Chapter 13
“W
hy ye cheeky wee yin,” Callum said, pretending to swipe at her, which only made the seated Meria fall sideways to the floor because it made her laugh even harder.
“I had to take what post was offered me! I could nae wait to get out o’ the kitchens so I could begin learning how to use a sword. Awa’ wi’ ye!”
She was immediately contrite, but not for reasons of apology. “I will nae awa’, Cal, because I have to keep turnin’ these sticks. Come an’ sit next to me so we can have a wee coorie while it cooks.”
He was not immune to her wheedles. She had never met a man who was so ready to forgive and forget all the time.
He did not seem to bear a grudge or allow her past bad behavior to turn him against her.
No other man would have permitted his suspicions about her escaping to subside to the point where he could allow himself to experience warmer feelings.
But Callum was different. She sidled closer to him, and he took one of the sticks out of her hands and began turning it over the flames while he put his other arm around her shoulders.
“The rest o’ the traps were right fankled, lass,” he told her, “so I let the beasts go.” When she asked him, he told her it meant the cord had become tangled when the birds and small animals struggled to free themselves.
The game meat had been cut up thinly before being placed on the skewers. Callum declared the food was ready after a while. When Meria bit into it, she nearly swooned from pleasure. “It tastes so good,” she said, “I can feel the strength flowin’ into me already.”
He nodded and seemed pleased. “Aye, a hot meal with good sustenance is what ye need after freezing the marrow out o’ yer bones like ye did.”
She finished off the meat on her stick and took a swig of ale.
She noticed Callum searching for a small enough twig on one of the branches to use as a brush for his teeth, but she stopped him.
“Nay, Cal, take this.” She pulled a strand of hair out of her head and handed him the thin filament.
It glowed in the firelight. “Use it to clean yer teeth; that’s what I do.
Me hair is so strong, it does nae break or stick. ”
They laughed together as she watched him do it.
He shook his head and grinned. “That’s the neatest trick I’ve ever tried, Lady Meria.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in yer clan’s dining hall during feast days.
” The thought of every Calvin busily cleaning their teeth with hair made both of them laugh.
This emboldened Meria to bring a tiny box out of a compartment sewn inside her bodice. “An’ take one o’ these an’ suck it. Me mither taught me how to make them. They are rose petal pillums.”
He chewed it and smiled. “It tastes like yer mouth.”
Meria blushed. “Aye, Mither used to make them from the roses and other flowers in her garden. Ye pound lavender, violets, and rose together into a paste an’ then form them into round pillums between two butter boards. Allow them to dry in the sun and then they keep for ages in a box.”
“Me mither used to make the same things,” he remarked, “only she would use herbs she found in the tavern kitchens.”
Meria knew Callum was relaxed and comfortable enough with her not to place a guard on what he was saying, so she did not say anything after he shared the memory with her except, “I would have loved to taste ones made from herbs.”
He looked sad. “Me mither died over twenty years ago, and all the knowledge of her lands went with her. She was a wife an’ mither, an’ then forced to earn her bread with the lowest work.
She was accidentally separated from me faither, ye see.
Men came to court her from miles around, but she never forgot him nor stopped waiting for his return. ”
“It reminds me of that story about the wife of Ulysses.
When Ulysses got lost on his way back from the Trojan War, he was gone for a very long time, and his wife was pestered by men wanting to marry her.
When she chose none of the men, they did not leave.
They stayed in her house, making themselves at home, and told her they would not leave until she chose one of them to be her husband.
“Mistress Ulysses told her suitors that she would choose someone when her tapestry was finished…but every night she would sneak into the sewing room and unpick the weaving she had done that day so she would never have to choose. When Ulysses came back after twenty years—ten years of war and then another ten years of traveling back home—he killed all of the suitors.” Meria sighed.
“Those men didn’t understand how much she loved her husband… ”
The wind picked up outside, and she moved closer to him instinctively. He put his arm around her, drawing her into his warm embrace. This was not how Meria planned the night to end, however.
“I am sorry to hear about yer mither’s sorrow, Cal.”
He closed his mouth shut and shook his head. “Never ye mind, lass. I’m a bustert for telling ye such harrowing tales, although yer own story was well told an’ entertaining too.” He hugged her tight to his chest.
“As warm an’ braw as I find yer arms to be, Cal,” she said, stroking his thigh as they sat back against the cavern wall watching the flames lick and spit. “I would nae say nay if ye were to give me a buss.”
She watched his mind process what she was asking of him. Meria reminded him, “Ye told me last night how ye would show me how a man and a woman can take their pleasure from one another without riskin’ a bairn from the encounter, Cal…”
He seemed more hesitant than he had shown the previous night.
“Ye guessed rightly when ye noticed I hold no special affection or loyalty toward MacTavish, lass. But if I show meself too willing to take advantage of a girl—a lass newly come to womanhood, no less—I don’ think I could find it in meself to justify me actions, even if she was nae bonded to marry my enemy…
That is, what I mean to say is…a laird I dinnae admire. ”
She flung his arm off her and jumped to her feet. Standing by the ring of stones around the fire, Meria looked like some vengeful Valkyrie descended from Valhalla to berate his cowardice.
“Callum…whatever yer name is! I would never take ye for a forelock-pullin’, knee-bendin’ coward!
