Scot On the Moors #6
He ran his calloused thumb along the seam of the box. “Poorly welded,” he said, and while it should not have hit her like a seducer’s whisper, it did something that all the waltzes and flowers had not during her debutante days. She was going to have to go sit down.
“There,” he said, and just as he had as a boy, he stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, as he worked the point of the knife into a weak spot. The top of the box popped free like the lid of a jack-in-the-box toy.
Musty air wafted out, rust and dirt flaking onto the table surrounding it. Virginia cleared the air in front of her face with her hand, but didn’t lean in. She really didn’t want to see a desiccated severed hand or head or any other body part.
“What is it?” she asked, waiting for him to share aloud.
He poked at something inside of it with the point of his dirk, and then hooked something, lifting it slowly.
Dirt clung to every crevice of some piece of metal jewelry.
About the size of a rose in full bloom, bits of decorative scrollwork surfaced as Callum gently tapped it.
As more of it was revealed, the delicacy and quality of the metal workmanship became discernible.
This wasn’t any old thing. This was an emblem of wealth and culture.
Any person would want to wear such a piece, man or woman.
“This is—” Callum choked on his words.
She tore her eyes away from the jewelry, surprised by the emotion in his voice. “This is what you were hoping to find?”
He nodded. “This proves it. This proves some of it, at least.”
Virginia retrieved a handkerchief from her bag, cupping it in her hands, so he could lower the brooch into the pocket she’d made for it.
She wrapped it carefully and handed it to him.
“It needs a thorough cleaning, but it would be better done during daylight. You’ll see better and be able to examine it more fully. ”
He nodded, his face strained, but he accepted the packet, tucking it inside his dirty waistcoat, close to his heart. He held his hand over it for a moment. Virginia didn’t know what to do. Should she ask more questions, or should she ignore his heightened emotions? She didn’t know what was best.
“I could make us some oatmeal, sweetened with the jam?” She didn’t mean for it to sound like a question, but her whole body, her existence, her standing in this cottage felt so uncertain that it had to be a question.
Callum nodded, but she thought he would agree to putting wet frogs on his head if she suggested it right now.
It was like watching someone be in shock.
So, she decided she would take care of everything.
She made the oatmeal, used the last scrapings of the jam, and managed to get Callum to sit in front of the fire.
As she handed him the only bowl available, her hands brushed his fingertips. They were cold as ice. His eyes were locked onto the low, dancing flames in the hearth. “Callum?”
“I thought I would never find it,” he said, accepting the bowl, but his eyes were still on the fire.
“The jewelry?” She didn’t know what else to call it.
“It’s a brooch, but it’s more than that. It’s a symbol. It was meant as a peace offering, a gift, a bride price. It was meant to broker a peace, a show of good faith, and to allow two lovers into marriage. It was meant to show what the future could be, if trust could be reestablished.”
Virginia didn’t dare breathe. The rest of the story was here and her curiosity took over.
“But the story was spun that my long-ago uncle, my kinsman, was going to kidnap his love. That it was against her will, that it was another case of reivers dipping across the border. But it wasn’t.
He lost his head for it. And our clan lost all of our wealth in that one piece of silver.
Well over a century of struggle and starvation, the British, Culloden, all of it.
What could have changed if we’d had this?
” He touched his hand to his breast, where the brooch sat.
“Would your people have melted it down to pay for food or weapons?” she asked, not understanding.
He shook his head. “We wouldn’t have had to because we would have had something more important than either of those. We would have had allies.”
Virginia sat back on her haunches. The answer to deprivation was community—or rather, a friendship with another community who might not be suffering the same problems. And they could help one another in need. If they could have established such an alliance. If the brooch had worked.
Callum sighed. “And the name of our clan would never have been sullied by lies. No one would have believed us to be reivers and rapists, thieves of people and virtue.”
“I never thought you were,” she said, grasping his outstretched ankle. It was a strange place to touch a man, on the ankle, but it was there before her.
“You’re an American.” His voice was tinged with an affectionate sadness. “You wouldn’t know.”
