Chapter 11
Calum couldn’t fathom how long it took for Iain’s conversation with Ella to get back to him. Mhairi pulled no punches when she told him about it. “Dinna blame me,” she complained. “I just found out today. Ella kept it to herself while she thought about what Iain told her.”
“For a ten-day?”
“Apparently. Ye ken she’s a deep one.”
“Did she say whether she’d decided anything?”
“Ye are a fool, Calum. She’s waiting for ye.
She’s waited for ye for nigh on a year. How long do ye think ye can treat her like this?
” She didn’t hide her disgust, but Calum suspected her dismay had as much to do with the idea of Ella marrying away from Brodie so that Mhairi lost her assistant and prospective apprentice as it did with Calum’s failures.
And as for Iain and probably Annie, too, they were meddling where they were not welcome. He needed to tell them so. Iain, anyway. He could tell his wife. Calum would be happy to leave that unpleasant chore to him.
Calum left Mhairi and went straight to Iain’s solar.
“I canna believe ye would offer Ella a betrothal to someone else,” Calum raged at him after he stormed in and closed the door behind him, still smarting from hearing the news.
“Who told ye that?”
“Mhairi, when I saw her a few minutes ago about my eye. She said ye told Ella she had choices, and that she might be in a position to decide her future soon. With someone else. Another clan. When ye posed this to me, ye didna also tell me ye were going to plant this poisonous seed in Ella’s mind.
Damn it, do ye want her to leave? I thought ye understood that I want her—when she’s ready. ”
“I spoke to ye nearly a fortnight past,” Iain reminded him, not backing down. “What have ye done since then?”
He waited while Calum sputtered, fighting for something to say to absolve himself, but nothing came out.
“Calum, there are many men interested in a lass as lovely and kind as Ella. Honorable men, who would treat her well. Surely there are several who would care for her—even love her—for her whole life. Such a match would be good for both of them. Or for both of ye.”
Calum groaned at that. “Ye ken I care for her. And ye ken how shy she is around strangers. Do ye seriously expect her to accept as another husband a man she doesna ken?”
“She kens many good men. No’ well. No’ as well as she kens ye, for instance.”
How serious was Iain about this? And how soon? “Who are ye thinking about?”
“I willna tell ye, no’ with ye in this frame of mind. Ye’ll run off and start a clan war.”
“Give me a little credit, Iain.”
“If ye are so fashed about this, why have ye no’ offered for her yerself?”
“I told ye before, I was giving her time…”
“Ye’ve given her long enough. And by dragging this out for a year, treating her as ye have since ye were hurt, ye ken fine that ye’ve hurt her, perhaps worse than Thomas Ross ever did.”
That stung. And the blade bit deep. But Iain was right. He’d been a fool. A proud and stupid fool.
“I have a claim on her. Unspoken, aye, but what I feel for her is…between us.” And now he even sounded like a fool. But he hadn’t admitted to himself what he felt for Ella. He certainly would not tell Iain.
Iain grinned and waved toward the door, a clear invitation for Calum to leave. “Then ye must convince her, no’ me.”
Could he? He hadn’t done so well in his last conversations with her. If he meant to repair the damage Iain pointed out, correctly, that he’d done, he was going to have to impress her. But how?
Ella waited impatiently in the keep’s garden, pacing among the roses she hadn’t the wit to stop to enjoy.
She was distantly aware of the cloud of scent around her, something she would normally savor, but Calum’s request, delivered by Muireall, that she meet him here had set her pulse to racing and her mind to spinning.
Her friend would not tell her what he wanted.
Perhaps she could not because Calum had not told her, but simply requested she deliver his message.
Muireall would have done so without question, knowing Ella’s feelings for the man, and hoping as Muireall always did, for something good to come from his unusual request.
But what would she consider a good outcome? Had he learned from Mhairi or Muireall that Iain spoke to her much as she knew he’d already spoken to Calum? Was that why he was eager to speak to her in the relative privacy of the walled garden?
At one time she thought Calum the only man who would ever make her happy in this life. But much had changed. And not enough had changed.
Or had it?
What did she want? Iain’s surprising advice confused her. Had Annie put him up to this? How would she know? Annie would not reveal something Iain held close. Iain all but said she should stay at Brodie. She was certain they would want her to stay with Calum, too. So did she.
