“Well?” Cat demanded impatiently when Andrew stared at her with hungry lust rather than attempting to offer her an explanation.
He sighed deeply, pacing the room for several seconds before sitting on the chaise in front of the window, a piece of furniture where Cat knew her uncle liked to recline when he was taking refuge from the women in the household.
“Come and sit with me,” Andrew invited huskily.
She eyed him warily as she slowly crossed the room, giving a small squeak of surprise as, instead of allowing her to sit next to him, Andrew lightly grasped her arm to pull her down until she was seated across his muscular thighs with his arms tightly about her waist.
He gave her no opportunity to voice a complaint. If she had wanted to make one, which she didn’t. She had been longing for this physical closeness with him all day.
Once she was ensconced upon his knees, he told her the reasons he and her uncle had been so preoccupied and why there had been men arriving to and leaving the house all evening.
By the time he finished his explanation, hot tears were falling unheeded down the pallor of Cat’s cheeks. “You are certain of all this?” she choked.
Andrew nodded. “Your uncle’s men apprehended Alec Munro in a tavern two hours ago. On your uncle’s instructions, they have since questioned him.” He paused as if searching for the right words. “He admitted everything. In fact, your uncle’s men thought he seemed almost relieved to admit to his misdeeds.”
“He really killed Hugh and Elena on his father’s instruction?”
“I am afraid so.”
“He intended killing you too whilst you are here in Inverness?”
“Yes.”
“The attacks on the sheep?”
“Made by his own dogs.”
“So that I might lean on him for support now that I have been left alone?”
Andrew’s arms tightened about her. “You are not alone.”
Cat chose not to respond to that statement, knowing that Andrew would have to return to London at some time in the future. He was the Duke of Essex, after all. “I would never have married Alec, no matter how alone I felt. Besides, I have Dougal McGregor to help with the running of the estate until Malcolm is old enough to do so.” She gave a shake of her head. “I have known the Munro family all my life. I find it hard to believe either Alastair or Alec are capable of committing such wicked deeds.”
Andrew grimaced. “Your uncle believes Alastair to have become emotionally deranged after Ewan’s death, and Alec to have felt inferior to his older brother and desperate to please his father now that he was the eldest son and heir.”
“Alec has killed people for that cause,” Cat wailed as fresh tears fell hotly down her cheeks.
“And he will hang for it,” Andrew said evenly. “When his father arrives in the custody of your uncle’s men, he too will stand trial for inciting murder.”
Cat could only imagine what effect this would have on all the Munro family. She might not like her in-laws very much, but they were still her beloved Ewan’s family. And all this seemed to have been done after Ewan had the misfortune to die.
“Ewan would have hated them for this,” she stated with certainty.
“I have no doubt,” Andrew acknowledged softly.
She sat up to peer at him. “Do you hate him for it?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then do you hate me?”
He looked taken aback. “Why on earth would I hate you?”
“Because the family I married into are responsible for killing your sister!”
“And your brother,” he reminded quietly.
She nodded. “And if you had gone into Inverness tonight, you might have been killed too!” She buried her face against the hardness of Andrew’s chest. She was devastated at the thought of him lying dead in a filthy alley somewhere in Inverness, if he had not overheard the Munros’ plan to kill him. “I could not have borne it if you had died too.”
“No?”
“No,” she confirmed gruffly.
Sometime during her previous restless night of being unable to sleep, Cat had accepted her feelings for Andrew were stronger and deeper than anything she had ever felt for anyone before. She could not have behaved so wantonly with him if her emotions were not fully engaged.
It seemed disloyal to Ewan and the years they had spent together as friends and then the few weeks as husband and wife. But the depth of her feelings was undeniable.
She and Ewan had been children and then young adults together, joined by friendship and affection, and then married for the same reason.
Her love for Andrew was that of a sensual, passionate, and fully grown woman who knew her own mind and heart.
A woman who now refused to shy away from acknowledging her feelings. “This might not be the appropriate time to say it, and we have not known each other for very long, but…I have absolutely no doubts that I am in love with you. I do, I love you,” she said again firmly.
“Are you sure?” A nerve pulsed in his clenched jaw. “Be very sure, little Cat.”
She met his pale green eyes unflinchingly. “I love you. You do not have to feel the same way about me— Andrew!” she protested as he rose to his feet with her firmly held in his arms. “What—”
“Hush.” Andrew silenced Cat with a fierce kiss. He pointedly waited for her to reach down and open the study door before he strode out of the room into the dimly lit hallway.
Her arms clung about his neck as he carried her up the stairs. “Where are you taking me?” She sincerely hoped it wasn’t to her own bedchamber where he would once again leave her to sleep alone.
She needed Andrew’s closeness tonight. If only to hold at bay the terrible truths he had told her and the dire consequences that would occur because of it.
Alec and Alastair would surely hang for their crimes, and the rest of the Munro family be in disgrace because of it.
Cat had no doubt it was news that would devastate the whole of the Highlands.
