If you find Catherine and there is anything I can do for her, please notify me immediately.
Yours in haste, Kenneth
Michael stared at the page, feeling as if he had been kicked in the stomach. He read it again. Could Kenneth be wrong? Not likely. But why would Catherine lie to him? He had thought there was honesty and friendship between them.
It wouldn't be the first time a woman had made a fool of him.
He was staring numbly at Kenneth's letter when Catherine entered the bedchamber. As she closed the door, she said cheerfully, "The laird was tired, but he still had the energy to explain how the islanders pay an annual tax in capons on each chimney. Fascinating customs." She started to say more, then frowned. "What's wrong?"
"A letter came from Kenneth Wilding," he said tightly. "Is it true that Colin is dead?"
The blood drained from her face, leaving the perfect features as pale as marble. She caught the back of a chair to steady herself. "It's… it's true."
"Jesus bloody Christl" He crushed the letter in his hand, feeling a shattering sense of betrayal. His beautiful, honest Saint Catherine was a liar. "Why the devil didn't you tell me?"
She brushed at her hair with a trembling hand. "Because I didn't want you to know, of course. I thought you might feel honor-bound to offer for me because I nursed you after Waterloo. It was simpler to let you think Colin was alive."
It was another blow, almost as hurtful as the first. "Is the idea of being my wife so horrific that you had to hide behind a dead husband?" he bit out. "If you didn't want that, you could always have said no."
She dropped into the chair, her shoulders hunched and her gaze on her locked hands. "It… it wasn't horrific. It was appealing enough that I would be tempted to accept, so it was better if the question was never asked."
"Forgive my stupidity," he said icily. "If you thought I might propose, and you didn't dislike the idea, why the lies?"
"Because it's impossible! I will never-never-marry again. If I was fool enough to accept you, I'd make us both miserable," she said unevenly. "I can't be your wife, Michael. I have nothing left to give."
His anger vanished, displaced by despair. "So you loved Colin that much, in spite of his infidelities and neglect."
Her mouth twisted. "One can't spend twelve years married to a man without caring, but I didn't love him."
Michael could think of only one reason for her attitude. "Your husband abused you, so you've sworn off marriage," he said flatly. "If he weren't already dead, I'd kill him myself."
"It wasn't like that! Colin never abused me." Her hands clenched. "I wronged him far worse than he ever did me."
He studied her haunted expression. "That's hard to believe. Impossible, in fact."
"I know everyone blamed Colin and pitied me because of his womanizing, but I was the one who made a farce of our marriage," she said in a low voice. "He behaved with great forbearance."
"I'm very slow, apparently. Explain to me what you mean."
"I… I can't." She looked down, unable to meet his eyes.
Exasperated, he stalked across the room and put his hand under her chin to raise her face. "For God's sake, Catherine, look at me. Don't you think I deserve an explanation?"
"Yes," she whispered, "but… but I can't bear to talk about my marriage, not even to you."
Getting information from Catherine was like trying to drag oak roots from the ground. It was time for another approach. He curved his hand around her neck and bent to kiss her, hoping that desire might do what words couldn't.
For a moment she responded with desperate yearning.
Then she wrenched away, tears running down her face. "I can't be what you want me to be! Can't you simply accept that?"
In a distant corner of his mind, he began to have an inkling what this might be about. "No, I'm afraid I can't 'simply accept that,' Catherine. I've wanted you ever since we first met. God knows, I've tried to deny it and find someone else. But I can't. If I'm going to spend the rest of my life miserable because I can't have you, it will be easier if at least I understand why."
The starkness in her eyes showed how much she was affected by his words. Guessing that her resistance was breaking down, he said, "The problem was sex, wasn't it?"
Her eyes widened in shock. "How did you know?"
"There were hints in what you said." He knelt before the chair so he wasn't looming over her, and took one of her hands between both of us. Her fingers were cold and shaking. "And it would explain why you feel too humiliated to talk about it. Tell me why you consider marriage unthinkable. I doubt you can say anything that will shock me."
She crumpled into a ball in the corner of the chair, fragile as a child, her hands pressed to her midriff. "Marital intimacy is… is horribly painful for me," she said in a raw whisper. "It's damnably unfair. I find men attractive, I feel desire like any normal woman. Yet consummation is excruciating."
And feeling that she was abnormal must be even worse than the physical pain. He asked, "Did you ever consult a physician?"
She smiled bitterly. "I thought of it, but what do doctors know about how women are made? I couldn't bear the thought of being mauled by a stranger in return for the dubious pleasure of being told what I already know, that I'm hopelessly deformed."
"Yet you bore a child, so you can't be entirely abnormal," he said thoughtfully. "Did the pain lessen after Amy was born?"
She looked away. "I became pregnant very soon after we married, and I used that as an excuse to forbid Colin my bed. I… I was never a wife to him again."
"For twelve years you lived together without marital relations?" Michael exclaimed, unable to conceal his surprise.
She rubbed her temple wearily. "Colin deserved to be called a saint far more than I. We met when I was sixteen and he was twenty-one. It was a case of mutual calf's love, wildly romantic and not very deeply rooted. Ordinarily the affair would have burned itself out quickly. Colin would have become entranced with another pretty face, and I would have wept for a few weeks, then gone on with my life a little wiser."
She took a ragged breath. "But my parents died in the fire, leaving me alone in the world. Colin gallantly offered for me, and I accepted with never a second thought. I had assumed I would enjoy the… the physical side of marriage. Certainly I had enjoyed the stolen kisses that I had experienced. Instead…"
She thought of her wedding, and shuddered. After the usual drinking and ribaldry, Colin had come to bed hotly impatient to claim his husbandly rights. Though nervous, she had been willing enough. She had not expected such vicious, tearing pain, or the ghastly sense of violation. Nor had she thought she would cry herself to sleep while her new husband snored contentedly beside her. "The best that could be said for my wedding night was that it was over quickly."
Michael studied her face searchingly. "The first time is often painful for a woman."
"It didn't get any better. In fact, things got-worse. The… the pleasures of the flesh were very important to Colin. He assumed that in return for surrendering his freedom he was getting a beautiful, lusty bedmate." Sadly she thought of the exciting time when she had just met Colin, and she had believed she was normal. "Based on how I behaved when we were courting, he had every reason to expect that. Instead, whenever he touched me, I began to cry."
"That must have been dreadful for both of you," Michael said with deep compassion.
"It was horrible," she said vehemently. "I never refused him, but he found me so unsatisfactory that he soon stopped asking. We were both relieved when I became pregnant. Without ever discussing it, we devised a kind of silent pact that made our marriage tolerable."