With a last triumphant lift of her chin in Fiona’s direction, Cat deliberately linked her arm with Andrew’s.

  * * *

  Andrew’s whole body became charged with the awareness of Cat’s close proximity before he lifted a hand to cover hers as she linked their arms before resting her palm and fingers on his forearm.

  One look at Cat’s angrily gleaming eyes and the flush on her cheeks and he knew that Fiona Munro had said something to upset her during her leave-taking. Andrew had had opportunity to speak with all the members of the Munro family throughout the day, and he now knew that the same poison ran through all of them.

  He had been enjoying discussing livestock and the benefits of crop rotation with Dougal McGregor, but the moment Cat touched him, Andrew wanted nothing more than to be alone with her again.

  “It’s been a long day, and I, for one, am ready for my bed.” He spoke to Dougal McGregor, but he knew Cat had realized those words were meant for her, as her fingers curled enough that her nails now dug into his forearm.

  “As am I,” Dougal acknowledged ruefully. “At least half dozen of the three-year-old barrels of whisky are empty,” he added proudly.

  Andrew knew that part of Dougal’s crop rotation included growing the barley necessary for the making of whisky. An art at which Dougal excelled. Andrew had imbibed some of the fermented brew himself and found it far superior to any he’d had in London.

  “Then it’s time to make some more,” he encouraged the older man.

  “But for now, time we were all going to our beds.” Cat smiled. “Thank you for your help today, Dougal McGregor,” she added warmly. She turned to smile at Andrew as they crossed the yard together toward the house.

  Despite the things Andrew had overheard and having Cat make love to him earlier, his desire to fully claim her had not abated in the slightest since they’d parted earlier.

  A sentiment Cat seemed to echo as she gave a low groan. “I cannot wait until we reach my bedchamber or yours. I need your hands on me, Andrew,” she groaned as soon as they had stepped inside the cool interior of the house.

  Too impatient even to climb the stairs before touching her again, Andrew looked around the shadowed entrance hall for somewhere they might immediately be private together.

  “Here.” Cat pulled him toward the room he knew to be the study her brother had once used and which Malcolm would, in turn, occupy one day.

  Andrew waited only long enough for her to close and lock the study door behind them before pushing her up against the door. He claimed her lips with his as she pulled his kilt out of the way and he tugged her gown up past her knees and then her thighs.

  Where he made a breathtaking discovery. “You aren’t wearing any drawers either,” he groaned. His fingers caressed the silky curls between her thighs unimpeded.

  She arched her throat to allow his lips further access to the long column of her throat. “I removed them earlier when I applied the salve.”

  Which meant she had been walking about for most of the day and evening without those drawers. “For that alone, you deserve to have you arse spanked again,” Andrew grated.

  “I want your cock inside me when you do it,” she pleaded.

  It seemed their time together earlier today had awoken a sexual hunger in both of them that could now not be assuaged. “Over here.” Andrew tugged Cat with him so that he could sit in the chair behind the desk. He pulled up his kilt to expose the thick length of his aroused cock as it jutted upward, pre-cum glistening on its tip. “Place your legs either side of my thighs,” he instructed.

  She rested her hand on his shoulder for balance, using the other to hold up her gown as she straddled him.

  Andrew’s fingers caressed lower, to where he could feel the juices already slicking her pussy lips. He parted and held open those swollen petals. “Lower yourself onto my cock now.” His other hand moved to grasp the base and hold it steady as Cat lifted up high enough above his cock before she slowly lowered again.

  They both groaned long and loud as Cat impaled herself, engulfing Andrew’s cock in the hot tightness of her channel.

  “I will pull out before I come,” Andrew promised.

  He knew it wasn’t a guaranteed method of avoiding pregnancy, but right now, he was only interested in prolonging their pleasure.

  To that end, he began to spank Cat’s arse as she used the leverage of gripping his shoulders to lift herself up and down the length of his cock.

  “Is this what you wanted?” Andrew pressed, raising her gown so that he might watch his glistening cock sliding in and out of her hot pussy.

  “Oh God, yes!” Cat gasped, her body jolting with pleasure and her channel becoming even hotter as Andrew spanked her arse, over and over again, until she was a shaking and mewling creature in his arms, begging for release.

  A release Andrew gave her by stroking and pressing her clit with his fingers until he felt her body convulse and her channel contract hotly.

  He waited until he was sure her release was fully over before withdrawing his cock and grasping and masturbating it in his hand until his release spurted over her pussy and thighs.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cat was feeling out of sorts as the three of them traveled on horseback along the rough and rutted tracks leading to the busy city of Inverness. To attempt it by carriage would have taken twice as long.

  Andrew rode his black hunter, Malcolm the pony Hugh and Elena had bought him for his fourth birthday, and Cat on the reliable mare she’d owned for the past five years.

  Even so, she felt every step and jolt on the soreness of her spanked bottom.

