The Arrow Read online

  Isobel had stung his pride, but Cate had done much worse. She’d made him feel. She’d made him want. And if that was what “love” was about, he didn’t want anything to do with it. He’d been fine the way he was before, but he’d let himself get caught up in a young girl’s game.

  No longer. His eyes were open—wide open, damn it. And soon enough hers would be as well. She might have forced him into marriage, but she hadn’t “won” anything else. She could take him as he was or not at all—he no longer cared.

  He drained his cup and poured himself another. It was Hogmanay, damn it. He was getting married in a week. What did he care if the bride had made a bloody fool of him? It was time to celebrate. And he, for one, intended to have a good time.

  Cate returned to the Hall and did her best to pretend nothing was wrong. But her smiles were forced, her attention was distracted, and her heart was aching. She felt like someone had just taken a hammer to her happiness and shattered the illusion like glass.

  She hadn’t realized how fragile the bond she’d formed with Gregor was until Seonaid came along and snapped it with a few carelessly spoken words and half-truths.

  Without question, Cate was ashamed of the conversations with Seonaid. She never should have boasted about her relationship with Gregor or spoken about marrying him as if it were a contest and he a prize to be won—especially since she knew how much it bothered him to be thought of in those terms.

  In doing so, she’d made herself no better than the countless other women who’d sought him out because he was “the handsomest man in Scotland” or made a game of trying to bring him to heel. But she wasn’t like those other women. The ones who tried to seduce him, the ones who wanted to marry him not because they loved him but because of how he looked and his reputation. He had to see the difference—didn’t he?

  But talking about him like that was wrong, and she deeply regretted it. It wasn’t how she thought of him at all, and she hated that he’d overheard a conversation that might have given him a reason to question the sincerity and depth of her feelings.

  She wasn’t blind. Of course she loved the way he looked. But she saw far beyond that. She saw the man who could have a kingdom but was determined to prove himself on his own merit. She saw the man who no one—not even his own family—had believed in become someone to rely on. She saw a man who’d taken in a traumatized young girl and given her a home, a family, and a way to keep the nightmares at bay by encouraging her to learn a man’s skill. She saw the skill that made him one of the best warriors in Scotland, and the depth and compassion for those he killed that made him a great man.

  Maybe she deserved his condemnation and anger for her part in the conversation with Seonaid, but a few thoughtlessly spoken words were a long way from the deception and trickery of which he’d accused her. It bothered her how easily he’d been ready to accept her guilt. She would never attempt to trap a man—any man—into marriage. He should know that, no matter how bad her words sounded.

  Admittedly, they had sounded bad, and given what had happened with John and the others walking in on them, the situation had looked bad, too. But it stung that he hadn’t trusted her, and the cold, unfeeling look on his face had given her a moment’s pause. If he could turn on her so easily, maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did?

  Heartbreaker. What they said about him came back to her. That wasn’t him, she told herself. He did have the capacity to feel. He cared about her—maybe even loved her. When he thought about it, he would realize the truth.

  But she was disappointed, hurt, and a little angry—certainly in no mood for merriment. Still, she forced a smile to her face as she danced with his uncle, and then with a steady stream of other guests. It will be all right, she told herself. Gregor would come to his senses. No doubt he would be ashamed for distrusting her and find a creative way of making it up to her later.

  But as the night drew on, her thoughts of sinful kisses and passionate apologies became harder and harder to believe. He didn’t look like a man who was sorry for anything.

  On returning to the Hall, Gregor had gone to the dais, spoken to John for a few moments, called for the uisge beatha, and proceeded to fill his tankard over and over with the strong-tasting brew that she’d seen him drink only rarely—and then in much smaller amounts.

  The heavy drinking wasn’t the worst of it, though. Those flirtatious glances and touches that had been reserved for her were now being distributed freely and indiscriminately.

  Gregor hadn’t looked at her once since returning to the Hall. But his friends had. The worried looks cast in her direction by the other Phantoms and John didn’t make it any easier to bear. When one of the serving maids somehow ended up on Gregor’s lap after bending over to refill his tankard—with her sizable breasts practically right under his nose—Cate had had enough. She wasn’t going to let him treat her as if she meant nothing to him—no matter what he thought she’d done.

  She stormed over to the corner of the Hall before the fire, where he was holding court like some drunken sultan, and glared at the two until the giggling servant saw her and had the good sense to slide off his lap and scamper away.

  The crowd of men who had been standing around him—maybe to protect her from seeing what she had?—slowly dissipated.

  Not wanting to make a scene, she spoke in a low voice through gritted teeth and a tight smile. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “What does it look like?” he replied with a narrowed gaze, and a dangerous glint in his eye that she’d never seen before. “Celebrating the new year.”

  “It looks like you’ve done enough celebrating,” she said with a pointed glance at his tankard.

  His smile was sly and calculating, and it sent a chill racing down her spine. “I haven’t even begun. The night is young.” He stood with more steadiness than she would have thought him capable after all the whisky, and threw back the rest of the contents in his cup for good measure, before slamming it on the table in front of him. “You aren’t my wife yet, Cate. You’d do best to remember that.”

  She sucked in her breath. Her heart seemed to have stopped beating. Was he saying he no longer wanted to marry her? “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He gave her a long look filled with a dark emotion she didn’t understand. “It means I know the truth. It means you may have ‘won’ your little game with your friend, but don’t try to get in my way.”

  There was no mistaking the warning. Clearly, he still didn’t believe her. “Gregor, don’t be like this. We need to talk.”

  His gaze hardened to black, unforgiving ice. “Aye, we do, and I shall have plenty to say. But right now is not the time. Do not push me, Cate.”

  She let him go, watching him walk away with a sense of helplessness. What did he mean, “I know the truth”? If he knew the truth, he wouldn’t be acting this way. But it was clear he was in no condition to think rationally. He’d said they would talk. Tomorrow … tomorrow things would be much more clear.

  Twenty

  Tomorrow came and went without anything being resolved. The cool light of day, and a whisky-cleared head, had not imparted to Gregor any sudden epiphanies or rationality about Cate’s motives for—or means of—securing a proposal from him.

  Nor did he give her the chance to explain. He skipped the morning meal and was locked away in his solar with Aonghus, Bryan, and Cormac—three of his household men—for most of the morning.

  As most of the guests were staying through to the wedding, he could not avoid the midday meal, although she suspected he would have if he could have found an excuse. He sat beside her at the high table on the dais, but there was so much distance between them, he might as well have been in England. He spoke to her only when necessary, and then with such blank politeness it cut her to the quick. The easy rapport and intimacy of the day before had vanished as if it had never existed.

  Anger Cate would have known how to fight. But this seeming acceptance of her guilt and