Chapter 3
Freya’s brilliant plan to avoid Callum Ross was a resounding success. She hadn’t laid eyes on him since that awful scene in the front drive on the day he arrived at Castle Cairncross.
Which had been … yesterday. Still, more than a day had passed since then. Whole hours in which she’d escaped the sight or sound of him. Of course, she’d spent nearly all those hours in her bedchamber, but a lady must take her successes as they came.
Now all she had to do was get through the next three weeks. That would be easy enough, surely? It was only twenty-one days. Why, that was hardly any time at all.
Just five hundred and four hours. It would be over before she knew it.
Never mind that she’d spent hours this afternoon pacing her bedchamber before she’d worked up the nerve to venture to the top of the staircase, and then she’d darted down it as if the hounds of hell were on her heels.
She plucked glumly at one of the pianoforte keys. Five hundred and four hours of peeking around every corner and scurrying up staircases every time she caught a glimpse of him. She’d only ended up in the music room because she’d fancied she heard footsteps behind her.
She didn’t even play the pianoforte, for pity’s sake. God above, what a dreadful coward she—
“There you are, Freya. I’ve been all over the castle, looking for you.” Sorcha burst through the door of the music room, a cloud of dust swirling into the air as she slammed it closed behind her. “Why are you hiding in here?”
“Hiding? What a ridiculous notion, Sorcha! Why should I be hiding?”
Yes, two strange, enormous men she’d never laid eyes on until yesterday had invaded her castle, and yes, the more terrifying of the two of them had grabbed her and nearly suffocated her with his massive paw around her throat.
And yes, they’d both been watching her every move like a pair of hawks hunting a mouse ever since, but that didn’t mean she was hiding.
She wasn’t hiding. She was merely … dusting the pianoforte.
“I beg your pardon.” Sorcha paused in front of a window, a watery beam of gray sunlight washing over her. “I need, ah, a small favor from you.”
“A small favor,” Freya repeated flatly. Oh, this didn’t bode well.
Sorcha’s favors were never small, and they invariably led to trouble.
The last favor she’d done for Sorcha had ended with a small fire.
The hem of her best cloak had been singed beyond redemption, but perhaps the less said about that, the better.
She eyed her sister. Sorcha was dressed in an old, dark gray riding habit Catriona had outgrown years earlier, the elbows worn thin with use, and atop her head sat an old black felt hat of their father’s.
A gnarled walking stick she’d fashioned from a thick branch of a fallen pine tree completed this odd costume.
Odd, but familiar. It was the usual costume she wore when she went tramping about in the woods.
For anyone else, a sedate stroll through the trees was an innocent enough pastime, but Sorcha wasn’t anyone else.
She was Sorcha, and too much like their father for anything she did to be entirely innocent.
“It won’t take any time at all, I promise you,” Sorcha said in her best wheedling voice. “I’ll be back before you’ve even had a chance to—”
“No.” Freya cut her off before she could get another word past her lips. “It’s out of the question, Sorcha.”
“For pity’s sake, Freya! There’s no need to make such a fuss. It’s just a quick errand.”
“A quick, harmless errand.” Freya snorted. “You always say that, and it’s never true.”
“But I mean it this time! I’ll be back before you’ve even had a chance to miss me.” Sorcha offered her most ingratiating smile.
Well, it wouldn’t work. Not this time. They’d both promised Cat they wouldn’t venture beyond the castle grounds, but Sorcha had never excelled at observing boundaries. “No, Sorcha. Nothing good will come of it, and you know it as well as I do.”
Nothing good, and likely a great deal of bad, particularly if Sorcha intended to go into the village.
Between the smugglers haunting the waters of Loch Dunvegan—the MacLeod sisters’ fault—and the rumors of witchcraft taking place inside the castle—also the MacLeod sisters’ fault—they had few friends left in the village these days.
Few friends, and dozens of enemies, all of them eager to put the MacLeod sisters in their place.
Sorcha wasn’t the sort to keep her mouth closed if she was challenged. She loved her sister, but Sorcha was stubborn, willful, and alas, it must be said, occasionally a bit too, er … forceful.
Blade-to-a-man’s-neck forceful.
“Come now, Freya. Don’t tell me you’re going to allow those two. …” Sorcha waved a hand toward the entryway. “Those two lairds to keep us prisoners in our own home!”