  She had slept alone but not well the night before, after she and Andrew had parted ways at the top of the stairs following their time together in Hugh’s study.

  It had been Cat’s decision they sleep alone, and Andrew, after looking at her searchingly for several long moments, had finally agreed to her request.

  A request Cat had made because she had no idea what she was doing or how this sexual madness with Andrew could possibly end in anything other than disaster. She had never felt such wantonness as she did in Andrew’s arms, and yet she knew that it couldn’t last.

  Fiona Munro had been correct in her warning that Andrew would eventually go back to London and forget about them, his duty to Malcolm fulfilled by having assured himself his nephew was being well taken care of and Andrew need stir himself no longer in that regard.

  If anything, Malcolm was more out of sorts than Cat, having been cross and truculent as he dressed and when they all ate breakfast together this morning. No doubt his bad mood was because of a lingering tiredness from his busy and emotional day yesterday and his lateness in going to bed the previous night.

  Andrew was as silent, his attention focused in narrow-eyed awareness of their surroundings, rather than troubling himself overmuch with talking to the two disgruntled people he was traveling with.

  They stopped to eat a packed luncheon halfway to Inverness before continuing on as silently as before.

  By the time they rode up to her Uncle Simon’s house late that afternoon, they had all been in the saddle for hours, and, to add insult to misery, it had, as so often happened in the Highlands, begun to rain.

  Malcolm, with the resilience of youth, rallied the moment his Great-aunt Morag offered to take him to the kitchen where he might have a glass of milk and some of the cakes their cook had baked fresh that morning.

  As Andrew had asked for a private conversation with Simon McGregor, Cat was left with no choice but to join Morag and Malcolm in the parlor.

  * * *

  “I need your assistance in bringing to justice the people responsible for murdering my sister and her husband, and also for the attack on yourself two months ago.” Once he and Simon McGregor were alone in the older man’s study, Andrew wasted no time in voicing the knowledge which had been eating away at him since overhearing that damning conversation yesterday.

  Half a dozen times since, he had almost shared those suspicions with Cat, but those same half a dozen times, he had stopped himself. There was no reason to disturb her with that knowledge until he was in a position to be able to do something about it.

  This distraction of his thoughts was the only reason Andrew had agreed to Cat sleeping alone the night before. He had known that spending the night in such close proximity to her might loosen his tongue, and he saw no reason why both of them should bear the burden of this information until Andrew was able to do something about it.

  It was his hope that Simon McGregor, as the sheriff principal for the area, would be able to provide the solution.

  “Please sit, Your Grace,” the older man instructed before pouring some of Dougal McGregor’s whisky into two glasses, Cat having brought several jars with her as a gift for her uncle. He handed one of those glasses to Andrew before seating himself behind his desk.

  Tall and gray-haired, and spare of build, Simon McGregor’s intelligence gleamed brightly in pale blue eyes.

  “Please call me Essex, or Andrew, if you prefer,” he invited dismissively. The stuffy man who had arrived in the Highlands only two days ago had been replaced with one who freely admitted to despising his previous stiff formality. “Also, before I go any further, please let me assure you I am not prone to making wild or inaccurate accusations.”

  The older man studied him for several long seconds before nodding. “I have heard many things about you, Essex, but having flights of fancy is not one of them.”

  “Thank you.” It didn’t surprise Andrew that this wily old man knew more about him than Andrew did about him.

  McGregor nodded. “Seems you were over critical of your sister’s choice of husband in the past, but hopefully ye’ve seen the error of yer ways now?”

  Andrew deserved to feel uncomfortable at this warranted criticism. “Very much so, sir.”

  “Then we shall proceed,” the older man invited.

  Andrew knew he had been let off lightly under the circumstances. “Are you acquainted with the Munro family?” He winced. “Of course you are. Cat was married to one of them.”

  McGregor nodded. “The best one, in my opinion.”

  Andrew eyed him curiously. “What is your opinion of Alastair and Alec?”

  “Young Alec is trying, and failing, to step into his elder brother’s shoes, and Alastair…” The advocate paused. “It is my belief Alastair has not been the same man since his eldest son was taken from him at Waterloo.”

  Andrew released a relieved sigh. “Then that makes it somewhat easier for me to tell you of what I have learned since meeting that family yesterday.”

  Simon settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “Whenever you are ready.”

  “I now have reason to believe my sister and her husband’s boating accident to not have been an accident at all, and the attack on you to have been deliberately carried out by the same person who killed them.” He could still see the evidence of that attack in the way the older man walked slowly and with the aid of a cane, his leg having been broken and obviously taking its time to heal. If McGregor had been battered and bruised too, then any sign of those injuries had faded over time.

