Scot On the Moors #2
“Why are you kidnapping me?” She crossed her arms. The air was cold, and she should be shivering, but she felt like a blaze of fire.
“I asked first,” he said.
“Mine is the more pertinent question,” she countered.
His jaw worked as he wrestled with himself. “None of yer business.”
“My own kidnapping is none of my business?”
“Who would be in a carriage on the moors at this time of night? I thought it was a stagecoach resetting. There shouldna been anyone in it.”
She stared at him, and the jumble of thoughts that normally ran through her mind at breakneck speed tangled into a knot that subsequently crashed to the ground. “You cannot—what on Earth—How could you—But it doesn’t—”
The light showed a hint of a smile on that chiseled cheek. “Ye’ve almost got a complete sentence.”
She reached out and punched him on the arm. “You scared me!”
He didn’t even flinch. “I didna—”
“—‘Didna.’ You certainly did mean to scare me. I thought I was going to die, Callum. Or worse!”
He snorted. “What’s worse than dying?”
She glared at him until he figured it out and he dropped his chin in embarrassment.
“Oh. Well. Ye’re safe with me.”
The wind whistled through the gaps in the carriage, a gust strong enough to gently sway the vehicle. She stared at him while he did the same at his hands. “What are you doing here, Callum?”
“None o’ yer business. Fer yer own sake, Ginny. Dinna ask again.”
She threw her hands into the air. “Then what are you going to do with me? I’m supposed to be arriving at my lodging right now. I want a bath. I want a bed. I’m tired, Callum. I’ve been traveling for weeks.”
“I—” he shook his head, “I don’ yet know. This wasna the plan.”
“Well.” She crossed her arms across her chest, and she saw his gaze lift to her bosom. Some things didn’t change then. “I await your orders with bated breath.”
He squinted at her. “What now?”
It was her turn to shake her head. “Tell me what you’ll allow me to do so that I may do it. Until then, don’t expect me to be any help.”
Callum heaved a breath and then rubbed his face with both hands.
She had forgotten how big he was, how much space he took up.
Not that the carriage was overly large. Still, his knees crowded her, and she had to keep hers to the side, lest she risk touching his.
And there was a temptation to do so, to see if that spark that had been so electric, so compelling, was still there.
It had been just over a decade, and she was no longer that rash young woman, headstrong, lost in the haze of her own desires.
But not in the long years since then had a man who ever made her as woozy with lust and want and breathlessness.
No number of waltzes nor dinners at Del Monico’s had turned her head.
Not that she’d been holding out for him.
She hadn’t. Because she would be a fool indeed to wait for a Highlander who was still trying to rescue his clan’s reputation.
Even then, his boyish quest seemed not only unattainable, but so long dormant that it seemed irrelevant.
His family had six hundred years to repair the folk history, and no one had done so.
What had made Callum believe he could do any different?
And why did she have to wait for him to achieve it in order to be gifted his love?
She’d left Scotland with her father in that long-ago autumn, heartbroken, full of promises, but nothing else.
Not even a scrap of a tartan or a pressed stalk of purple thistle.
Opportunities for other loves had “slipped through her fingers,” as her mother had said, when she hadn’t swooned sufficiently over a suitor.
But how could she, when she’d known a pull stronger than gravity?
But she was older now. And so was he. They were whittled down, stronger, wiser than when they’d met in an open field. She refused to risk the combustion that might occur in a small, enclosed carriage, so she kept her knees pressed tight to the wall.
Callum rested his elbows on his knees and looked up at her. “I canna take you to the inn, as the driver would be known, if he hasna gotten there already. I stopped him just outside of town. But I canna have you running about the moors freezing to death, either.”
“So?” Virginia prompted him.
“You’ll just have to help me dig.” He sat up, slapped his hands on his knees and moved to exit the carriage.
“Dig?” Virginia echoed. “Dig what?”
Callum climbed out and turned back into the carriage before he closed the door. “I’ll show ye when we get there.”
*
“There” was in the middle of yet another windy, rolling expanse.
