Sarah Gabriel (11 page)

“K
atherine, then,” Connor said calmly, though her tone gave him an uneasy feeling. “Or Katherine Sophia, if you prefer.”

Huddled inside her cloak, she watched him, her eyes large and colored like the sea, her bare toes peeking out, her golden hair gloriously mussed about her shoulders. She clutched the fine china cup, one of a set from Kinnoull, until he thought it might break. “Do you think I am Kate?” The words were clipped, brittle.

Connor felt as if his stomach sank like a stone. He set down the tray, then turned to study her in the pale light that now leaked between the curtains. Months ago he had seen Kate MacCarran in the market square at Crieff. Her hair, he remembered, was strawberry gold.

Not this bright flaxen color.

She was not Kate MacCarran.

“Your hair,” he blurted, though he sounded like a dimwit. “Is it powdered? Bleached?” Knowing the answer, he dreaded it.

“It has always been this color.” She sounded impatient. “Did you think I was Kate MacCarran when you stole me away?”

He frowned, gazing at her. “Aye,” he said. “I did.”

She drew a fast breath, another. “And last night?”

“Aye,” he murmured. Feeling dumbstruck, he stayed outwardly calm.

The cup rattled in her hands. She sucked in another breath, then suddenly, swiftly, threw the cup. It smashed against the fireplace, and tea dripped down the stone facing.

His bride gave a half sob, her eyes brilliant with anger—and hurt, too. He said nothing, made no move. She went to the hearth and knelt to pick up the shards, placing them in the saucer, her fingers shaking. His own heart was pounding, but he stood still and silent. Resisting the urge to help her, to hold her, he let her do the work, gave her that moment of distraction.

Finally she set the saucer down and stood again to glare at him. “I am not Kate,” she said again.

“Who are you, then?” He almost snapped it out.

“My name is Katherine Sophia. I am Kate’s sister. Sophie.”

Dear God.
He shook his head, staving off a moment of panic. “Duncrieff wrote that name in his letter—but I took it to mean his sister Kate. He never corrected me on it.”

“He knows the difference. I am Katherine Sophia,”
she repeated. “And Kate is Marie Katherine.” She lifted her chin.

Connor blew out a breath, spun away. At a loss for words, he pressed thumb and fingers against his eyelids.

What the devil was he to do now? Find the priest and demand an annulment? Throw this one back like a small fish and search out the bride he wanted? He swore under his breath, then turned.

“Why in blazes are you both named Katherine?”

“You need not swear. Our grandmothers were both called Katherine. So we each have the name, but we use our other names. Kate and Sophie. It has been easy—until now.”

“Jesu.” Duncrieff had misled him. Had that been a mistake, or intentional?

“So you meant to steal Kate and marry her?”

He nodded, frowning and silent.

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

“Your brother said nothing about the similarity in the names. Nor would I have recognized either of you. I’ve never seen you until tonight, and I’ve seen Kate once, from a distance.”

“Am I expected to believe that this is a simple mistake?” Her voice rose on the last word.

“You are,” he snapped, vexed.

She folded her arms and whirled away. Connor raked fingers through his hair, rubbed his face, thinking swiftly.

He had seen Kate last summer, when he and Duncrieff and Neill Murray had brought a few cattle—stolen from the Kinnoull pastures—to the marketplace at Crieff to sell them. Duncrieff had pointed out his sister, who was with other MacCarran
kinsmen. Rob went to greet them, while Connor stayed with the cattle, keeping his distance, maintaining his ruse as a Highland drover in a tattered plaid and a scruffy beard.

Knowing something of Kate MacCarran’s secret Jacobite activities, he felt it was safest for all concerned, considering his own rebel leanings, if she was not seen with him. Someday he expected to work with her, but the time had not arrived.

He recalled a lovely young woman, slender and neatly made, in a hooded cloak and blue gown. A lacy cap had perched on her glossy hair, which was gold. Ruddy gold.

Not Sophie’s glorious sunlit color. But he had not seen that in fog and darkness. And he had no reason to ask if she was the correct Katherine MacCarran.

“Where is your sister?” he asked. “The MacCarran told me that she would return to Duncrieff Castle this week. I knew that Kate had gone to Edinburgh, so I thought you were she. But where is Kate?” How was he supposed to resolve this? His mind whirled.

