Scot On the Moors #4
She hadn’t been able to discern the words, but he’d sounded close.
It had been two days without a proper bed, and near a month since sleeping in her own.
Exhaustion caused all sorts of hallucinations, and that’s certainly what that voice must have been.
And the disappearing carriage. Clearly, she couldn’t trust herself.
At least, not with figments of her imagination.
Could she trust herself with Callum? That was another story.
But one that she likely wouldn’t have to test, since she was capable of being repulsive to any man. She’d proven that enough times.
She returned to her hillock and huddled down against the decrepit stone wall.
Her fingers pushed at the rocks, finding nothing moveable.
Not that she was in the habit of traveling to foreign countries to destroy ancient landmarks.
She picked up a small, broken piece to scrape a mark onto the rock wall.
It made a white mark, scratching her existence into the world.
A notification that she’d been here, she’d existed.
She was about to finish a second scratch to turn her original mark into a V, when she noticed on the rock below hers, a heart symbol already inscribed.
She felt as those walking through the ancient streets of Pompeii must have felt, looking at those graffiti marks left from centuries ago.
Someone else had once sat where she sat.
Someone else had picked up a rock and needed to make a mark.
Needed to say, see, I exist. Needed to record a heart. Needed to write of love.
She transferred the rock to her left hand and traced the heart as lightly as she could.
The urge to connect was too great to let her ignore it, but she would kick herself if she erased it.
Someone had a great love and needed to express it here.
She looked back over her shoulder at Callum.
The man she would have, until a few hours ago, said was the great love of her life. Now?
Now he’d kidnapped her and ignored her while she shivered in the wind, tired, cold, and now, hungry. Not exactly showing her that he cared one whit about her. But what should she expect? To the world, she was extra. Expendable. A woman without a man.
Wars did that—take the menfolk. The American Civil War. The Franco-Prussian War. Or whatever they called it over here. All these wars took all the men, and then women worked the farms and doctored and labored, only to be told they were nothing without the prize of a ring on their finger.
Which was her. No rings. No man. No love. Just her photographs and the willingness to do whatever it took to make her father’s wish come true. She wondered if this heart was etched by a woman like her—whose love was gone, and she was left sitting on a lonely hillock.
“Please,” a woman’s voice whispered.
Virginia sat up straight. That voice was loud and distinct. But she saw no one. She stood, looking over the low wall. She did not imagine that voice—it was far too clear. She glanced back at Callum, still digging, still beautiful, still not aware she watched him.
Something strange was afoot, and she didn’t like it.
Virginia was a practical woman. The kind of woman who balanced a bank book.
Who tracked the price of train tickets and coffee and sable paintbrushes.
The kind who was happy to assist the librarians with reshelving books in alphabetical order.
She was not the sort prone to flights of fancy.
But so far this evening, she’d been abducted, faced an ex-lover, spotted a disappearing carriage, overheard a phantom voice, and now was begged by yet another phantom voice.
When she approached Callum this time, she was not incensed or angry or insistent. She was unnerved. And this time, he was aware of her.
“Not much longer, love,” he said, panting as he sped up his work. The hole was about four feet deep now, but he worked as if he’d already gotten where he’d wanted to be.
And he called her love. Did he say it in that noncommittal way of old men? Where every child and tavern wench was a love or luvvie? Or did he mean that for her, specifically? She didn’t know. She didn’t really want to know anymore. The answer was terrifying, no matter which way it arrived.
“I’m hearing people,” she said, scanning the horizon again. The stars had continued their rotation, clocking the passage of time. It must have been several hours now. Or maybe less. Or more. What did she know? Clearly nothing.
Callum paused his efforts. “Here? Are they coming?”
“I don’t see anyone.”
He squinted at her, no doubt trying to figure out if she had somehow lost her mind during the decade of their separation. “Ye’re certain?”
She flipped a hand back to where she’d sat, as instructed, on her hillock. “Absolutely certain. I’ve heard a man’s voice, but I couldn’t hear what he said, and then a woman’s voice. She sounded young. She said ‘please.’”