“Shame on you, Sorcha. It was Catriona who forbade us from leaving the castle, not Laird Ross or Laird Dunn, and you know it as well as I do.”
“Yes, well, Catriona isn’t here, is she?”
No, she was off on a treasure hunt with Lord Ballantyne, dash it, and it would be weeks before they returned. How was she meant to keep Sorcha out of trouble for weeks on end?
Really, Cat’s faith in her was utterly misplaced. It was all quite distressing.
“As for those two lairds, if they aren’t our jailors, then why are they guarding the door?” Sorcha kicked at the pianoforte bench, a pout on her lips. “The only door, now.”
Indeed, and she had Lord Ballantyne to thank for making it more difficult for Sorcha to sneak out whenever she pleased without a word to anyone. He’d secured the cellar and kitchen doors with nails and heavy planks of wood.
There was one way into Castle Cairncross now, and one way out, and that was through the front door. It did feel a bit like a prison, but a lady didn’t want her enemies strolling into her castle whenever they pleased.
“Please, Freya! I need your help to make a clean escape. There’s no chance of my getting out the door and down the drive with that man pacing the entryway like a guard at Newgate.”
“Which man?” The one with an angelic face? Or … the other one?
She swallowed, her fingertips finding the pulse fluttering at her throat. Every time she recalled the pressure of that thick arm against her neck, her breath went all fluttery and shallow, as if it were still there.
“How do I know? One laird looks much like the other to me.”
Honestly, only Sorcha could mistake one of those men for the other. One of them was a handsome, fair-haired gentleman, and the other was … well, it was like confusing an angel with Satan himself. “For pity’s sake, Sorcha. They look nothing alike.”
Sorcha wrinkled her nose. “It’s the bigger one, I think. I need you to lure him out of the entryway so I can get out.”
“Lure him! You want me to lure Callum Ross?” Sorcha may as well have asked her to dive from the top of the turret into the freezing waters of Loch Dunvegan and resurface with a thrashing fish caught between her teeth.
“Of course, you. Who else, if not you?”
“But how?” How did one distract such a brutish man? Throw raw meat at him? “I haven’t got a single thing to say that Callum Ross would find the least bit entertaining. It’s not as if I can discuss my embroidery with him or instruct him in the finer points of lace tatting.”
He wasn’t at all the sort of man a lady could engage in polite chitchat.
“Not the lace, no.” Sorcha thought for a moment, then a sly smile curved her lips. “I know just the thing.”
Dear God, that smile. She hardly dared to ask. “What?”
“You can cause a commotion in another part of the house.”
“A commotion? What sort of a commotion?”
“A noise, or some minor disturbance, like glass shattering, or a scream, or an accident. A fall, perhaps? Not a real one, of course, but … oh, I know! You could feign a stumble at the bottom of the staircase, and pretend you’ve twisted your ankle.”
Oh, no. She didn’t like the sound of this. “How does my twisting an ankle get you out the front door?”
“Don’t you see? He’ll be obliged to assist you to a settee in the drawing room. As soon as he’s turned his back, poof! I’ll be down the stairs and out the door in a trice!”
“Poof?”
“Yes. Poof!” Sorcha snapped her fingers. “Just like that. It’s the perfect plan.”
“It’s not the perfect plan. For one, Callum Ross doesn’t strike me as a gallant, heroic sort of man. He’ll likely just leave me in a heap on the floor. Secondly—”
“Nonsense. Even he isn’t such a savage as to leave an injured lady lying in a heap on—”
“Secondly, I’m not much of an actress, and if I feign a fall, there’s a good chance I might truly injure myself.” Even if her ruse worked, he’d have to assist her into the drawing room, and that would almost certainly mean she’d have to touch him …
Blast it, there was that odd shivery sensation fluttering in her belly again, unfamiliar, and unwelcome.
Sorcha gave the floor a hard rap with her walking stick. “As always, Freya, you underestimate yourself. You’re a MacLeod, aren’t you? You can do whatever you set your mind to. Mother always said—”
Freya groaned. “Not this again.”
Her mother used to say that for all Freya’s sweet, quiet nature, there was a tempest inside her, a deep source of strength that she needed only to draw upon in times of doubt or fear.
This tempest, alas, had never seen fit to present itself, despite doubt and fear being her near constant companions these past few months.
