Chapter 32 #2
She stilled, looking up at him, suspicion glinting over her features. “You only say that to be kind.”
Her words pierced him, and he stared at her in astonishment, a sting catching in his chest. “I assure you, I’m no’.”
She turned away, her voice dropping. “You needn’t pretend things were different then. I know what I was. I know how my father railed against yours, at every chance. How could you ever have wanted me?”
He caught her chin, turning her face toward his. “Because I asked you to accept me on the skiff, and you did.”
Confusion swept over her features. “Aye, I remember…I meant I accepted everything you were—the man you were becoming. There was nothing in you I wished to change. I was only answering your question.”
The words struck him like a blow. For more than ten years he had believed she was accepting him as her husband.
That hope had carried him through exile, through battle, through every lonely night.
But now…heat tightened his throat. She had meant something else entirely.
She had been answering a different question. All these years, he had been wrong.
“I wasnae asking if you accepted the man I was.”
She blinked. “What were you asking?”
He held her gaze, steady and unflinching. “I was asking you to accept me as your husband. To be my wife. To stand at my side through whatever lay ahead.”
Her discordant eyes swept rapidly over his face, her rosy lips parting in disbelief. “You are jesting.”
“Am no’.”
She stared, as if waiting for him to laugh, to turn it into a trick. But he only looked back, every muscle taut, every nerve raw. His heart beat so hard it felt as though it must be visible through his kyrtill.
“You were sixteen, Calum.”
He felt his patience fray. “I was auld enough to know my mind—to know the lass I wanted for the rest of my days. Loathsome father-in-law and all. Are ye saying you wouldnae have accepted me?”
She blinked rapidly, her gaze skittering upward as if the heavens might hold an answer.
His chest burned with pain, the silence between them cutting deeper than words. “You wouldnae have accepted me, then?”
“You wanted to wed me? To take me as your wife all those years ago? Of your own free will? Not out of pity or circumstance?”
Her face contorted, as though the very idea were some foolish impulse of a lad too young to understand what he asked.
His temper flared hotter. “Aye—and you still’ve not said if you would have accepted me. I need to know, Freya.”
She gave a small, frustrated sound. “But it was so long ago…I cannae believe what you’re telling me. It—it changes things. …I am thinking. Am I no’ allowed tae think, MacLean?”
He thought of his blundering question in their bed only days before, and heat rushed to his cheeks. “Well, how much time do ye need, MacSorley? Ye’ve had ten years.” The words came sharper than he intended, and he stewed a moment before muttering, almost against his will, “And four months.”
She arched a perfect eyebrow, the silver discs in her hair catching the dim moonlight. “What was that, MacLean? A saucy remark? About the time I’ve kept ye waiting?”
He cringed, running a hand over the back of his neck. “Aye. It was. But I cannae help it, MacSorley. Ye prance about, yer hair all a-swirling, ye make me laugh, ye recite the morning prayer… and it’s all I can do not to carry ye to my bed. I’m fairly going mad with it.”
She blinked heavily, disbelief written across her face.
He pushed past restraint, feeling frustrated, unsure how to talk to her.
“I ken—I’ve said a foolish thing, just as I asked a foolish question.
But ye might as well ken this agony in my heart for ye.
It’s always been here. Always. And it only grows, day by day.
If we’re still in this state in six months, I fear I’ll burst into flame like one of your fireballs. ”
At this, she broke, a bright, infectious smile consuming her until she shook with laughter.
Embarrassed, he clenched her hand, pressing on toward the cottage, listening to her laughter ripple through the night.
After a moment, she began to quiet, squeezing his hand.
“I’m sorry. I just find it hard to believe that the likes of you ever considered me as someone you might have courted, let alone married.
You were you, Calum MacLean—the lad all the lassies wanted.
More braw, more brave than any other in our clan. To me…you were more myth than lad.”
He slowed, realizing he had been dragging her behind him. “I was always lad. No myth.”