“She was in Edinburgh last week. She met me when the ship I was traveling on landed at Leith harbor.”

He raised a brow. “You sailed to Scotland but a week ago?”

“I sailed from France with Mrs. Evans, my mother’s lady in waiting—the lady who was shrieking when you sank my escort.”

“I see. So Kate is in Edinburgh now?”

She shook her head. “She went to London to see family there. Her arrangements were made before word came of Robert’s imprisonment, just as I returned. Kate urged me to go on to Duncrieff with
Mrs. Evans to see what could be done for our brother. He already knew that Kate intended to meet me in Edinburgh and then go on to London. Robert was planning to come to Edinburgh, too,” she added softly.

Connor reached into his sporran and drew out Duncrieff’s folded note. “I wonder who the devil your brother intended me to marry,” he muttered as he looked at the page.

“He wrote my name.” She extended her hand for the note, which Connor gave to her. “Look…part of your name is scratched out. It says…Kin–Kinell—”

“Kinnoull,” he supplied.

“Then I wonder who the devil Robert intended
me
to marry,” she snapped with equal ire. “Campbell of Kinnoull? Perhaps you did force my brother’s hand on this page after all.”

“Blast it,” he said. “I am sometimes called Kinnoull.”

“How? Were you Sir Henry’s tenant?”

He dismissed that with a wave. “Later. Are you sure your brother knows your full name?”

“Of course! I cannot help it if you thought he meant Kate.” She fisted a hand at her waist.

Her tiny waist, which he had measured with his hands. That lovely bosom, now heaving in irritation, which he had shaped with his fingers, tasted with his mouth. Oh God, he thought.

What had Duncrieff wanted? Rob must have known that he would assume the bride was Kate. As a Jacobite sympathizer and rebel capable of looking out for her, he would make her an ideal husband. But he knew of no reason to wed Duncrieff’s other
sister, leaving Kate unprotected when she needed it most.

All he knew about Sophie was that she was a lovely fairylike creature—as well as mule stubborn, nimble as a fox, and so damned polite at times that it drove him mad. He also knew that liquor loosened her tongue and gave her the heart of a lioness.

And he knew she tasted like clear mountain water and felt like heaven in his arms. He turned back toward her.

“Sophia,” he said gruffly, trying out the name.

“Sophie. Or Miss MacCarran,” she added in a spicy tone.

He blew out a breath, rubbed his brow. “Sophie…I owe you an apology for last night.” He had never found it easy to admit any sort of mistake, but this was particularly important, and somehow the words came.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “But we are married now. And last night we—” She stopped, looked away.

He sighed. He was not even certain if the marriage had been consummated. “Duncrieff mentioned both of his sisters months ago. I knew he called one the hellion—Katie Hell. And the other…ah,” he went on, remembering, “Saint Sophia.”

She scowled. “He used to tease me with that name because I went to a convent school.”

“Convent.” In the confusion, he had forgotten that the other sister was a nun. He nearly groaned aloud.

“I spent six years in the English Convent in Bruges.” She stood before him, shoulders squared, hair glowing. Her breasts, full and luscious, rose and sank beneath the translucent gathers of her thin cot
ton shift. He remembered the smoothness, the warmth and weight, of her breasts in his hands. He thought of touching her. Kissing her.

“You do not look like a nun,” he finally managed.

“Because I am not a nun.”

“Novice, then.”

“I did not take vows. I was educated there.”

“Close enough to a nun.” He felt bitter, angry with himself over this colossal error. “It is a good thing I am halfway to hell already, since I am surely damned for last night,” he drawled. “Saint Sophia…what will I do with you now?”

Her mouth tightened. “Last night you were more than willing to act the bridegroom, and to relieve me of my obligation to marry Sir Henry Campbell.”

“Relieve you of your virginity,” he clarified. Had he? An instinctual certainty in his body, a constriction and a knowingness, made him dread the answer.

She flared her nostrils. “I am sorry that you got me instead of my younger sister. I can understand that you are disappointed.”

Hardly, but he would not elaborate. “What I got was a wee convent nun masquerading as a hellcat.” He glared, and she returned it fearlessly.

“I played the hellcat to survive, sir,” she snapped. “I was stolen away by a rogue and mishandled against my will.”

