been no less a disagreeable time for you than it was for me.’
‘I have enjoyed vastly more pleasurable experiences, certainly,’ he conceded.
An understatement if ever there was one! Katherine mused, with a tiny shake of her head, still at a loss to understand why she should have succumbed to the malady. ‘It really is most odd. I’ve never suffered from seasickness before. I can only imagine it must have been that pasty I ate.’
‘Possibly,’ he returned vaguely, as he raised his eyes to scan the cliff face, which Katherine privately hoped he had no intention of asking her to attempt to negotiate. ‘If you feel sufficiently recovered now, I should like to begin the last stage of our journey. I have every intention of reaching Rosslair before nightfall.’
‘Rosslare?’ Katherine gaped up at him in astonishment as he rose to tower above her. ‘But that’s in Ireland, Daniel! Why in the name of heaven do you want to go there?’
Once again a wry smile clung to his attractive mouth as he helped her to her feet. ‘Yes, I suppose I should have known from the very first,’ he remarked somewhat enigmatically, just as a gust of wind sent several auburn curls whipping across her face. ‘Rosslair is the name of my home, Katherine,’ he enlightened her, as he reached out one hand to capture the errant strands and confine them beneath the hat once more. ‘The spelling is different. It is a coincidence, all the same, that I should be taking to my Rosslair a half-Irish girl.’
The fleeting touch of those fingers brushing against her cheek was no less disturbing than the look of tenderness Katherine couldn’t fail to perceive in his dark brown eyes. For several entranced moments she found it impossible to draw her gaze away. It was almost as if something tangible were binding them together, making each such an integral part of the other that they were becoming inseparable, becoming one. Then the spell was broken by a further gust of wind off the sea that caught at her cloak, sending it billowing about her. She grasped at the folds in an attempt to keep it about her shoulders, and her attention was captured by the long length of fine lawn almost reaching down to her knees.
Frowning slightly, she began to tuck the shirt front beneath the waistband of her trousers. The garment seemed much longer, and baggier than the one she had been wearing the day before. ‘Daniel, this isn’t the shirt you purchased for me, is it?’
He hurriedly turned away, but not before Katherine had detected the look of comical dismay which took possession of his features. Eyes narrowing suspiciously, she followed him towards the mass of large rocks which lined the base of the cliff. ‘Daniel, where did this shirt come from?’
‘You have our free-trading friend the captain to thank for your clean linen, Kate. You soiled your own shirt, and he was kind enough to give you one of his.’
‘Free-trader?’ Katherine swooped down on this interesting snippet. ‘Do you mean he’s a smuggler? I should have guessed,’ she went on when he nodded. ‘I thought it a strange fishing vessel. And I certainly didn’t detect the aroma of fish.’
‘No, but you’d have detected the aroma of brandy quickly enough if you’d been more yourself,’ he responded, thereby returning her thoughts to the borrowed raiment, and inducing a frown.
‘It’s odd, but I cannot recall being given the shirt.’
There was no response.
‘It’s odd that I cannot recall putting it on, either.’ Again there was no response. Furthermore he had suddenly quickened his pace, determined, it seemed, to remain just that short distance ahead—or determined to bring the conversation to an end. A horrendous possibility suddenly occurred to her. ‘Daniel! I demand to know at once how I come to be wearing this garment!’
He stopped and swung round so abruptly that Katherine almost cannoned into him. ‘All right, if you’re so set on knowing … I changed it for you, as you were incapable of doing it yourself,’ he admitted. ‘Now, does that satisfy you?’
She could feel the searing heat slowly rising from the base of her throat. ‘But-but … I’m not wearing anything beneath,’ she squealed, cheeks now aflame.
‘I’m well aware of that, strangely enough,’ he admitted, before neatly avoiding the small fist which swung in a wide arc towards his left ear.
It wasn’t so much the bold admission itself that had instantly replaced the searing humiliation with anger as the provocative gleam which had sprung into his brown eyes. ‘Ooh, you—you lecherous wretch!’ she screeched, frustration at missing her target only adding to her wrath. ‘I trusted you! How could you have taken advantage of me in such a despicable way?’
Half-amused, half-exasperated, Daniel followed as she swung away and began to stride up the beach, her slender frame held rigid with indignation. He could quite understand her mortification and anger, though he found it difficult to maintain his countenance when she swiped his hand away as he reached out to assist her over the rocks.
‘All I did was try to make you more comfortable, Kate,’ he ventured gently.
‘Kindly do not speak to me!’
‘My actions stemmed from the purest of motives,’ he assured her, sublimely ignoring the request.
The earnest admission won him a brief, considering glance. ‘Maybe so,’ she conceded in a tight little voice still throbbing with anger.
‘Come, be fair, Kate!’ he urged, determined to bring her out of her sulky mood, which was so unlike her. She might be a feisty little wench on occasions, hot-tempered and occasionally wilful, but sullenness was not in her nature. ‘After all, it was no more than you did to me when I received that slight wound the other day.’
‘That, Major Ross, was totally different, and you know it!’ she countered, clearly unwilling to be pacified. ‘You were fully aware of what I was doing the whole time. Furthermore, I don’t suppose for a moment that I’m the first female to have glimpsed you in a half-naked state. Whereas you are most certainly the first man ever to have seen me.’
He hardly needed this assurance, but the totally honest admission gave him a wonderful feeling of satisfaction all the same. ‘No, I don’t suppose I am the first, Kate. I expect your father was,’ he teased gently, and she swung round, tiny fists clenched.
‘Ooh, you really are asking to get your ears boxed!’
‘If it will help you recover from your fit of the sullens, then go ahead,’ he invited, screwing up his eyes in anticipation of the blow that never came. Consequently he risked opening just one again a moment later in time to catch the faintest of twitches at one corner of that delectable mouth.
‘This conversation is becoming ridiculous,’ Katherine announced, turning away in time to hide the smile that she seemed incapable of suppressing.
‘Wrong,’ he countered. ‘This conversation was ridiculous from the first. So I would suggest that, instead of wasting our breath in fruitless argument, we channel our energy into something far more worthwhile—namely, getting off this beach.’
She couldn’t help but agree with this. ‘And do you happen to know of some way off this rock-fall, without having to get our feet wet?’
‘There’s a path up the cliff a little further along. My cousin Simon and I occasionally played here when we were boys.’
Memory