“Aye, but I was…me.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Aye, you were. And I fancied her.”
She came to a sudden stop, and he jerked forward. “What?”
“But you couldn’t have.”
Her gaze held his, looking at him again as if this were some new revelation, as if she had never picked up on how he felt about her. Their eyes held, and for a heartbeat, everything else fell away—they were alone with the truth that had waited ten years to surface.
Her foxlike eyes stared up at him, drawing him in, calling to him as they had even then.
“I fancied her. Quite a lot.” He drew her closer, running his thumb along the exquisite curve of her jaw.
“Her eyes…so wide with observation. As if she knew the world, but the world didnae ken her heart.” He caught the flutter of her heartbeat at her throat, and a tremor of boyhood seized him, pulling him back in time—as though he were a lad daring to declare his heart for the very first time.
“But no one ever looked at me like that, Calum… not in that way.”
“I did. Why’s that so hard to believe?”
She tried to pull her hand from his. Her cheeks flamed and she laughed, high and brittle, repeating herself. “No one… no one looked at me like that. Not like… like it makes your heart leap and your stomach twist…”
“Mine did. I prayed I would see you wherever I went. And when I did I’d break out in a furious sweat. My kyrtill would be soaked through at the armpits. Why do you think I spent so much time bare chested?”
Freya’s cheeks flamed scarlet, and she fumbled with his hand but he twined their fingers, holding her fast. “I thought it was probably the training. Or maybe to impress Astrid or the other lasses. Nothing to do with me, surely.”
“It was everything to do with you. Your eyes. Your mouth. The perfect arch of your eyebrow. The shorn hair that everyone hated, but I thought made you look a mischievous heather pixie.2 I savored the angle of your jaw, the curve of your cheek, the sparkle in your eyes, the nape of your neck that begged to be kissed.” He lingered, close enough that she could feel his warmth.
“Do you feel how I’ve held all this in for you? —Why do you keep pulling away?”
Her fingers trembled. “Calum… please… stop… it isn’t true.”
Snowflakes quickened, falling in a swirling blur as she scanned the ground, the sky, the darkened mountains, the loch.
He slanted a sideways look at her. “You’re distressed.”
A sheen of tears glimmered in her eyes. “I dinnae like thinkin’ of those days… a spotted, big-eyed, wide-mouthed toad in love with the laird’s son… never havin’ a chance of ever—”
With an abrupt curb, he crushed her into the wall of his chest, unable to believe what she was confessing. “You loved me?”
She could not bring herself to look at him.
“Every time I saw you, I longed for even a second of that afternoon beneath our tree, the one that changed everything between us. I watched you from afar, followed your steps, tried to understand you without being seen. And then… that day… I saw you strapped to that table and knew how much you wanted to run. I knew it was I alone who could feel what you felt—the pain in your heart. When you fled, I had to follow, to save you as you had saved me. I wanted to tell you how much I loved you… but I couldnae speak the words that burned in my chest. I didn’t understand them myself, much less know how to explain them to you.
I only wanted you to notice me, to…” Her voice broke, and he gently brushed an errant flake from the loveliness of her lips.
“To remember me. Even now I know that you loved on Mull, that there was some lass who held your heart, who shared your bed… that you loved someone then. And I… I am the one you are bound to now, the one my father’s cruelty forced upon you. ”
He froze, utterly bewildered. “What are you saying, Freya? I’ve never shared a bed with anyone.”
Her gaze dropped, doubt threading through her voice. “But…you told me. On our wedding night—you said there was only one lass on Mull who held your heart.”
The memory of that night hit him sharply, and he suddenly understood how she had misinterpreted his words.
“Freya…look at me.”
A tear escaped down her cheek, and he brushed its hot path away.
A smile of awe and gratitude spread across his face—he could hardly believe this blessing.
She had always loved him, and he had always loved her.
His hands began to roam his beautiful wife, tracing her cheeks, the softness of her skin, the curve of her waist.