“I can still see you with my own two eyes.” That was why sometimes traveling wasn’t pleasurable—as if being an American meant she was robbed of all sense of time and history. That her country somehow dictated her learning or her ability to feel compassion for others.
He reached over and touched her hand that had lain on his lower leg. “That’s not what I meant. Only that you didn’t grow up steeped in a culture where your family name was another synonym for criminal.”
She considered it. There were places in her country that did have prejudices like that, but they didn’t go back quite as far.
And instead of a single name, it could be the prejudice of a skin color or a religion.
Or the prejudice against an unmarried woman who traveled alone.
Whose work sold well to the public under a man’s nom de plume.
“Human nature is the same the world over. We might experience a different bias over there, but the feeling is the same. I don’t know your particular case, no, but I can empathize. I can say I understand.”
Callum shook his head. “The understanding is no longer needed, Ginny. I have the proof that it wasn’t warranted in the first place. The proof that no matter what, I’m a good man.”
She didn’t dare point out that in the last few hours he’d proved himself to also be a highwayman, a kidnapper, and a grave robber. Seemed inopportune. But overall? Yes, Callum was a good man, and always had been.
Callum set to his oatmeal—which he insisted was porridge, and Virginia didn’t want to argue over the American word for something, so she said nothing but busied herself until it was her turn to use the single bowl.
By the time she’d eaten and tidied up the one spoon, bowl, and kettle, Callum was already lying on the floor, his jacket covering himself as a blanket, and was fast asleep.
It had been a rather lot of digging, she supposed.
She sat down on the cot, thinking to at least untie her boots, but found it attempting to upend on the other side.
So she scooted back, gave up on taking her boots off, and lay down.
The military issue contraption was ridiculously uncomfortable, causing her to only find purchase if she lay directly on her back.
The smell of old smoke, fear, sweat, and horse manure almost made her choke.
The floor was altogether more appealing. After numerous attempts to pull herself upright, or even onto her side, she finally succeeded in falling onto the floor, and onto the sleeping Callum.
He grunted as she lay splayed over him. The cot creaked as it rocked back to stability.
“Sorry,” she said, trying very hard to roll off of him without kneeing him in the private bits. She managed to get the inside of his thigh instead. He grunted again.
Her elbow had accidentally strayed into the territory of his tender middle as she flailed. “That’s my stomach,” he wheezed.
“My apolo—oof.” It was her turn to grunt as she fell onto the hard, cold floor. Her tailbone was most offended.
She went to rub the offended area, but Callum, thick with sleep despite her assault, wrapped his arm around her and pulled her to him. They lay on their sides, nested like spoons. He pulled his overcoat onto her, sharing the warmth.
“Go to sleep,” he whispered into her hair.
It tickled the small hairs on the nape of her neck.
She hadn’t been this close to a man in years.
The smell of him, dirt, oatmeal, a touch of personal triumph, and that smell of the cold wind was far superior to the suffocating cot.
The feel of him behind her, his knees nestled behind hers, felt far too potent to allow her sleep.
She pondered her predicament right up to the moment she fell into dreams.
A large, heavy moon sits low in the sky against the moors.
A young woman, silhouetted against the light, wanders the landscape, the wind whipping her dress.
She calls out, but her voice is lost on the wind.
In the distance, a man crests a hill, his long hair blown away from his face, his coattails trailing behind him.
He calls out to the young woman, and she turns to see him, hearing him for the first time.
The intricate silver brooch on her breast glints bright in the moonlight.
She can see him, hear him, and soon, touch him.
This time, in this version, the two make their way to one another without interference.
In this version, they meet atop the next rise and clasp hands, then embrace.
The search is over; they have finally found one another.
There is no one to stop them. There is no one to hurt them. They will never be separated again.
Virginia awoke on the floor, stiff and cold. Callum was no longer pressed against her back, but even in the absence of him, the feeling of his strong arms and thighs bolstering her lingered. Nothing untoward had occurred, but somehow it still felt like an indelible trespass.