Chapter 26
“Well, Ballantyne? Are you going to stand there and glare at me all night, or do you intend to let me inside?”
Hamish crossed his arms over his chest. Otherwise, he didn’t move, but remained in the doorway, blocking Callum from entering the castle. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Well, do you think you might get on with it? I have urgent business to attend to on the other side of that door.”
He’d left Balnagown Castle on horseback only six or so hours after Freya had left in the Lelands’ carriage. If he hadn’t had such bad luck changing horses he would have caught up to them, but as it was, he’d been trailing them for the entire journey, only just missing them in Achmore.
To say he’d reached the limit of his patience was a drastic understatement. He wanted Freya, and if Hamish didn’t move out of the bloody way, he’d go over the top of him to get to her.
“It’s late, Callum. Freya went to bed hours ago. Come back tomorrow. You can see her then.”
Was Hamish mad? Tomorrow was a lifetime away. “Step aside, Hamish.”
“For God’s sake, man. I just told you she’s gone up to bed. She’s asleep—”
“I—I’m not asleep.”
There, standing on the last step of the staircase, half obscured in the shadows, was Freya. Her clothing was rumpled, her face was pale with exhaustion, and half her hair had come loose from her braid and hung in tangled chaos over her shoulders.
He’d never seen a more beautiful sight in his life. “Freya.”
She took an eager step forward, and for one breathless instant he was certain she’d rush into his arms, but then she seemed to think better of it and stopped several paces from the door. “What are you doing here, Callum?”
What was he doing here? Didn’t she know he’d follow her anywhere? That he’d chase her from one end of the earth to the other if he had to? Dunvegan, Kildary, Castle Cairncross, or Balnagown Castle—wherever Freya was, that was where he’d go.
But that wasn’t what he said. No, he stumbled over his words like every other besotted fool before him. “I need to … I have to speak to … I came for you.”
“Well said, Ross.” Hamish still hadn’t moved, but he was fighting a grin. “Perhaps you’d better sleep on it, and return tomorrow morn—”
“I’m not returning in the morning. I’m not going anywhere.
” Callum didn’t spare Hamish a glance, but kept his gaze on Freya, drinking in the sight of her.
Had it only been a handful of days since he’d seen her?
It felt as if he’d been chasing her his entire lifetime.
“If you don’t wish to see me now, I’ll wait here on the doorstep until you do. ”
Hamish rolled his eyes. “You’ve always been a stubborn, willful—”
“Perhaps you’d better let Mr. Ross in, Hamish.” Catriona MacLeod appeared in the doorway and laid a hand on Hamish’s arm. “Freya, I advise you to speak to Mr. Ross.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good—” Hamish began, but Catriona interrupted him.
“Nonsense. He’s come all this way to see her, after all, and … well, I don’t fancy the idea of him sleeping on our doorstep. If we don’t let him inside, we’re likely to find him here tomorrow morning, frozen to a block of ice.” She gave Callum a little wink.
At last, someone with some sense! “Thank you, Miss MacLeod. Hamish? If you’d be so good as to get out of my way.”
“Yes, all right, but only if Freya agrees to it.”
Callum’s gaze found Freya’s, and God, those green eyes. They’d be the making of him, or the end of him. “Please, Freya,” he murmured. “May I come in?”
She’d been standing in the doorway, staring at him as if in a trance, but his words broke the spell. “Yes, I …” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Yes, of course, you must come in.”
At last, Hamish stepped aside, but whatever brief flash of triumph Callum might have felt died a quick death. He didn’t have anything to congratulate himself for, considering he’d nearly been turned away at the door.
There was nothing to celebrate.
Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
Freya might still send him back to Kildary with a broken heart. He stepped over the threshold, searching her face in the gloom, but whatever she felt, whatever she hoped and dreamed, she kept it well hidden.
She didn’t speak but led him to the third floor, and from there up the staircase winding around the inside wall of the turret, and out onto the roof beyond.
He’d been here once before, on the night of the fire, when he’d found Freya hiding under her father’s desk. He hadn’t time to give it more than a passing glance then, but he stopped in the doorway now, his breath stilling.
Above them, the night sky was filled with stars.
Millions of them, all winking at once, and from here atop the turret they appeared so close—close enough he might have reached for one, caught it in his hand, and plucked it loose from the darkness that surrounded them.