Callum barked out a laugh and then blew out a pant of air. “Just our luck.”
“What’s that?”
He picked up the shovel and continued worrying at the bottom of the hole. “The lovers have found ye.”
“Who?” There was a modicum of relief that Callum had not called her insane, but there were still dozens of questions.
“There’s an old tale. Of sorts.” Callum made a whisht noise that was a dismissal, a laugh, a mark of incredulity all at once. “It’s why I’m here now, digging this very hole.” He stuck his shovel in the dirt experimentally, as if he were feeling around for something.
“I think it’s high time you tell me about the lovers, then, and why I’m stuck here in the middle of the night, freezing my fingers off and scared to pieces.”
Callum looked at her with curiosity and amusement. “Are ye scared, Ginny?”
Those eyes. They pierced right through her defenses every time. “No,” she confessed. “But I am cold.”
He chuckled. “Aye. I’ll believe that.” He threw another shovelful of dirt.
“The lovers were a young man and a young woman from centuries past. Every storyteller has a different date. It was one hundred years ago, four hundred years ago, it was when the Romans had a fortress. The century doesna matter.”
He threw another shovelful and Virginia felt like the pause might be some kind of prompt for her. “What does matter?”
“Depends on who ye ask. Ye see, the young man disguised himself as a coachman, intending to take his lady love off to elope. But they were discovered, and the young woman was locked away, and the young man, well. The young man had his head separated from his body by the father of his lady love.”
Without meaning to, Virginia’s hands found her own neck. “How brutal.”
“Aye. Ye can see why it’s a nicer story to say that it was Romans who might be gadding about, beheading a young suitor.”
“It does seem a bit of an outsized reaction,” she agreed.
“So if ye are about on the moors at night, ye might spot a coach being driven by a headless man. Or ye may hear his declarations of love. Or ye may hear the pleading of the young woman, begging her father not to kill her love.”
“And that’s what you think I’ve been hearing and seeing? Wait, how do you know all this?”
Callum shrugged and wouldn’t meet her eye.
His shovel hit something solid. His movements were quicker now, surer, as he picked around an actual object in the dirt.
Virginia peered into the hole but could see nothing in the moonlight.
Behind her, she heard the man’s voice murmuring again, the words indistinct, low, and lost on the wind.
She turned, still believing she would see something—someone—but no one. But the landscape was empty and dark.
He pulled up a dirt-covered box, the size of which was smaller than a portable writing desk, but larger than a jewelry case. Standing in the pit he had dug, he placed the box on the edge of it, clearing the dirt from its crevices.
“I wish I could photograph this moment,” she said, thinking aloud.
“Photograph?” Callum asked, startled out of his reverie at finding his prize.
“Yes. Photograph. That’s what I do. Or at least, that’s what I’m doing here. My equipment is in the carriage, but it’s far too dark to take a decent picture right now, even with a full moon.”
The box seemed to be welded shut, for no matter how hard Callum tried to open the lid, it would not open. Perhaps that was just the consequence of time. But Ginny’s Highlander was nothing if not persistent. He wedged the box against stones and tried to pry at the seams with his shovel.
“May I make a suggestion?” she asked when he was panting now not from exertion but from frustration.
She’d refrained from speaking earlier, as he had not yet put his shirt back on, and the straining and pulling he was performing did incredible things to his musculature.
There was a time and a place for everything, and Virginia had lived long enough to know how to enjoy the little things that came her way.
Callum waved his hand at her before returning it to his slender hip. “Please.”
“A little heat or water might aid you. Along with daylight. So you may see what you are doing.”
He gave her a long-suffering look. “You just want me to take you back to the village.”
“I do want to get out of the cold, yes,” she admitted, “but sometimes a little distance can illuminate the problems that lie in front of you.”
His expression changed—softened, maybe? And then he jerked his head around, looking over his shoulder. “Did ye hear that?”
“Have the lovers found you, too?” she teased.
He frowned. “I’m nae joking, Ginny. I swear there was a woman’s voice, just behind me.”
“What did she say?”
“I’m not sure. The voice was loud enough, but the words were garbled, like the wind obscured it.”