Chapter 5 #2
“I think ye shouldna wait for Calum to crawl to ye. Annie doesna want to see ye hurt again, and I agree with her on that. But lass, Calum is a proud man, one who thinks ye betrayed him in some way that makes nay sense to us, but drives his anger. I believe some of the blame he places on ye is actually his reaction to what happened to him, but ye gave him a convenient target for it.”
Ella nodded, despair swamping her. “I ken that. If I could go back and do it over—”
“But ye canna. Ye can only go forward. And forward is through Calum’s hurt feelings. Dinna let yer guilt stop ye. There is naught wrong with ye. Ye tried to help. It went wrong. Verra well, the current situation reeks. So change it. Dinna keep avoiding him. Go after what ye want.”
Ella crossed her arms, her gaze on the floor between them.
“What if I am nay certain what that is?” She thought she had been.
Before Harlaw. But Calum after Harlaw was so changed, so angry and distant.
She didn’t blame him for what he felt, but she also no longer knew how to deal with him.
She’d tried and this disaster was the result.
Muireall laughed, not amused, but mocking.
“Keep telling yerself that and naught will change,” she warned.
“Ye ken exactly what—or who—ye want. And so does Calum. He chased ye around the Moray Firth for a reason. Remind him of that. Yer beauty entranced him. Dinna blush, ye ken ’tis true.
Before he kenned aught about ye, he liked what he saw.
Then he learned that ye are a caring and a good person, despite what he saw ye go through.
He liked having your kindness directed at him.
He enjoyed yer company, and the bond between ye two strengthened because of it. ”
“And then I broke it.” How many times must she suffer that stab of regret that pierced her chest?
“Mayhap. Or mayhap ye were a convenient target for his fractured pride and his fury at what happened to him. Or his fear about how life in the clan will be different and perhaps less than he expected. He had an important position, but at the moment, he thinks he’s lost it forever.
The lads are helping him train to compensate for the changes.
Mayhap ye can help him regain his pride. ”
Ella shook her head. “I embarrassed him. And the teasing embarrasses him even more. I’m doing the exact opposite of helping him regain his pride.”
“The teasing will stop. Soon, I think. The lads tire of it and will find something else to amuse them.”
“I hope so.”
“Ye need a plan,” Muireall told her. “We’ll think of something. Ye canna go on as ye are. Nor can he.”
“Nay, we canna. But a plan? To do what? Convince Calum that he was wrong and I was right? Ye can see how well he’d accept aught like that.
He’s no’ a fool. He’ll think I’m plotting again to get him to do something I want.
If making him fall in love with me—or at least to be open to the possibility—was that easy, everyone would do it with the objects of their own affections. ”
“Ella, everyone does make the effort to make someone fall in love with them. ’Tis what happens when we fall in love.
’Tis part of learning about the other person, and letting him learn about ye.
’Tis hard work. It seems to me that Calum has forgotten much of what he kenned about ye before his injury. ”
“If the answer was to spend time together, we’d have been together long before now.
As ye said, he chased me around the Moray Firth for a reason.
I’ve been here a year, and we’re no closer to a vow than we were when ye and I first got here.
In fact, we’re further apart than ever.” She stared toward the keep’s gate and the open sky beyond it.
She might as well sprout wings and fly as to hope anything would change Calum’s poor opinion of her at this point.
Muireall shook her head, her eyes flashing. “Ask him to train ye as Iain is training other lasses. Ye’d spend time together and be close to each other. Very close.”
Iain taught the lasses hand-to-hand fighting with dirks and smaller blades.
They trained with wasters, the wooden swords used to begin training the youngest lads, then graduated to larger ones the older lads used before beginning to fight with dulled metal blades.
Those would bruise, but were unlikely to break the skin, much less to remove any body parts.
Ella huffed. “Calum would never agree to an arrangement like that. And why would I ask him when I can work with Iain and the other lasses?”
“Because ye want to be with Calum, no’ Iain, ye daft lass,” Muireall told her.
“Wanting to be with him and wanting him to teach me how to fight are very different things, my friend.”
“But with the same result. Proximity. Touching. Striving together. Doing something with him that he kens well, which lets him be manly and strong, aye?”
The more she thought about it, the more Muireall’s suggestion made sense. “That may be, but I dinna think I can ask him. I’d be too embarrassed.”
“What if ye didna have to ask him? What if ye go to train with Iain and he asks Calum to take ye on?”
“Get Iain involved in this scheme? Ach, nay. I’d rather ask Calum myself. At least then he can laugh at the idea and say nay to me without having to turn down Iain.”