“Your aunt has very kindly given me the bedchamber on the side of the house opposite to their own,” Andrew answered her. “I am taking you there so that I might tell you, and show you, how much I love you, and so they will not hear your screams when I spank your arse at the same time as I thrust my cock inside you over and over again until there is no you or me, only us.”
Cat stilled in his arms. “What did I do to deserve a spanking this time?”
“Nothing,” he assured her lightly. “I merely enjoy doing it. I believe you enjoy me doing it too?” he prompted huskily.
“I do,” she admitted before burying her face against his throat and allowing her lover to take her to his bed.
“I love you, my little Cat,” Andrew murmured in the aftermath of the need they had both felt to possess each other that had overtaken both of them the moment they were alone in his bedchamber. “I love you with a fierceness and depth I had not known I was capable of feeling. It is the same fierceness and depth, I believe, with which my mother fell in love with our butler and Elena fell in love with Hugh. A true love that will never fade nor be gainsaid.”
Cat glanced up from where her head rested against his bare shoulder, both of them naked beneath the bedsheets. Cat’s hair was also loose down her spine, Andrew having scattered the pins about the room when he pulled Cat’s hair from its confines. “You really do love me.”
His arms tightened. “Ecstatically. Feverishly. Faithfully. Eternally.”
“I love you the same way,” she told him with a shyness belied by the passion they had just received from and given each other. “But what shall we do?”
“Do?” Andrew stared at her. “We shall be married, of course, and provide Malcolm with half a dozen cousins he can lord—laird—it over until our eldest son realizes he is a marquess and will one day be a duke,” he murmured affectionately.
Cat looked astounded by his certainty. “But—but you live in London and I live in the Highlands.”
“And there are roads between the two—some of them not very good roads, as my valet would no doubt attest—but I am sure we will be able to manage our lives so that we live in both London and Scotland.”
Cat could feel the excitement building inside her as Andrew portrayed a life for the two of them she had never even dreamed of in her future.
“Half a dozen cousins?” she repeated in astonishment.
Andrew chuckled. “I wondered when you would realize what I said.” He sobered. “My darling, we might already have sown the seed of having our first child together.”
Andrew was right, Cat realized. Neither of them had thought of his withdrawing when they made love a short time ago. Perhaps because they had both known the two of them having children together was inevitable? Either way, she could now feel the wet stickiness of his release between her thighs and in her channel, and she could only hope and pray that it would result in a child they could love as much as they both already loved Malcolm.
She frowned. “You really want to make someone like me your duchess?”
He scowled. “Like you?”
“Andrew, I do not doubt your love for me, never think that, but I am at heart, and shall always be, someone who was born and brought up in the wildness of the Highlands. I am different from the other ladies of London Society.”
His arms tightened about her. “Thank God for it, for I could not bring myself to marry one of them these past ten years, not even to provide myself with an heir.”
“If I am their mother, then your children will in all likelihood have red hair and a fiery temper to match,” she warned.
“Meaning our sons shall have minds of their own and our daughters shall have all the beaus in London queueing up at our door,” he predicted.
Cat gazed at him with her love for him glowing in her eyes. “Then you may ask me.”
He looked confused. “Sorry?”
“I cannot be your duchess, Andrew Belgrade, the Duke of Essex, nor shall we have children together, if you have not first asked me to marry you.”
“Ah.” Andrew gently lifted Cat off his shoulder before sliding out of bed and onto his knees. “Catriona McGregor, will you do me the great honor of agreeing to become my wife and mother to all my red-haired children?”
She laughed as she moved up onto her knees, both at his words and his naked state as he proposed to her. As Andrew had intended she should. There would be plenty of time tomorrow to deal with the aftereffects of the things the Munro family had done, for now there was only him and his little Cat.
She sobered before answering him. “I can think of nothing I want more.”
“Is that a yes?”
She nodded. “It’s a yes.” She possessed the beauty of a Greek goddess as she knelt before him on the bed, completely and unashamedly naked.
Except Cat was his Highland goddess.
Red-haired, fiery-tempered, and Andrew had absolutely no doubts he would love her until, and beyond, the day he died.
With the assistance of Simon McGregor’s considerable influence, they were married before they left Inverness to travel back to the McGregor estate.
Andrew knew it would be different for all of them once they returned home. The Munro family had arrived in force the day following the arrest of Alec and Alastair Munro, only for them to have to sit in court and listen as their two menfolk were both sentenced to hang for the murders of Elena and Hugh McGregor, the one for carrying out the deed and the other for inciting it.
Simon had reported having met with the rest of the Munro family and learned they would not be returning to their home in the Highlands. Fiona Munro had told him she had collected up the family fortune and now intended, in the company of her remaining children and her cousin Esme Munro, to take passage for the Americas to start a new life there where no one knew of the shame their family left behind them.
Cat hadn’t spoken much of the past, seeming more centered on their future. As Andrew had hoped she would be.
Because it was a future Andrew had not a single doubt would be full of the love and laughter this beautiful woman had brought into his life.
His wild Highland goddess.