I ken ye want me fully as much as I want ye!
An’ now ye quibble about it like a bairn scared about its first day in the schoolroom!
I hate the thought of MacTavish showin’ me how the act of love should be learnt.
Here ye are, driving me toward a lifetime o’ having to lie down with a man three times me age, like a lamb to the slaughter, an’ ye cannae ‘justify’ yer actions when I ask ye to make me happy for a wee while before years an’ years o’ misery?
” She mocked his deep tones, mocked his words.
“And ye expect me to follow ye all meek an’ mild to that auld castle when ye treat me so cruel? Nay an’ nay an’ nay!”
Meria flung Callum’s plaid over her head, picked up one of his saddlebags from where it lay propped up against the wall of rock, and ran out into the night.
She knew he would not be able to follow her immediately; Callum had removed his boots entirely, loosening the leather bindings that held them to his legs.
She heard him jump to his feet when she exited, but this only made Meria run faster down the mountainside.
Soon the sound of crackling flames and the hiss of burning wood were consumed by the noises of the night.
A stiff wind from the west was blowing, but it seemed to be bringing warmer weather with it.
The biting cold had dissipated; the mists were still thick.
In certain areas, where the path dissected the tall gray boulders, the fog was almost impenetrable.
Meria did not like the thought of pushing through that mist at all. She halted.
“Meria!” Callum’s voice echoed eerily amidst the rocks, and she found it impossible to work out from whence it came.
Determined to escape…no, that would be a lie.
She had only wanted to teach him a lesson to show him that she was not some timid lass prepared to say aye and amen to the dictates of men.
Those men seemed to have mapped out her life for her without bothering to consult her on the matter.
She was determined to make him realize that in return for her biddable behavior, he must ravish her with kisses all over her body like he had shown himself so eager to do last night.
Her pace had slowed down. This was not how Meria had imagined her flouncing out of the cavern would be. In her mind, he would have jumped into his boots in a trice, pounded down the pathway after her, only to catch her in his strong arms and punish her with a hard kiss.
Panicking, Meria looked down at the swirling fog around her legs. She was not even sure if she was on the pathway anymore…and when she turned back to check, the mist had swallowed up her progress as completely as if she had waded through water.
No longer caring about how it would look to Callum, Meria screamed out. “I’m here! I don’ ken exactly where, Cal! To me! To me!”
But when he called out to answer her, his voice came from further away. They had no lantern, and now they were both meandering around inside the mountain clouds.
Meria tried not to give a cry of despair when his voice shouted her name again, but this time from further away.
She leaned back against a cold hard boulder and then slowly slid down onto the ground.
When she felt tough tufts of scrub brush under her, she realized she had left the pebbled pathway entirely.
There was no moonlight to guide her. She must sit there and wait for him to find her.
“Callum!” she screamed, trying hard to control the break in her voice. “I’m off the path…”
Silence. The wind picked up. Then a long howl penetrated the stillness of the night.
For a moment, Meria did not comprehend the sound nor associate it with anything particularly perilous.
What did she, a girl from a sedately run estate, know about predators in the wild?
A howl was something that other Highlanders heard and understood, not Miss Meria Calvin.
Time had no meaning to those who sat and waited in the dark.
So Meria was not sure how long it was before she heard a scuffling and sniffing sound as something scrabbled over the rocks, making its way toward her.
From the scratching of claws and sharp panting, she knew the beast’s proximity did not bode well for her safety.
All the prayers an’ all the regrets in the world will not save me now.
My beautifully knit body and pretty face will be ripped apart, and me soul will flee away.
Callum will find me carcass in the early morning light, bury me, and then carry the tale of me brattish behavior and silly stubbornness to everyone in the Highlands, so they can laugh an’ nae mourn me death…
A low growl came from the rocks overhead. If only Meria had known about how some male wolves left their packs to hunt alone in the wilderness, she never would have left the protection of the fire and Callum’s broadsword.
Two red eyes pierced the darkness of the night. The growling intensified, then was suddenly replaced by sniffing sounds.
The beast is sniffin’ for metal or weapons. Maybe it can smell the wolf pelt fur on me! I hope it takes me by the throat so I die quickly.
The blackness lightened, growing gray as the sniffing sounds came closer. Meria closed her eyes; she did not want to see her death approaching.
She heard scampering, the sound of heavy paws and long claws moving away quickly over the rocks. Was it a trick? Meria opened her eyes and saw the grayness was lighter now. A long branch, wrapped in material at one end to make a torch and set aflame, blinded her sight.
“Are ye all right, lass?” Callum’s deep voice asked her.
He bent down, propping the torch against the rocks.
“I saw a dark shape skulking along the boulders above ye. I’m guessin’ it was a wolf.
One o’ the renegades that prowl the mountains looking for easy prey.
” He looped her arm over his neck and scooped the shivering girl into his arms. “Come, hold on tight. I must hold the torch in one hand an’ support ye with t’other. ”
He tramped back up the mountainside with her in his arms like she weighed no more than a feather, his long strides bringing them to the cavern mouth in a short time. Meria did not say a word. Once more she was overwhelmed by how caring and forgiving he was showing himself to be.
I think I am in love with Callum…whatever his name is.