually get to Edinburgh.

Of course, that was then. She had more to sustain her now. But that first bit of the journey from his and Meg's, was through a very difficult gully. A gully that was more a perilously secret path between the mountains, with rocks and scrambles, she'd had to dismount several times to manage, and when she had, stones had cascaded into the raging torrent hundreds of feet below. A gully that even now her hair probably stood on end,just thinking about it. There was no mirror to hand to check.

She didn't fancy escaping through that, let alone explaining what it was like to her father's men either, although if they plunged to their deaths there, provided she'd secured Arland? Well, it might solve this.Certainly she couldn't see herself being in any fit state to lead them back along it. That might prove to be third time unlucky.

"What are you so desperate to know for? In a hurry to meet that charming sweetheart of yours, are you?"

His face was such a grim triangle between the curtain of hair, it probably wasn't politic to open her mouth. Why shouldn't she though, even if it meant drawing him like a gloveless falconer, with a honeyed hand?She needed answers. Now, not in a month's time either. Besides men's brains were not meant to be taxed. Certainly they were not meant to be taxed about her. She cleared her throat.

"Actually, yes. Yes, I am, sir. Indeed I confess to being agog with curiosity. Deprived by not meeting him yesterday and being happily wed to him by now. I know we've only been riding for about two hours now, but will I see him by nightfall, do you think?"

"Like having nightmares, do you?"

"Not really."

Holding out her honeyed hand was taking a bit of doing, especially when it was savaged like this. But it was nothing she wasn't used to. "That's why I'd like to know if I'll have to spend another night in your company, or not." She was sort of used to it anyway. But it wasn't just that--Lachlan and the snow, the distance in other words, that made her speak. It was him and the disgusting, feral thoughts that crowded her mind.

He snapped his brows lower. "My company?"

"What I said, wasn't it?"

"That's the first I knew you spent a night in my company." He grinned so his cheeks dimpled. "Did I fall asleep and miss something here, Princess?"

She tightened her shoulders. Knew it, didn't he—what a stunning specimen he was. More stunning in fact than the plate-glass loch, the iced mountains that rose like sentinels around it. Why the hell else turn a simple request for information into a sexual quest? Unless he read her disgusting, feral thoughts?Or had them himself? Christ, she hoped not. Either way. Either way it was time to put him in his place. Get the information she wanted.

She edged her gaze sideways. "Of course, I can only speak for myself."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"If I had—spent a night--and it's an if, you understand, you'd not have fallen asleep."

"That would be beyond your miniscule capabilities."

"You like to think."

"I don't just think. I know."

"Really? Goodness. The fount of all knowledge."

Just how the blazes did Meg put up with it though? This very deliberate casting of nets on the waters of female sexuality? And the unutterable damned cheek that accompanied it?

In a few words?

He scorched sheets.

Why the hell else would you put up witha cheeky philandering, full of himself as a stuffed peacock, bastard. To think that yesterday she'd thought how five years ago her father had hoped to marry her off to him. She gave thanks on bended knees that it hadn't happened. Bended knees? She prostrated herself. Because if she had, an awful lot of time would have been wasted. She didn't want to dwell on doing what exactly.

"You know, Princess, not that I've any use for them, but that wasn't a very virginal thing to say."

And neither it was. Damn him. To hell. Probably just what he was hoping for in every way,from making her itch further to catching her out on the fact she did itch and she wasn't very virginal.Well, the hell with it.

"Oh?" She tilted her chin. "We speak virginese do we?"

"Virgin—what?"

"What I said. I very much doubt you're deaf."

He nudged his horse closer, so their knees nearly touched. If she dug her spurs in though he'd probably be after her faster than that damned dog had her belt this morning. Anyway on this nag? She'd be lucky to get to where this castle was, sometime this week.

"I'm keeping my lips sealed, Princess. Least said, soonest mended."

"That will be a first. You keeping your mouth shut, that is. But very welcome if you honestly believe there's one rule for what I can say and another for what I can listen to. You know perfectly well, you didn't spend anything with me. So please don't pretend you did. That is not the kind of lies I want reaching the ears of my beloved."

His gaze swept her. Was that because she could have fooled him? Too bad. Blazing sexuality seldom fished for nothing. Here she was, betrothed to his brother—supposedly anyway—and he still couldn't stop himself flashing that confident smile at her. He probably flashed it around half the women in the glen. And they fell at his feet. Idiots. And if it was all an act, carefully and deliberately designed to put her off her guard so she made a mistake, he'd a big think coming. She hadn't lived in hell for five years for nothing.

"I'd keep the endearments till you meet him. See what fancy words you come up with to call him then."

"Dearest, darling, the love of my errant life. Is that good enough for you?"

"What do you want me to say? Yes? Or that you'll be the first to call that son of a--"

"You're the older son, aren't you?" Enough was enough.

He canted his jaw, still trying to beat her down with that dazzling grin. The dimpled one that never reached his eyes. Anything rather than answer her bloody question about the castle. "My mother certainly thought so."

"The one he's the son of? But there, that's what this is all about, is it?"

"What's what about?" He bunched the reins. He was a man, after all. Unaccustomed to self-analysis.

"Why you're like this? You're jealous of your very own brother? And that is why you can't be nice about him? Well?"

What she'd heard told her no, there wasn't anything nice about Ewen, but she said it anyway. Why not? Put him at a distance. And after all, what was he going to say to stop her? He straightened his shoulders.

"You don't refuse a clan chief's wishes on his deathbed. That would just be rude."

"Says the sterling paragon of politeness. So it wasn't just a case of you falling down drunk on the floor more times than Ewen that he's chief and you're not?"

She had heard, of course. Not just about the drunken rage he had descended into when Morven died, what he did to those responsible. How he dragged them behind his horse for a whole day before depositing what was left of them on her father's doorstep. The furrow denting the bridge of his nose said it was nothing to what he'd like to do to her now. In fact it was so deep she could probably plant turnips in it.

"I suppose you think you're very clever, Princess—"

"I hardly need think what I am."

"--knowing just about all there is to know about me," he snarled.

"You flatter yourself I'd want to."

"Just you know this. On his deathbed, Lord Mhor, my father, put the people here first. He weighed protecting them against governing them."

"I see. Isn't that good. At least he thought you could do one thing."

"And know this too."

"Yes?"

Gracious. What was he going to say?Some pathetic tit for tat about her old bastard father and the perfect Lord Mhor? And? he must be perfect to have produced a son whose way with women, dogs and horses, wasn't just exemplary. It was wondrous to behold.? While her father now?

Yes. her father now. Well, firstly she hardly needed telling there were reasons this man's eyes were dead. Any man who'd done what he had that day--how did you come back from that? And not just that. Secondly, any man who did that, the pain in him must be unbearable. Oh, her father now, all right.

That fleck of white on the back of her glove, should she brush it away? His fury was mounting.It would teach him to answer her question about the castle.

So she did it. She brushed the softly melting fleck, admired the tiny dark patch it left on her glove.Why not?Thirdly, when nothing he said was hardly likely to could surprise her, it dealt with it nicely in terms of keeping her sanity when she'd tangled with him, not to her satisfaction.

"Please don't contain yourself. You don't usually. As you can see I'm all ears, although really--"

"What my father did, putting his people first when he died?Well, you're about to see why."

"Oh really?" She offered her most dazzling grin. "And why is that?"

He dug his spurs into his black stallion's flanks.

"It resides in McDunnagh Castle. That question you wanted an answer to? McDunnagh Castle? How far? That's it right there."