Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Idon’t remember the last time I felt this light. Ironic, considering it’s the first time my stomach has felt truly full since I arrived.
“You’re grinning,” he teases, bumping my shoulder with his.
“So are you,” I shoot back. “Funny, since I just corrupted you.”
“Corrupted, am I?” He lifts a brow, biting into his apple with a crisp crack. “Lass, I hate to disappoint you, but this isnae my first crime.”
I slow my pace, turning toward him with exaggerated interest. “Oh? What else have you done?”
Callum chews, considering. Then, solemnly, “Once, as a lad, I nicked a bannock from Campbell’s table.”
“Scandalous,” I whisper.
“Aye,” he agrees gravely. “The guards are still after me.”
I giggle, tilting my face up to the sky. It’s still damp from the earlier rain, but the clouds have started to break, revealing star-spattered patches of the night sky. The world feels wide and open, stretching before us in a way that makes me want to keep walking forever.
“This is so nice,” I say after a while.
Callum raises an eyebrow in question.
“Just…walking,” I explain. “I rarely do it at home.”
Callum stops short, looking at me like I’ve just said something inconceivable. “Do you nae?”
“Nope.” I don’t pause, and when he catches up, I say, “I told you, we have cars. I drive pretty much everywhere. People walk in the city, but I live in a more rural area. It’d take me, like, an hour and a half to walk to the market. But in my car, I’m there in ten minutes.”
He takes a moment, marveling at this, then asks, “How did you get from America to Scotland? Are the boats faster, too?”
“I didn’t take a boat.”
I stop, relishing his expression.
“I flew.”
He gapes at me, goggle-eyed. “As a bird flies?”
“No,” I laugh. “In something called an airplane. It’s like a big metal ship that flies really fast through the sky. The whole trip took only about seven hours.”
Callum seems torn between alarmed and incredulous, and I raise my hand like I’m under oath. “I swear it. The bigger planes can carry…I don’t know, maybe a few hundred people?”
“Is it witchcraft?”
“Nope, engineering. The ship has these huge engines, with spinning blades called propellers, and it just”—I gesture with my hand—“takes off into the clouds.”
He makes a little ahh sound. “Does it float upon them? I’ve often thought clouds might be waves, coasting across the sky.”
“Clouds are just mist. Planes fly through them.”
“The things you know…” He shakes his head, wonder-struck, like I’ve just rewritten the sky.
My glee nosedives.
Callum is so smart, so curious—he’d love the modern world. It’s not fair. I’ll return to modern medicine, clean drinking water, even space travel, while he’ll stay here, where something as simple as a splinter could be deadly.
The thought twists inside me.
I squeeze his arm and tug him forward. “Come on, let’s keep walking.”
He claps a hand over mine. “I’ve a notion.”
“A notion to what, exactly?” I try to decipher his expression. “Okay, Callum. What’s with the wicked gleam?”
“I’ve a gleam?”
“Mm-hm. We’re out late, we’ve apparently stolen apples…what’s next?”
I follow his gaze. A silver band of moonlight stretches across the valley, then fractures, dulling as the landscape shifts. It’s not a loch, but—
“Is that a bog?” I squint. “Are we smuggling peat now?” I give him a stern look. “Just so you know, bogs are dangerous. They suck you in, like quicksand.”
He chuckles. “I’m not looking at the peat.”
He crouches beside me, his shoulder brushing mine as he points. “There, just along the edge—see where the light doesn’t shine?”
I follow his finger to a dark tangle of branches.
“A wee thicket of brambles,” he murmurs. “Might be a fine accompaniment to your apples.”
Brambles. It’s what my mother calls blackberries. I’d always thought she was trying to be cute.
“You mean the blackberries? Are they Campbell’s, too?”
He hesitates, shrugs. “Mayhap yes, mayhap no.”
“Mayhap which is it?” My tone is more severe than I’d intended. But seriously, he needs to stop taking risks. There are dangers all around, and I swear they’re all aimed at Callum.
“Mayhap it’s not your concern,” he says with a grin. “Wait here.”
I snatch his arm. “It’s too dangerous.”
He smirks, easy and confident. “Don’t worry. I’m verra sure-footed in the dark.”
“It’s not your feet I’m worried about.” My grip tightens. “If those were Campbell apples and these are Campbell blackberries…what if you get caught? If something happened to you—”
My voice catches. The thought is unbearable.
He softens, misreading me. “If aught happened to me, Donag would care for you. She’s a crabbit old sort, but she’d—”
“I’m not worried about who’d take care of me,” I snap. “If anything, I worry about who’ll take care of you after I’m gone.”
His smirk vanishes.
“You need to be more careful,” I press on.
“Hamish is out for you. Promise you’ll be especially careful around him.