His heart raced, as if all the years of chasing her had caught up with him in a single moment. In the misty cloud of his breath, he swept his mouth over hers, sharing its warmth. He paused, drawing her face into his palms.
“You are the lass who held my heart. I have loved you ever since you cried in my arms as a child. Since the moment you made the leap in the sword dance and won. I have searched for you since you hid at the edge of the practice yard. It was you I longed to dance with at the ceilidhs, watching you spy from the rafters. It was you I dreamed of bringing to the marshes, of stealing kisses from those beautiful lips—by the saints, lass, these lips.”
He pressed a deep kiss to them, needing her to believe how long he had desired her, and when she gasped, he gave her three more.
He rested his hands on her neck, looking into her eyes.
“I wanted your heart, your spirit, the bonnie starbursts in your eyes. I have wanted you as my wife since you gave everything to save me, since I felt your heartbeat against mine in that skiff. Losing you that day killed me—I lived in agony for ten long years, needing you. You were my reason for striving, so that one day I might return and claim the woman, my woman, who accepted me on that skiff. I had no paramour on Mull. I was waiting for you then, and I am waiting for you now. You have held my allegiance since the moment you curled into the crook of my arm under the rowan tree. You have forever been mine, Freya MacLean. I love you—and have always loved you—with all of my heart.”
Her hands fisted in his tunic, and she looked up at him, eyes wide with desperation. “Calum—I—”
He panted, pushed to the edge, needing her, wanting her, knowing she was about to be his in every way that mattered. “Yes?”
Her nose brushed his. “I love you. From the first moment you held me in the wood, I have loved you. I love you.” She lifted a trembling hand to his cheek, holding his eyes with her own. “I love you.”
The force of his kiss took them both by surprise. Her arms shot out in a reflex of shock, and then clung to him as he hauled her into his arms, every restraint he had held for years bursting free like a tempest.
He bent her into the curve of his body, encircling her, every sinew flaring as he held her to him. His knuckles brushed her jaw, then threaded into her hair as he cradled her, trailing kisses along the flicker of heartbeat in her throat.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, drawing him nearer. He sheltered her against him, eyes flicking to the stone cottage ahead. With a surge of strength and care, he lifted her higher into his arms and began sprinting as she kissed his cheek, his jaw, his neck.
They crashed into the cottage, his heart leaping as he fumbled through the rooms, searching frantically for their chamber.
He thanked the blessed saints that no one else from the team had arrived—then cursed softly as he stumbled over furniture, gripping her tight, sweeping his mouth over hers.
Her kisses grew more insistent, urgent, leaving no room for doubt, and he tore down the corridors like a man possessed, wishing for the tiny bothy.
At last he found the way, and they collided with the door of their bedchamber. He pinned her beneath him, unwilling to part from her, pressing her gently but firmly against the door. Love for her was barreling through him, overwhelming every thought, a fierce and glorious delirium.
Her hands moved of their own accord, clutching the bands of his arms, the muscles of his shoulders, the curve of his chest. They slipped beneath his tunic, feeling the warmth of his skin, and settled over his hammering heart—the heart that beat only for her.
He stilled, breathless, covering her hand with his.
Slowly, she took his hand in hers, guiding it beneath the fastening of her cloak. Her skin was flushed against his cold hand, reddened from the scratch of his beard. She rested his palm over her own beating heart. They stood, suspended in the rhythm of each other’s racing pulse.
She looked up at him, eyes shining with love. “It belongs to you.”
He leaned closer, letting his hand spread over her heart. “Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.”
She gave him an arch smile, playful and daring. “Will you have me, my wonderful lad?”
His own heart flared as he brushed his lips to hers. “Are you certain you dinnae want to wait?”
She shook her head. “You’ve waited more than ten years. There will be no more waiting.”
His hands found the clasp of her cloak, lips following the curve of her neck as she fumbled with the door behind her.
At last it gave way, and they tumbled inside, the door slamming behind them.