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  Rather than be intimidated by his anger, however, she looked up at him and smiled. “Freshly washed, brushed, and folded.” She shook her head. “You still leave them on the floor, I see.”

  Whether it was the intimacy of how much she knew about his personal habits or the intimacy of knowing she had been in his room when he was sleeping, Gregor didn’t know, but he felt the walls closing in on him. Nay, she was closing in on him, and he didn’t like it. It made him want to lash out as he always did when a woman set her sights on him and tried to corner him. “Stay out of my room, Cate—especially when I’m sleeping.”

  How she’d managed to sneak up on him was alarming on many different levels.

  Her brows furrowed. “Why?”

  “Because it isn’t right, damn it!”

  She lifted a brow. “Isn’t right? I’m like a daughter to you—or a sister. Aren’t I?”

  The hell she was! She was …

  Clever. He stopped, realizing what she was doing: forcing him to acknowledge something he didn’t want to acknowledge.

  He couldn’t let her keep doing this to him. It was time to untwist the knots the lass had him all tied up in. She’d grown too bold after what he’d inadvertently revealed the other night. But he’d been playing this game a hell of a lot longer than she had. He smiled slowly. “Aye, you’re right.”

  She blinked. “I am?”

  “Perhaps not a daughter—I’m not quite that old—but definitely a younger sister.” She looked properly horrified. He shrugged as if it no longer mattered to him. “I was only trying to protect you.”

  She swallowed uncertainly. If her closeness weren’t firing every nerve ending in his body, he would surely have enjoyed it.

  “Protect me from what?”

  He gave her his best roguish grin. “Seeing something that might shock your maidenly sensibilities in the event I have company.”

  She sucked in her breath, stricken, the thought obviously never having occurred to her. But if he thought she would so easily be discouraged, he’d underestimated her. The lass was far too stubborn and proud. Nor, as her little brawl at the river had proved, would she back down from a fight, even when the odds were not in her favor. And betting on him was bad odds indeed.

  The stricken look slipped away, and the gaze that held his was far more knowing and determined than he would have liked. “There is very little privacy in a castle, Gregor. I’m sure you’ve nothing that I haven’t seen before.” The eyes scanning his chest and reminding him of exactly how much she’d seen were narrowed—and didn’t seem impressed. Though why the hell that grated, he didn’t know. He didn’t want her admiring him or his body. But who the hell was she comparing him to? Admittedly he’d bulked up in the past few years, but it was all muscle—

  He stopped. Good God, what was she doing to him?

  “Although for the children’s sake,” she added, “I hope you will keep your ‘company’ to a minimum.”

  She’d done it again. Put him on the defensive. Making him feel like an arse. A profligate arse.

  Whom he shared his bed with was his business. He didn’t owe her any explanations. He would bring a woman to his chamber if he wanted to.

  But damn it, it would hurt her, and something inside him rebelled at the idea.

  Her words, however, reminded him of another problem. Every time he tried to talk to her about “the children,” she kept putting him off. It seemed the only way to be rid of her was to mention that he’d been on his deathbed with an arrow through his neck when Eddie was conceived and patrolling the Western Isles hunting down John of Lorn in the months during Maddie’s conception. “Speaking of the children, have you made arrangements yet for their removal—”

  “There they are now,” she said, cutting him off. He could hear her relief at once again being saved from discussing the matter by the arrival of Ete, Lizzie, the scowling black-haired charlatan, the child who had a propensity to release his bladder every time Gregor was near, and the banshee in the guise of a blond-haired poppet. “We had best go, if we do not want Father Roland angry at us for being late.”

  She tried to flounce off, but he caught her arm. “We aren’t done with this, Cate.”

  She looked up at him, and something about her expression—hell, everything about her expression—made him want to cover her mouth with his. “No.” Her eyes searched his, probing. “No, we’re not.”

  He might have been pleased by her agreement, except he knew she wasn’t talking about the children.

  He didn’t know what Cate thought she knew about him, but she was wrong. And it was becoming very clear that one way or another, he was going to have to prove it.

  Company. The one word had shaken Cate’s confidence to the core. He wouldn’t bring a woman to his room … would he?

  With the way Gregor had been fighting acknowledging his attraction to her since the night in the corridor, she suspected he just well might.

  Cate was going to have to up her vigilance and her efforts, it seemed, until he was ready to accept that there was something between them.

  It was thoughts of how to save him from himself that kept her occupied during Father Roland’s long “popular” sermon given in Gaelic rather than Latin. Perhaps ironically, the subject was chastity, and the priest, after giving an example of the nun who’d gouged out her own eyes and had them sent to a king rather than be the object of his lust (Cate thought his point would have been stronger had the king gouged his own eyes out), was going on ad nauseam with long passages from the Gospel (these in Latin), which she didn’t understand.

  Not surprisingly, Gregor had decided to sit a few benches away from her and the children. He was proving intractable on the subject of being “rid” of them, and she was finding it harder and harder to convince herself that he would change his mind. But as she had no intention of changing her mind either, they were at an impasse.

  Patience, she reminded herself. But it was difficult. On all accounts. Not just the children, but waiting for him to acknowledge what was between them—especially with all the other women with whom she had to contend.

  Feeling as if a rock were sitting on her chest, she watched as the instant the mass was over, the women descended on him like locusts. It had been the same for the past three mornings at Dunlyon, since news of his arrival had spread throughout the small village and surrounding countryside. His arrival always caused a sensation, with women arriving at Dunlyon to see the laird under all kinds of ridiculous pretenses.

  He took all the attention in stride, smiling, flirting, and charming every one of them. Every one of them but her, and for the first time it bothered her. Cate was jealous. And no matter how many times she told herself the women were nothing to him, she couldn’t stop the little voice from saying that neither was she.

  Yet. Lady Marion’s words came back to her. “Be patient, sweeting. Those women don’t mean anything to him. When he gives his heart to the right woman it will be forever.” It was giving it to the wrong woman that had been the problem. Gregor’s mother had guessed Cate’s feelings, and trying to give her hope—nothing would have pleased her more than to see them together—told her what had happened with his brother’s wife. How the woman had used Gregor to make his older brother jealous and elicit a proposal from him.

  Cate followed John outside, where the villagers were taking advantage of the sunny winter morning to gather in the churchyard. One of the reeve’s sons—Farquhar, she recalled his name—stopped to talk to John, and Cate took the opportunity to look back at Gregor, who was still in the church trying to make his way outside.

  Seeing whom he was talking to, she wished she hadn’t. Cate stiffened, her teeth grinding. Seonaid MacIan, the favored daughter of the wealthiest chieftain in the area, had befriended Cate when she’d first arrived but had turned on her once it became clear their friendship wouldn’t get her any closer to Gregor.

  Blond, blue-eyed, and curved in all the places men seemed to like curves, Seonaid was the most b