” My chest tightens. “If he hurt you—badly? I’d be devastated.
Really. It’d kill me. And it’s not just because you said you’d help me or whatever.
It’s because you’re you. You’re too important, Callum. So, no. No brambles.”
Silence.
What’s he thinking? I wish I could see him better, but his face is in shadows.
“I’m being ridiculous, aren’t I?” My voice is weaker now. “If I were you, I’d have stopped listening a while ago.”
“I…Rosie-love…” He swallows hard. “I always listen. ’Tis my honor that I’m not below your concern.” His tone softens, reverent. “You’re a lass of boundless heart.”
“Boundless?” I chuff a laugh. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
Back home, I hold on so tight, controlling how things need to get done and when. “If you asked someone from my town, they’d probably tell you I have plenty of bounds. I’m a bundle of bounds. And rules, and anxiety, and schedules.”
Callum is already shaking his head before I finish. “I see how you carry yourself, Rosie. You take the weight of the world on your back and call it duty. You say it’s responsibility, but I say it’s kindness. It’s you, always putting others first.”
His voice gentles, certain. “A lass of boundless heart. Just so.”
I have to concentrate just to breathe again. I’m that sideswiped.
Boundless.
Callum makes it sound as if I have a choice in my life—helping Poppa, minding my mother, and...
I guess I do. I’ve always had choices. And I’ve always chosen to help. To carry my weight. To be useful. To do what’s right.
The realization makes me feel like he’s lifted an actual weight from my shoulders.
Callum doesn’t wait for me to respond to his breathtaking pronouncement, and I’m grateful.
“Now then.” He places one hand on my shoulder and draws an X over his heart. “I swear forthwith and from this day on, I will do everything in my power to avoid all fruits, bogs, brambles, and Campbells.”
“Forthwith, huh?” I can’t help but smile. “That’s a long time.”
“No, it’s forever that’s a long time. And I swear both, either way. Forthwith and forever. I willnae frequent orchards or bogs. I’ll mind my footing—”
His foot slips.
I gasp, grabbing him in alarm, hands flying to his waist, bracing for impact…only to feel his shoulders shaking with laughter.
“You did that on purpose,” I snarl up at him.
“Forgive me, but you looked so verra distressed. I had to see you smile again.”
I try to pull away, but he claps his hands over mine, holding them where they’ve clenched in his waistcoat. He glances down, grinning. “’Tis almost as though you’ve wrapped your hands about me.”
“I’ll wrap them around your neck if you’re not careful.” I’m trying to be angry, but the low roll of his laugh cracks my resolve. I glare at him, but I’m smiling. “I’m not joking.” I grip his waist extra hard and shake him for emphasis. “You have to stay safe.”
He shifts, and the moonlight catches half of his face. As his eyes lock with mine, his smile vanishes. The other Callum—the intense one—stares down at me. His voice drops, curling around me like smoke. “I’m in great peril indeed. And it’s nae from any brambles or bog.”
Heat surges through my chest, setting my pulse pounding. “Well,” I say weakly. “It’s a fact. People do drown in bogs.”
He glides his hand up, fingertips brushing featherlight to cup my chin. “I might drown here, just looking at you.”
A nervous puff of air escapes me.
Guys don’t think things like that—not about me. And they especially don’t say them. “You just think I’m interesting because I’m different. A novelty.”
His gaze sharpens. “You’re novel,” he says slowly. “But you’re no novelty.”
He takes my hands again, his skin warm even in the cold.
“Rosie, can you nae tell? I was gone the first moment I saw you.” His voice is ragged, raw.
His eyes bright with something that makes my breath catch.
“You were such a ferocious wee thing, standing against Donag like a queen. I’ve never seen the like.
” He leans in, his breath a whisper against my ear.
“Mayhap you don’t believe me yet. But that’s all right, Rosie-love. I’ll enjoy the convincing of you.”
By the time he pulls away, his expression has shifted. The intensity recedes, leaving something quieter, something sad. “For as long as I have you.”
He sniffs sharply, then plasters on a too-bright smile. “Now then. Forget the brambles.” He tugs my hand, pulling me back the way we came. “We’ll walk by the gorse instead.”
I let my shoulder knock into his as we walk. A quiet answer. A way to say I feel it too. That I’ll enjoy every minute, just like he will.
It’s so easy to be with him. We don’t talk for a while, but it’s perfect. After everything he just said—to me, about me—this whole night should be awkward.
It’s not.
They say the heart is a muscle. Mine feels like it’s just unclenched for the first time in forever.
I steal a glance at him. He looks like he just came from a bar brawl—all big and scruffy and tough. And yet.
He’s the sweetest, gentlest soul I’ve ever met.