“Not all of it was against your will,” he said meaningfully. “You rather liked some of that mishandling, as I recall.”

“What about the rope?” she reminded him.

“I apologized for that. It was necessary at the time.” His mind was still whirling. “I can understand if you are angry—you were snatched away.
You have a rogue for a bridegroom, a ruin for a house, and not much of a future now,” he said in a deadly calm voice. “But you will never be mistreated in my keeping.”

“I suppose I will thank you for that at least.”

Inclining his head, he smiled flatly. But he admired her boldness and strength, and he liked her contrasts—soft in nature but tough in spirit. Saint and sinner, he thought, remembering her in his arms, in his bed—

A deep inner hunger stirred in him, grew hot. Kate or Sophie or turnabout witch, he wanted this small golden-haired woman as he had never wanted another. She was divinely desirable, had already matched him for passion.

But no matter how much he desired her, he could not touch her again until he understood this situation. He had married the wrong lass, and he needed to solve that somehow.

He leaned toward her. “I am a rascal, Sophie MacCarran, and you are a nun, or the closest to one that I shall ever meet. Perhaps we should annul this marriage as fast as we made it, and forget what has happened between us.”

“Forget—how can I—” She stopped. “But I would be free to marry Sir Henry if we did that.”

He lifted a brow. “Tell him you are a nun. That should discourage him.”

“It is discouraging you,” she said.

“As it should. I would think you’d be pleased about that.”

She glowered at him but did not reply.

“I mean to find out what your brother intended,” he said.

“Did you truly want her?” she asked. “Kate?”

He paused. She might be further hurt to know that he had indeed accepted the idea of marriage to Kate. Closer to the truth now was that he wanted Sophie—something she would never believe. Nor did he understand it himself.

“I keep my word when I give it,” he finally answered.

“What now? Can we…even annul this? Is it possible?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Do you not know?”

“I…am not certain.”

“Did the nuns teach their students nothing about Adam and Eve?” But even as he spiraled into sarcasm and anger, he knew he could blame only himself for a good part of this dilemma.

“I know perfectly well what happens between a man and a woman,” she said, hoisting her chin. “I just do not remember if you and I did that!”

“It must have been a memorable evening for you indeed, Mrs. MacPherson.” Could a woman truly not know?

“The whiskey…I do not quite recall. Tell me. Please.”

He felt a muscle jump in his cheek as he looked down at her. Thanks to Mary’s whiskey, he had no good answer for her. But he had a clear suspicion.

“I told you I am damned to hell,” he said. “Make of that what you will.”

He whirled on his heel and went to the door, slamming it shut behind him.

Cold rain pattered over Connor’s head and shoulders as he strode down the hill that led away from
Glendoon. Thinking of his bride’s revelation—Sophie, he reminded himself, her name was Sophie—he reached the narrow place in the gorge and leaped the gap with scarcely a change in his pace. Landing on the opposite bank, he headed down the slope toward the lower hills that formed the bowl of the glen.

Though it was well past dawn now, the steely sky threatened rain. But work would not stop on the military road, Connor knew, and so his own work of rebellion must continue—no matter the distraction of his pretty bride.

Sophie did not remember what had happened between them last night, either, he thought, thanks to Mary’s whiskey. He had promised Duncrieff to make sure that the marriage was indisputable. Repeating the wedding night was no sorry turn of events, but now that he knew she was a nun—or near enough—and not Katie Hell, he felt some genuine misgivings. His bride was an innocent, and he was a cad. He shook his head and swore, then swore again, louder, as he stomped down the slopes.

He could only conclude that Duncrieff had tricked him into this marriage for unknown reasons. And nothing could be done about it short of annulment or divorce.

Duncrieff was dead, or so the guards at the Tolbooth in Perth had told him the previous week when he had gone there to see the prisoner. Died of his wounds days before, they said, and the news had hit Connor like a gut blow. The death of a Highland chief was a tragedy for any clan, but the death of a friend felt worse—particularly when he had an indirect hand in it.

Although Connor was a kinsman of Cluny MacPherson, chief of that clan, he was a tenant and friend of MacCarran of Duncrieff. Therefore his clan loyalties were twofold, and a strong sense of guilt and obligation bound him to Clan Carran. Now that he had married the deceased chief’s sister, he was kin to her kin.