  The other man’s expression remained inscrutable. “Because…”

  “Because yesterday, I not only overheard Alec Munro and his father, Alastair, discussing how Alec had arranged the ‘accident’ that killed Hugh and Elena, but also how Alec intended to travel to Inverness last night, where he would have no trouble disposing of me whilst I am here. They knew the murder would undoubtedly be attributed to the thieves and cutthroats inhabiting the city.”

  Andrew had been deeply shocked to hear what he had previously thought was the mild-mannered Alastair Munro talking to his son of having instigated these atrocities. Perhaps Simon McGregor was right, and Ewan’s death had unhinged the father, but that did not make his actions since then any less deplorable.

  “What I need from you,” Andrew continued, “is your belief in what I have told you followed by your help in bringing these men to justice.”

  “You believe Alec Munro to now be in Inverness for the sole intention of killing you?”

  “I do.”

  “Why kill you at all?”

  “Because the attack on you two months ago was supposed to ensure I was never informed of my shared guardianship of Malcolm with Cat—Catriona,” he corrected uncomfortably.

  Without Hugh’s will, Andrew would not have been informed of anything but his sister’s death, leaving Cat as Malcolm’s sole guardian. That would have left her alone and vulnerable to the attentions and “emotional support” of Alec Munro. The same man who had conveniently arrived at the McGregor family home, no doubt after being contacted by his cousin on the same evening that Andrew arrived from London.

  It had sounded as if this was far from the first time Alec Munro had supposedly come to Cat’s rescue since the death of her brother and sister-in-law.

  “There have been attacks on the McGregor ewes and lambs the past few weeks. I believe Alec Munro to have instigated those too, rather than it being the responsibility of wild dogs from the city. He’s making himself indispensable to Cat as her savior.” The very thought of the lengths Alec Munro had gone to in achieving that purpose made him feel ill.

  The thought of Andrew never having come to the Highlands and Cat having married the other man made him feel even more so.

  There was no doubt in Andrew’s mind that the other man had meant to make Cat his wife and step in as laird in Malcolm’s place. No doubt only until the boy reached an age when Alec and his father might decide to kill him too.

  Simon’s mouth tightened. “While we are eating dinner, I will have some of my men search the city and see if Alec Munro is to be found there. I will send more of my men to arrest Alastair Munro and bring him here. The two of them can then explain themselves to me in the morning,” the advocate added grimly. “The idea you had of staying at an inn in Inverness, with or without Catriona and Malcolm, is no longer viable.”

  Andrew had already made his peace with that fact. He would rather Cat and Malcolm were safe here than in danger in Inverness. “I would appreciate it if we could all stay here for the night instead.”

  “Verra sensible of ye.” The older man’s brow cleared, and he gave a half smile. “That is several times now I have heard you call my niece Cat. I trust your intentions toward her are of an honorable nature?” He demonstrated why he had been chosen as Sheriff Principal of the Highlands.

  “They are,” Andrew assured the older man decisively. “But I cannot say whether or not she feels the same way about me.”

  After remaining sleepless the previous night and going over and over his lovemaking with Cat, Andrew knew that his heart and body belonged to her.

  But he had no idea whether or not she felt the same way about him.

  How could she, after knowing him for such a short time?

  Andrew now completely understood why Elena had eloped with her beloved Hugh after knowing him for only a week, because after knowing Cat for two days, Andrew wished he might carry her off and marry her in exactly the same way.

  He had cautioned himself with the knowledge there was no rush. That once the Munro family was dealt with, the two of them would have time to get to know each other, and for Cat to hopefully fall in love with him too.

  But none of that would be possible until the relevant members of the Munro family had been arrested and brought to justice.

  A truth which was sure to come as a great shock to Cat.

  A truth she demanded to know the moment dinner was over and she had come back down the stairs to join the three adults in the parlor after putting a very tired Malcolm to bed. “Will someone now please tell me what is going on?” She bristled with anger. “First we are staying in Inverness, then it is decided we shall stay here. Then there have been men coming and going to this house all evening, and none of you seem to be in the least surprised by it.”

  Andrew glanced across to where Simon McGregor and his wife were watching them as they sat either side of the fire. “Might I request the use of the privacy of your study for a short time, McGregor?” He had no doubts, after observing the couple together during dinner, that Simon McGregor had already told his wife of this evening’s events. But Andrew didn’t feel it fair to reveal those facts to Cat in front of an audience, even if they were her family.

  Events that had, unfortunately, served to confirm all of Andrew’s suspicions. Quite how Cat was going to take that news should not be done with an audience, even of those who loved her.

  “Of course,” Simon invited graciously. “Morag and I will be going to bed shortly, so there is no reason to hurry yourselves,” he added with a twinkle in his wily blue eyes.

  From the angry sparkle he could see in Cat’s eyes, Andrew doubted that there would be a repeat of their lovemaking together yesterday, this time in Simon’s study.

  His cock, unfortunately, refused to accept that possibility and became engorged and throbbing the moment the two of them were alone together.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “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.