Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Istop short, instantly suspicious. “What are those?”
Callum tilts his head. “You’ve not seen a pony neither?”
“You—” I swat at him, but he dodges with a happy shout. I huff, crossing my arms, then immediately uncross them when I remember how this vest makes everything more…prominent.
Too late. I catch Callum as he shoots his gaze skyward, all bashful and gentlemanly.
He definitely noticed.
“Of course I’ve seen ponies,” I say with as much dignity as I can muster. “But we don’t travel by horseback in the twenty-first century. We have cars.”
Callum frowns. “You wish to hitch a cart to this poor beast?”
“Not cart—car. Which I guess is kind of like a cart, only it’s metal and goes really fast.”
He gives me a long, skeptical look. “Sounds tiring for the animal.”
“It doesn’t use animals. That’s my point. It’s a machine. It runs by itself.”
He grins, shaking his head. “Nothing’s as trustworthy as a good horse.”
“But—”
He lifts a hand, cutting me off with an easy smile. “I insist you tell me all about your special carts as we ride.”
He turns to the speckled gray, loosening her reins from where they’re looped around a branch.
I blink. Wait.
“Ride that,” I say, voice flat.
“’Tis only a pony, love.”
“Not like any pony I’ve ever seen.”
“You’ve not seen a Highland pony.” Callum pats the animal’s back, his voice full of affectionate pride. “This one here, she’s sturdy. She could climb a mountain, if you’d a mind to.” He steps aside, gesturing toward the animal with a flourish. “Well? Your mount, fair lady.”
He called these creatures ponies, but the word doesn’t do them justice. These are ponies on steroids. Thick legs, wide barrel chests, shaggy all over, with long manes and dense, tufted coats.
As I inch closer, I realize the gray is a lot taller than she first seemed. Her stocky build and short legs had tricked me into thinking she was lower to the ground. But she’s not short. Not at all.
I frown at her back. “Uhhh, I can’t.”
He frowns, genuinely perplexed. “Whyever not?”
My cheeks burn. Whoever heard of a farm girl who can’t ride?
I grew up around horses. I used to love them.
Our neighbor let me visit their horses whenever I wanted.
They had this one ginger-colored mare, a tall, sleek, high-strung show horse probably worth more than Poppa made in a year.
They called her Priss—short for Priscilla, which, to seven-year-old me, was just about the stupidest name imaginable. So I called her Red instead.
Maybe it was that our coloring matched, both of us glowing the slightest bit orange in the sunshine, but I was positively in love with that animal.
It took months, but gradually, Red learned to trust me. Like, really trust me. Whenever she saw me, she’d come straight to the paddock fence—straight to me—to whiff and nuzzle, pressing her velvety nose into my palms in search of treats like sugar cubes, apple cores, or carrot tops.
Until the day Janet saw me. Until she dared me.
“When I was a lass,” she’d proclaimed from behind me, “I rode bareback afore I could walk.”
I startled at the sound of her voice. Like the woman herself, it always emerged from out of the blue, both sought-for and dreaded. It was enough to spook Red, who bolted away like I was a stranger instead of her best human friend.
I curled my hand into a damp fist, palm sticky with sugar and horse spit. “I’m not here to ride her. I just came to give her treats.”
“You dinnae like to ride?”
“I like to ride.”
A sly smile twitched Janet’s cheek as her gaze flicked between me and Red. The mare stood a few paces away, tossing her head, weighing the risks versus the possibility of more sugar cubes.
“Is it the horse’s bare back that puts you off?”
I straightened, stretching as tall as my second-grade body could get. “I’ve ridden bareback.”
“All you need to do is hold her mane. They dinnae feel it, you know.”
“I know about horses.”
She laughed, soft and mocking. “You’re scared then.”
It felt like a taunt.
And oh, I knew better. Climbing the fence and crawling onto the back of a skittish horse, without even a halter, was beyond reckless. But how I wanted my mother’s attention. Her praise.
Maybe Janet knew how stupid it would be. She sure hadn’t acted like it.
Before I knew it, I’d emptied the last crumbs of sugar from my pockets and was straddling the fence, beckoning Red closer. As she turned her head toward me, I slung an arm around her neck and leaped—landing hard, sprawling like a spider across her back.
She exploded into a gallop. Naturally.
Her withers punched into my chin, slamming my teeth together. I tangled my fingers in her mane, held on for a few desperate yards before she launched me.
By the time I rolled to a stop in the dirt, I had two chipped teeth, a broken pinky, and a shattered collarbone. I didn’t cry. Not until I saw Red staring at me—wild-eyed, nostrils flaring—like she didn’t know me anymore.
