Scot On the Moors #3
Even from this distance, she could see how his skin prickled in the cold night air. No doubt he would warm up quickly with his digging, but the moon caught the expanse of his chest. The sprinkling of golden-red hair on his chest, gathering at his navel, which trailed down farther.
Her upbringing meant that she dealt in terms of unequivocal beauty.
Balance, symmetry, lines, and curves. There were techniques to create an aesthetically pleasing tableau.
Her life had been full of beauty in all its forms, and she was fully aware of the male form, as she had studied the ancients, who preferred it.
But none of those things could compare to Callum’s raw power as he pulled the first shovel full of dirt from the moors. The strain of muscle, the braces that hung from his waist band, looped and swinging, mimicking the arc with which Callum moved.
He looked up, catching her watching. She spun back to face the village.
Her heart hammered in her chest. This had been an entire mistake, from start to finish.
She shouldn’t have left her father’s side, even with his specific request for her to photograph the dilapidated abbey.
She shouldn’t have left her chaperone in Liverpool.
She shouldn’t have come here alone. And she shouldn’t have gotten kidnapped by a man for whom she had pined for over a decade.
The wind kicked up and she crouched down, taking the ancient, crumbling stones as refuge. The moors were pretty, in their own desolate sort of way. It was so different from the States here. So far from her normal life, which many had claimed was far from normal anyhow.
Towards the village, there were few circles of lights. It wasn’t a big enough place to have streetlamps. But the inn had a gas lamp, beckoning visitors inside. Her imagination drifted towards an end of the evening, of her and Callum repairing to her room, undressing one another, with soft words of—
Oh, absolutely not. She shook her head to clear her mind.
What was wrong with her? She was not the sort to become dreamy-eyed, or dreamy-whatever part of her that would be imagining a disrobing tête-a-tête with a man.
My goodness. Surely, it was the fatigue of her journey that induced her to such thoughts.
But why was she sitting on this hill? Why was he digging in the middle of nowhere at the dead of night? And what was it that compelled her to just agree with whatever this was? She was cold, she was tired, and she was done.
She stood and stomped over to him. This farce had gone on long enough.
He kept shoveling, his movements identical and rhythmic.
Dig, stomp, hoist, toss. Dig, stomp, hoist, toss.
The hole was little more than two feet by two feet, and barely a foot down.
It appeared as if he were excavating, like an experienced treasure hunter.
His bare upper arms bulged and a vein protruded along his forearm.
She would just have to ignore that for the time being. Her dignity had to be worth something.
She folded her arms. “Callum!”
He didn’t stop his motion. The wind had made it harder to hear. She repeated his name, louder this time. Still nothing. She pushed into his field of view, and this time he faltered mid-hoist.
“Can I help ye?” he panted. The sweat that lined his body glistened, and his skin prickled now that he’d stopped moving. While he waited for her reply, he slowly moved his shovelful of dirt aside and tossed it onto the growing pile. He licked his lips.
That made it very difficult to concentrate.
“Yes. I—” Nope. Every protest and condition she’d thought of fled her brain.
How could she think while standing in front of this?
How could she look him in the eye when all she wanted was to trace the trail of hair from the light dusting across his pectorals down past his navel, where it disappeared into trousers?
“Ginny.” He shook his head, catching his breath.
And then, over his shoulder, she spotted a carriage. “Get down!” she hissed. They both crouched.
Callum spun around, looking at the horizon to see what she had. He stood a little at a time, until he was fully erect and relaxed. “What did ye see?”
“There was a carriage, over there, a bit distant, I think, but it was absolutely a carriage.” Virginia stood now, too, trying to spot what she had seen before.
“Are ye sure?”
“Absolutely. It had a lamp holder, and it was swinging as the horses galloped.”
“Horse and carriages don’t gallop on these roads,” Callum said, as if she were a complete idiot.
“You did,” she said, leveling a gaze at him, now that she could think. Mostly.
“Aye, well, I shouldna. It’s dangerous.”