Ella feared any decision that would take her to a strange place and a strange man. She belonged at Brodie. With Calum. She could admit that now. To herself, at least.
Calum came through the gate and closed it behind him, then turned and stopped when he saw her.
He just looked at her, and Ella could not interpret the expression on his face. Sadness? Fear? Hope? She couldn’t discern whether it boded well or ill for whatever he intended to say to her.
She studied him in return. He hadn’t changed on the outside.
Still the tall, handsome warrior who pursued her once she and Thomas Ross had repudiated each other.
Calum did not care about her past. He cared about her.
Or she thought he did. Had it all been simply that he wanted her, as a man wants a woman he thinks he cannot have? Lust, not love?
What did she see in his eyes now?
She tried a small smile, hoping he would respond in kind.
He didn’t, but he took a step toward her. “Thank ye for agreeing to meet me, Ella. I ken I have been hard on ye. Unfair, even, in my condemnation of yer actions.”
His voice was soft. Gruff. The pain in his eyes had not abated, and Ella’s body chilled as if ice filled her veins instead of hot blood. What was he leading up to?
“There is so much I need to say to ye,” he continued when she didn’t respond.
“To apologize for. To ask ye. I dinna ken where to start, save to say that I ken I hurt ye. I’ve been an arse since I woke up from Harlaw.
I felt sorry for myself and let self-pity overtake every other important thing in my life.
Including ye. I never meant to hurt ye. And I canna begin to explain to ye how deeply sorry I am. ”
He was apologizing. But why? Was he telling her goodbye? Ella fought the twisting pain climbing like a vining rose, thorns scraping from her belly to her chest, and found her voice. “I accept yer apology, Calum.” It was all she could do.
He seemed to relax a wee after she spoke. Perhaps this would not be as bad as she’d feared.
“Ye once told me ye wanted back what we had before I was injured. Can ye accept that I want that, too?”
Heat rose, thawing the ice in her veins and melting some of the thorns twisting in her chest. But she didn’t yet trust where this conversation was going. “I have hoped for that.”
“Am I too late? I ken Iain spoke to ye about yer future. Ours. Mine, too. I treated ye badly. Ella or Janet, both. I like both sides of ye. I want ye to be able to be yerself around me, Ella and Janet combined.”
“Do ye?” Ella straightened her back and met his gaze, drawing strength from within herself.
She was tired of waiting for him to get to the point.
“Have ye come to this realization only because Iain and Annie have decided to push us toward each other? Are ye begging my forgiveness? Or letting me go with kindness by blessing a possible union between me and another man, as Iain suggested? What do ye want, Calum?”
“I want what we had. And more. I want the future we once hoped to have together.”
He paused and Ella watched him, wide-eyed, not yet sure if she believed what she heard.
He sounded like the old Calum, the man she had begun to fall in love with.
Before he’d been injured and became angry and impossible.
“I have wanted that, too,” she answered, daring to admit that truth despite the risk of what Calum might do with it.
“But I want more than that,” he said. “I want ye to ken how I feel about ye. I want to say to ye the things I never had the courage to say, before now.” He took another step closer.
“I was blind. Not my eyes.” He prodded his chest with stiff fingers.
“In here. And too proud. And foolish. But I’ve learned my lesson.
Aye, Iain and Annie’s meddling opened my eyes, but so did ye.
I see ye, Ella Munro. No’ just yer beautiful face.
I see the good in ye, I see how ye care for others.
I finally see that I canna bear to go through life without ye at my side.
I see how much ye love me, no matter how ye try to hide it.
But most of all, I see how much I have hurt ye and I regret every moment of pain that I caused ye.
And I never want to do that again. I love ye, Ella, more than I ken how to tell ye. ”
“Calum…” She’d never imagined she’d hear those words from his lips. She reached out to him, but he didn’t move to take her hand.
“Let me finish, love. I want to show ye how much I love ye. For ye to see that I mean it. To see how much ye mean to me. Ye are everything to me, Ella. I dinna ken how better to tell you than to say I’d rather be blind again that to go through life without ye. I want ye to marry me, lass.”
“Calum!” This time she gasped his name and held up a hand.
“Ye would rather be blind? How can ye say something like that after what ye have been through?” And how could she consider, even for a moment, wedding anyone else after he made a declaration like that.
With all the rest of what he said. She couldn’t look away from him, overwhelmed by the entreaty in his voice and on his face.