" 'Tis where I belong. 'Tis where I have slept each time I have come to Caraidland." She rose to her knees and slipped her arms around his neck. "Come to bed, Tavis, and let me pleasure ye as I have so oft in the past." She began to kiss his throat. "I have waited hours for ye to come to bed."
"I didnae ask it of ye." He pulled her arms away from his neck. "I ken I made it plain in the hall this night that 'tis not what I want. Go to your own chambers, Kate."
The chill in his voice combined with his flat rejection shattered Katerine's resolve to be conciliatory. "Ye would leave me for that scrawny Sassanach bitch?" she screeched, and swung at him.
Catching her wrist with ease, Tavis flung it from him. "Aye. I would."
"How can ye treat me so after I have given ye twa years o' me life?"
"I didnae ask it of ye and I ken those years werenae solely mine. Nay, 'twas ye that sought out my bed, Kate, much as ye have tonight."
"My family will make ye pay for this insult," she snarled, catching her clothes as he flung them at her.
"A man has a right to choose his bedmate. They'll do naught and weel ye ken it."
"Ye made promises. They expect us to be wed."
"If they do 'tis because ye lied to them, Kate. I made ye nary a promise save to give and take pleasure, and that promise has been fulfilled. Ye were nay an innocent. Ye had kenned a man ere I had ye." He laughed softly. "Aye, and weel we ken who it was, for ye were far from discreet. Your family kens as weel. Nay, they may wish I will wed ye, but I dinnae think they expect it. An I take a wife it willnae be one of the women Alexander MacDubh has used and tossed aside."
The color fled from Katerine's face, for she had not realized that Tavis knew about her affair with Alexander. " 'Tis a lie," she bluffed.
"Is it?" He shrugged. "It matters not." He made no move to help her as she struggled into her clothes. "I cannae turn ye out, Kate, as ye are a MacBroth, and they are all welcome at Caraidland. Ye will, nonetheless, stay to your own room. 'Tis over, and we both ken it. Let it die. Find another man. Ye might e'en find one fool enough to wed ye, e'en though ye have the morals of a cat."
Choking with anger, Katerine strode to the door. Part of her fury stemmed from the discovery that Tavis knew far more about her than she had thought or had wanted, as well as the fact that her plans to get with his child would never reach fruition if he kept her from his bed. Furious though she was, she did not plan on giving up. Her stint as his mistress was too well known. There would be few men who would wed her now. She could not lose Tavis, for he could well be her last chance to get a husband.
"Go to the Sassanach whore then," she hissed as she stood in the doorway. "Ye will soon tire of her and want a real woman. Ye best hope when that time comes that I am in a forgiving mood."
He winced as she slammed the door upon her exit. It was not to his liking that the ending was so acrimonious, but he doubted that it could have been any other way. Storm was not the only reason for freeing himself from Kate. The woman had gotten to be too possessive as well as a liability. Tavis was fairly sure that she was planning to become pregnant, and he wished to be away from her before she could succeed.
It was not that he wished no wife, for he knew he must needs get one before too long, nor that he cared all that much that she be a virgin, although it would be nice. In the case of Katerine, it was simply her character. He doubted he would have even taken her for his mistress if she had not initiated the relationship. She was too much the cold, grasping sort, and she had no concept of fidelity, the one thing he would demand of a wife, for he had no wish to spend his years as a cuckold or guessing the paternity of his children. Kate was much like many another woman he had known.
A crooked smile touched his finely chiseled mouth as he made his way to the tower where Storm slept. It appeared he would have some difficulty in finding a wife if he was after a woman he could trust. In his six and twenty years he had found that breed very rare. Only once had he trusted a woman, just to end up looking the fool, a hard thing for a proud man to endure.
Recalling Mary always brought a surge of bitter anger. He had loved her to the point of near worship. Finding the woman he thought so pure and perfect in the arms of Alexander MacDubh, with her skirts tossed up like some whore, had been a shattering blow. From that moment on he had trusted no woman, treating them all with a callousness he thought they deserved, an attitude that none had yet been able to change. It had also been the start of a somewhat acrimonious rivalry with Alexander MacDubh, a rivalry that never broke out into open warfare, for Tavis did not hate the man, but he could not fully disassociate him from a time of painful disillusionment.
Something in him craved to find Storm worthy of trust, to find her character little changed from the open honesty she had shown as a child. Her image had returned