“Thank you then for your enduring concern for my personage.” Honestly. Why she would be dizzy over a man like this, she didn’t know.
“I know these roads backwards and forwards. It’s not dangerous for me.” Callum wiped his forearm across his forehead, and the errant copper curl flipped back into place. He was speckled with dirt. And he was so beautiful.
“The ‘do as I say, not as I do’ defense. Very original,” she said, scanning the landscape again.
A carriage could not have vanished, could it?
Perhaps there was a trick of some valley or something that made a carriage disappear and then reappear.
When it appeared again, she would point it out first, hide second.
Callum sighed. “If there’s nothing else, then.” He stuck the shovel into the dirt.
“There absolutely is something else,” she said, glad that he reminded her. “I do not care for this treatment, and I demand that you give me a modicum of respect and take me to the village.”
Callum shook his head. “Ginny, ye know why I canna.”
“Yes, this very mysterious hole you are digging. Fascinating. Not at all the actions of a lunatic.”
He heaved yet another sigh. “I take digs at the dirt, she takes digs at me.”
“I’m asking for a very small amount of respect, one that any person—”
“Stop,” Callum interrupted. “Ginny.”
He kept saying her name. Or rather, a name that no one had called her in more than a decade.
It was what her father had called her when she was younger, what everyone had.
But after that summer, after hearing that name spoke by Callum, in a whisper, his lips grazing her flesh, she’d decided that she would become Virginia to everyone else.
That the next time she heard someone call her by that childhood nickname, it would only be him.
And it was. It was the only way she could have an endearment from him.
A lasting, visceral memory. And every time he said it, the skin pebbled beneath her ear, as if he were skating his face alongside her neck once again. She swallowed hard.
He wiped his other forearm across his face. The red curl that danced along his forehead bounced back into place. “This is not how I planned on meeting up with ye. I’m not treating ye any sort of way. This is the only—”
“Planned on meeting up?” Virginia repeated his words. She felt as if her eyebrows could not get closer to her hairline than they already were, but then, she’d never been in this position before. “You planned on finding me?”
He looked at her as if she were completely bonkers. “Aye. As we said.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. There she was, on the moors, in the moonlight, midnight approaching, and this man had the audacity to tell her that he was still holding fast to a lovers’ pact from over a decade previous.
Her hands covered her face. She was nearly thirty years old.
She’d been written off as an old maid by every single social acquaintance and every member of her family.
Even she had abandoned the idea of Callum.
From behind her, she heard an indistinct whisper from a male voice. She whirled around, tearing her hands from her face. No one. She turned back to Callum, whose furrowed brows displayed his annoyance.
“Does that mean ye did not wait for me?” Callum demanded. He stuck the shovel into the ground with a hard heave. “Are ye married then? Children?”
But Virginia’s attention was split. Had the wind carried a man’s voice all the way from the village? Was someone coming? But Callum’s stare was persuasive. She turned her attention to him. “Don’t be silly.”
“I don’t know what silly might be, so why don’t ye explain it.” He crossed his arms across his chest, and it did things to his muscles that made it difficult to pay attention. He was such a beautiful man.
“I’m not married, and of course no children.”
One burnished eyebrow raised. “Ye don’t have to be married in order to—”
“Yes well, that was a one-time thing. With you.” Virginia hugged her arms to herself, a chill creeping over her.
“So ye haven’t taken another lover,” Callum pushed. Because of course he’d push.
“Absolutely not.” Virginia shivered and the idea of handsome Callum in a pub, in a market, with women fawning over his broad shoulders and twinkling blue eyes, it made her ill. “Have you?”
“Taken a lover or just had a tup?”
“A tup?” Virginia echoed, feeling insulted. “You think you tupped me?”
His jaw set hard, as if he were the one insulted. “Do you?”
They stared each other down, neither wanting to give ground and cede the argument. “If I can’t get some rest until after you finish digging your hole, get digging. I want a hot bath.”
Callum snorted and pulled the shovel out, getting back to work. Virginia paced, searching the horizon for the carriage, or the moors for a man whose voice might have been carried on the wind to find her.