But there was no use arguing with Sorcha once she’d made up her mind.
She’d go off on her errand today, either with or without Freya’s help, and there was sure to be a dreadful scene over it.
She despised scenes. They made her stomach queasy.
“Please, Freya?” Sorcha folded her hands under her chin, and gazed at Freya with wide, beseeching green eyes. “Please? I promise I won’t ask you again.”
Perhaps there was a bargain to be struck here. “Very well. I’ll do it, but first I’ll have your word that you won’t leave the castle again until Cat and Lord Ballantyne return.”
“What, the entire time? But it could be weeks!”
“Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.”
Sorcha huffed out a breath. “Fine. I promise it.”
“And you have to promise to return to the castle before dark.”
“Yes, yes, all right. Thank you, Freya!” Sorcha pressed a kiss on her cheek. “I swear you won’t regret it.”
“See that I don’t.” But of course, she would regret it.
She always regretted it, and now she’d spend the next several hours worrying herself to a frazzle until Sorcha returned.
But if it kept her sister safely inside the castle walls for the next five hundred and four hours, it would be well worth it.
Anyway, it was too late now. She’d agreed to it, and Sorcha was already hurrying toward the door. “I’ll just pop up the back staircase and wait on the landing while you entice him away from the door.”
Entice him? She’d never enticed anyone in her life. Certainly not a gentleman, and Callum Ross was the last man in existence she would have chosen to start with.
It might have been different, if he’d been another sort of man. The ordinary sort. But there was nothing ordinary about him. Not his size, not his unsmiling lips, and not his cold gray eyes.
Why, she may as well attempt to lure a hungry fox out of a hen house.
“Wait, Sorcha.” She hurried to the door, her cowardly heart turning somersaults inside her chest. “Perhaps this isn’t such a—”
But it was too late. Sorcha was already turning the corner at the end of the hallway.
Dash it. Now what? How was she going to find a way to entice Callum Ross away from the front door?
She peeked around the corner. There he was, pacing from one end of the entryway to the other like a soldier marching across the battlefield.
Or an executioner, seconds away from hacking off someone’s head.
It wasn’t that he was such a giant of a man, or even his stern, forbidding countenance. She’d seen forbidding men before. Her own father had been a big, broad-shouldered man, and a smuggler to boot, with a glint in his green eyes that hinted at something wild lurking just below the surface.
But Callum Ross, with that thick mane of dark hair and his grim, unsmiling mouth was nothing like her father had been.
Rory MacLeod had been a vibrant man with a booming laugh and a wide, wicked smile.
She had dozens of lovely memories of him, but her favorite was of rushing down the stairs to greet him when he returned from one of his adventures and screaming with laughter as he tossed her into the air, then caught her again, his strong arms wrapping around her.
For all his faults—and there had been many—he’d been warm and alive.
Callum Ross was her father’s opposite in every way. He was as still and cold as a corpse, as silent as a cipher, and his mouth was such a stern, harsh line, it looked as if his lips would crack into a thousand pieces and drop right off his face if he even attempted a smile.
He was the most frightening man she’d ever encountered.
At least, he frightened her. Sorcha wasn’t afraid of him. Sorcha wasn’t afraid of anything. If only she had some of Sorcha’s fearlessness, and Sorcha some of her reticence, everything would be a great deal easier.
At the other end of the hallway, Callum Ross’s heavy tread echoed throughout the entryway. Back and forth, from one end to the other without pause.
Short of doing herself an injury, how in the world was she meant to distract such a man?
Think. There must be a way. She just had to think.
She turned to the window and gazed out at the woods that surrounded all but the eastern side of Castle Cairncross.
A great many of the leaves still clung to the trees, but the storm yesterday’s clouds had promised was coming.
It would be upon them soon enough, leaving the branches as bare as the bones of skeletons.
It had gotten colder as the storm neared, and she wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill. A hot cup of tea would be welcome right now—
Why, of course! She could invite Callum Ross to have some tea in the drawing room. Surely even gigantic, dour Scottish lairds with arctic gray eyes appreciated tea?
Dear God, just thinking of those eyes made a shiver dart down her spine, but it was too late to revert to her usual cowardice. She’d promised Sorcha.
The tea would have to do. There was nothing for it but to send a quick prayer up to the heavens that she didn’t make an utter fool of herself.