"Can ye?" he bit off. Usually the deep rumble of his voice made her senses expand with pleasure. Not tonight. Tonight, that harsh tone made her want to cringe away. "Because devil if I can."
He, like her, had brought a lantern. It hung suspended from the spar beside his head. The angle of the light and the way it swung wildly with the boat’s rocking cast terrifyingly sinister shadows over his remarkable face.
She’d always thought he looked like the Archangel Gabriel in a painting she’d seen at her cousin’s castle on the mainland. Now, any angelic resemblance was purely to the avenging kind. She’d feared this. If he produced a flaming sword and brandished it at her, she wouldn’t have been one bit surprised.
Still, she was game, even if any chance of wriggling out of her dilemma was slim indeed. She licked lips as dry as a desert and swallowed to moisten a throat that was even drier.
"When the wind came up, I was worried the Kestrel might break free of her moorings, so I came down to check." The brightness struck a false note in her ears. Clearly also in Dougal’s, because that stern expression didn’t ease.
"Stop lying to me." He rose to his feet, and she’d never been so aware of his daunting height. "Ye brought a bag of tools."
Blast, he had to notice that. The leather satchel had opened when she set it down, and her drill was visible. "I might have needed to fix something."
His eyes narrowed. "I’ll bet, like another hole in the hull or a crack in the mast."
"The storm…"
His sweeping gesture made her flinch. That muscle jerked in his cheek, and temper flared in his eyes.
"Dinnae worry. You’re safe. I’d never hit a woman. Even a deceitful wee besom like ye, Kirsty Macbain."
She felt ashamed, although she hadn’t flinched from fear of a blow. She’d flinched from the contempt in his face. After his reaction to this afternoon’s kiss, she’d thought he could never make her feel worse. She’d had no idea.
"I’m no’…" she began in a thin voice.
"I know everything."
"What do ye know?" She wanted to sound innocent, but the words emerged shaky and fearful.
Another of those blistering blue glares that threatened to sear the skin from her body. "I know that you’ve been damaging my boat every night since I arrived." He paused, and the bewildered disappointment that thickened his voice was somehow worse than his outrage. Because while they were never sweethearts – and aft
er this, never would be – they’d been friends, and she’d betrayed his trust. Only now she lost it, did she recognize what a rare and valuable thing it was, to gain the trust of a man like Dougal Drummond. She also had a queasy feeling that once that trust was broken, he’d never offer it again.
"Why, Kirsty? I knew something odd was going on. I knew someone had to be deliberately crippling the boat. I assumed it must be Bill or Jock or Johnny. This madness seems something they’d take into their heads as a great jape. Especially as they had some lunatic idea that I’d stay to court ye. When I saw it was you…"
She flinched again and opened her mouth to defend herself. When what she’d done was indefensible. But to her mortification, what emerged was something altogether different.
"Is it so lunatic?"
Those marked red brows lowered over his haughty nose. He looked so fierce and indomitable, she shivered. "What in blazes are ye talking about?"
Struggling to keep her balance, she stepped into the light and spread her shaking hands in a pleading gesture. "Is the idea of courting me so lunatic?"
He jerked as if she’d struck him, and the gaze he settled on her blazed with hostility. "Aye. I’ve pledged myself to saving Ellen of the Isles."
Now it was Kirsty’s turn to give a contemptuous snort. "Wake up to yourself, Dougal. She doesnae exist. She’s just mist and rumor and fantasy."
"What if she is?" His scowl deepened. "That doesnae give ye the right to cheat and lie."
Kirsty blinked back tears. She’d cried more in the last half day than she had in the last ten years. She had a grim premonition that her crying days had only just started.
The space around Dougal vibrated with rage. His rage sucked all the air from the boat. Kirsty felt as if she suffocated. She drew in a deep breath to beat back the fog rising in her mind and spoke the words she had to, really the only words she could in the circumstances. "I was wrong. I’m sorry."
If she’d meant her apology to soften his attitude, she was to be disappointed. "Aye, ye were." His voice turned puzzled. "What on earth were ye trying to achieve?"
"I wanted ye to stay," she muttered.
She supposed it said much for his lack of conceit that he hadn’t yet connected the facts to come up with the most humiliating fact of all.