“I never realized … it’s beautiful here. ”
“It is.” Freya wandered to the edge of the turret and braced her arms on the wall that surrounded it. “At least, I’ve always thought so.”
She stood there gazing up at the sky, the breeze caressing the loose locks of her hair and sending her skirts dancing around her. It was as if the night welcomed her here, as if she was a part of the darkness and the wind and the stars.
“It’s different in the daylight, of course. You can see for miles around Dunvegan from here.” She didn’t look at him, but kept her gaze fixed on the sky. “I’ve always preferred it at night. There’s something magical about it.”
Magical. Yes, that was the only word for it. There’d always been something magical about Castle Cairncross, and about the MacLeod sisters themselves.
Not witchery. There was nothing dark about them, nothing wicked.
But there was something about them that was different, something otherworldly.
Something magical.
He joined her, resting his arms on the top edge of the wall, close to her, but not quite touching.
They were quiet for some time, gazing into the sky, each of them thinking their own private thoughts until at last Freya turned to him, her face still shuttered, and her expression unreadable. “Why did you come here, Callum?”
This was what he’d come for. He’d been practicing his speeches, his declarations of love since he set out from Kildary three days earlier, yet the words he’d rehearsed all deserted him.
There was only one thing to say, only one thing that mattered. “I came because I love you, Freya. I’m in love with you.”
Silence.
She didn’t speak, and neither did she move. She simply stood there, as still as a statue, staring into the sky. It went on for so long his heart began a deep, heavy pounding in his chest, and a bead of sweat slipped down his back.
Why didn’t she speak? Did she not return his feelings, and didn’t know how to tell him? Had she decided she could never forgive him, and was angry at him for following her all the way to Dunvegan, or—
Was she trembling?
She was. Her slender body was shaking like a sapling in the wind, goose bumps rising on her arms. Her jaw clenched, and her chin began to wobble, and the next he knew tears were falling from the corners of her eyes—the beautiful green eyes he loved so well, the eyes he’d dreamed about since the first time he’d seen them—and spilling down her cheeks.
“Freya, sweetheart. Don’t cry.” God, he couldn’t bear it.
Nothing could have stopped him from turning to her then and gathering her trembling body into his arms. “I don’t … Freya? Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean to … I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. It was badly done of me. Have I shocked you? Forgive me, Freya—”
“You’re betrothed, Callum!” Her hands balled into fists against his chest, her words ragged, as if they’d been torn from her very soul. “You’re betrothed to Lorna Niven, and—”
“No. Shhh, love. I’m not betrothed to Lorna. I was never betrothed to her.”
“Then you’ve gone back on your word to her father, and you’re not a man who goes back on your word! It will plague you, and you’ll grow to resent it, and before long you’ll come to resent me, and everything is perfectly horrid!” She buried her face in his chest and burst into a flood of tears.
He’d made a terrible mess of this. He must have done, because he’d never seen her weep as she was right now, as if her heart was shattering into a thousand pieces inside her chest.
“Freya, love, listen to me.” He caught her chin in his fingers and raised her face to his. “I’m not betrothed to Lorna, and I didn’t break my promise to Alistair Niven. I gave up the lairdship.”
She went on weeping as if she hadn’t heard him, but after a moment his words seemed to sink in, and she pulled back to stare at him. “You gave it up? But how can you just … can you do that?”
“You can, and I did. It’s done, sweetheart. I asked Lorna to take the lairdship in my place, and she agreed to it.”
“You gave up the lairdship to Lorna Niven,” she repeated, as if she weren’t sure what the words meant, and was trying to make sense of them.
“Yes.” He brushed the tears from her cheeks. “She’s far better suited to it than I ever could be. It should have been hers from the start.”
“But … but don’t you want to be laird?”
“I want you, Freya. Lorna and I were never betrothed, and there’s never been anything romantic between us. The match only ever existed in her father’s head, but I should have told you all this at once. I made a mistake, and I beg your pardon for it.”
“You … you want me?”
“Yes, Freya. I never wished to marry Lorna. I never truly wanted to be laird, either. For a long time, I didn’t know what I wanted, but I do now.
” He traced his fingers over her damp cheek.
“All I want, all that matters to me, is you. I’m madly in love with you, Freya. I can’t imagine my life without you.”
“You … you gave up the lairdship, for me?”
“Don’t you know? I’d do anything, give up everything else, for you. Do you think … could you ever come to love me, Freya?”