At least in the distance she could make out the old priory ruins, and the new church next to it.
The ruins were, in fact, why she had come to Yorkshire.
Her father had always wanted to sketch it, and since he could no longer tolerate this sort of arduous travel, he asked her to come photograph it for him from multiple angles, so that he might have the experience from his sick bed.
Her heavy trunks, strapped to the back of this carriage, were not full of pretty shoes and hats for every occasion, but rather, all the photography equipment she could possibly need.
It made her travel less carefree, always worrying about the negative plates breaking, or the legs of her tripod snapping every time the carriage hit a divot in the road.
The wind gusted, testing the defenses of her wool overcoat. She buried her chin into her scarf, waiting for the weather to subside.
The location of her reserved room, bed, and hot bath at the Coachman’s Inn was not far from the ruins her father wanted photographed.
If she took the time for even a moment of introspection, she knew she’d find that if there were an option to abandon Callum in favor of a bathtub and a comfortable bed, she’d probably still choose Callum.
Even if the rugged ride had jumbled her internal organs to match her jumbled emotions, and she was not so youthful that she didn’t need a good night’s sleep in a passable bed, she would stay with him.
Although, the man had not missed a calling as a professional driver.
“I’ve only the one shovel,” Callum said, hands on his hips. The wind died down, letting his words reach her.
“You seem to have this misconception that I’ll be helping you.
” Virginia pulled her hands onto her own hips, mirroring his stance.
Not that she could match the kind of power he seemed to exude.
She felt silly, but she learned that people only believed you were silly if you thought of yourself that way.
This was true in both a ballroom in New York City and in the routs of the upper crust in the various territories of the United States.
What was silly in one place was often deadly serious in another.
He dropped his arms, proceeding to stretch them out across his chest, then his neck, as well. Then he stopped and stepped closer to her. His hand came up, as if he might touch her, but then he dropped it just before he made contact.
“Ginny.” Again, he stopped before he said more, his voice soft and warm, like he was going to speak a term of endearment.
There had been no nicknames, no sweethearts, no Gaelic terms of affection between them.
They had not known one another long enough that summer to find the ones that fit.
When she’d left, she wanted one. Something to call herself to signify that she was special in his eyes.
Something to mark the night that had stretched everlasting in her memory.
The one that ruined her. The one where she childishly hadn’t cared about a future, only about that moment, that second, the pleasure and connection that they’d found together.
But now, they stood on the moonlit moors, the wind pushing against her, blowing her bonnet strings and straining her overcoat and gown against her legs.
And he almost touched her. Said her name like he meant whole volumes of verse behind it.
But she was likely imagining it. Because he hadn’t meant to meet up with her, hadn’t meant to kidnap her. But who gets kidnapped by accident?
Just her. Just ugly old Virginia, too tall, with too big feet, who clearly “hated men,” as her mother claimed, because they could never live up to some invisible standard. But it wasn’t invisible. Her standard was Callum. And he was here, in front of her. And he was thinking of something else.
“Ginny,” he repeated her name, this time more grounded. “I need you… to keep watch.”
She blinked, the wind making her eyes water. “Of course you do.”
He pointed to a hillock, where an ancient wall stood knee-high, in the act of crumbling a millimeter at a time. “There would be a fine place. Keep a keen eye out towards the village.”
Picking her way through the scrub, hoping to not fall over some hidden rock or hole or whatever she might find out here in the middle of nowhere, she did as she was bidden.
Once she arrived on the mild rise, she turned, watching him as he took off his coat and waist coat, stowing them inside the carriage.
He had filled out since last she’d seen him.
His shoulders were wide, and in the thin, over-laundered shirt, she could see how strong he was.
More than able to dig a single hole. He took a shovel from the driver’s perch, no doubt where he’d stored it.
He saw her watching him, and made a circle with his hand, signaling for her to turn her attention back to the town.
She sighed and obeyed. But why? Why was she doing this? At least if she crouched down, the wind wouldn’t whip her so brutally. She turned to say something about it to Callum, and when she did, she saw that he had taken off his shirt as well. Her mouth went dry.