It was the neighbor lady who found me. I told myself my mother had run for help. Poppa refused to discuss it, though, so I never knew for sure.
From that day on, Red was terrified of me. And I was terrified of her. Soon, it became a generalized fear of all horses. Bareback ones in particular.
“Och, Rosie-love, your bonnie face has gone pale as ash.” The hesitant touch of Callum’s hand on my shoulder jars me back to the present. “Tell me, why can you nae ride?”
“Well…” I wrack my brain for a reasonable excuse, grasping for something that doesn’t sound completely pathetic. “There’s no saddle.”
“Is that all?” His smile is immediate, relieved. “Saddles are for the Campbells. Servants get saddle blankets. I made sure to pick a clean one. Soft as a pillow. Shut your eyes, and you’ll believe you’ve landed on a royal throne.”
He pats the horse again, proudly. “Come, then.” He waits. Lifts his brows in an encouraging grin.
Callum is truly the most patient person I’ve ever met. Maybe when you don’t have a phone buzzing in your pocket all day, you learn how to wait.
“Fine,” I finally confess. “I’m scared, okay? Of riding. I can’t.”
“You?” he blurts. “The lass who’s braw as a badger is afraid of ponies?”
I scrunch up my face, fighting the sting in my eyes. “It’s…my mother…once, she…”
His expression falls. “I’m a fool.”
He looks so stricken, a trembly chuckle escapes me. “No, it’s me. It’s embarrassing. It’s really not such a big deal.” I scrub my face and take a deep breath. “When I was little, I fell and hurt myself pretty badly, and I haven’t ridden since.”
Callum doesn’t ask what Janet has to do with it, and I’m grateful. He simply frowns and makes a thoughtful hmm sound as he idly strokes the animal.
His eyes brighten like he’s come to a decision. He takes the pony’s head in his hands, whispering something into her flicking ear. When he pulls back, he gives me a definitive nod. “It’s all settled.”
I let out a short, nervous laugh. “What was that about?”
“I had to tell her what’s what,” he says casually.
My smile grows uneasy. “And what, precisely, is that?”
“That she’ll need to carry us both.” Before I can protest, he adds, “Because someone feels she’s above riding horseback without a saddle.”
“Someone doesn’t need to travel by horseback where someone’s from.”
“Ever?” He looks genuinely taken aback. “Well, someone will tell me that story as we ride.”
He whispers to the other pony, pats its back, then lengthens the reins until they’re long enough for the animal to graze.
“Uhh, maybe I didn’t make it clear. I really am not a horse girl. Or a pony girl. I don’t do Highland ponies, or donkeys, or mules, or really anything that requires a saddle.”
But Callum ignores me and continues his nonchalant preparations, backing the gray away from the thicket, adjusting her saddle blanket, checking her bridle.
“’Tis just as well.” It sounds like he’s giving up on this riding idea, so why is he walking toward me? “You’d muss that pretty frock of yours.”
The way his gaze has locked on mine paralyzes me. So much, that when he does what he does next, I’m too shocked to stop him. It just happens.
He reaches me. Reaches for me. And swoops me into his arms.
I gasp, caught between surprise and exhilaration. With a couple quick, deft movements, Callum swings me sideways onto the pony and vaults up behind me. He settles me in his lap, like we’re two puzzle pieces slipping into place.
“And now, I get to do this.” His arms cinch around me, solid and unyielding. He leans in, lips brushing my ear. “Very scandalous.”
The way he says it, each syllable lingering on his tongue, sounds like verrra.
“Verra,” I mimic, my throat dry.
He adjusts my cloak and his plaid, swaddling us in wool, securing everything tightly under him, until it feels like he’s everywhere—behind, around, beneath—a cozy nest of Callum.
As he nudges us into a walk, his hips move in time with the pony’s gait, and the heart attack that causes must make my body go rigid, because he only snuggles me more deeply into the warm burrow of his body. My every sense is filled with him. His warmth, his scent, the steady solidity of his body.
“Be at ease, Rosie-love. I’ve got you safe.”
I manage a nod. His body is touching mine more than it isn’t, with a steady solidity that’s giving me hot, quivery sensations like I’ve never experienced.
I mean, sure, I’ve been held by guys before. But I’ve never tingled.
And this tingling…it’s happening very, very high off the ground.
I consider protesting, but I don’t get the chance. As we reach the base of a long, smooth valley, he cinches his arms more tightly around me and kicks the pony into a gallop.
I yelp and cling to his arm like he’s a cliff I’m hanging from, but it still doesn’t feel like enough, so keeping one hand gripped on his forearm, I lower my shoulder and carefully slide my other arm around him.
His arms instantly snug more tightly around me. “That’s the notion.” His grin tells me he’d been waiting for me to do just that.