Heart of Stone by Rebecca Ruger
Chapter Eleven
Ah, but the lass wasa mess.
And not only because she’d been weeping so pitifully for the last few minutes.
When she’d raged at them earlier, all of them, she’d appeared so forlorn and so very pathetic. In all honesty though, the shape and size of Beitris’s gown didn’t help. Every time she’d thrust out her hand to make a point, the thing had flapped and waved with her motions, expanding around her that she’d seemed naught but a child, helpless and afraid. The tears that had come then only added to the image, her eyes and nose quickly made red by her upset. The spot on her cheek where the bastard had struck her yesterday was mottled purple and red today. The sunken posture had completed the picture.
Calum recognized his own part in her present condition—realized it and let the guilt of it taunt him as they rode. He should have told her, as soon as the decision had been made, which was not only this morning with Beitris, nor last night when she’d completely captivated him and everybody else inside that croft while she told the most remarkable and entertaining tale. He should have told her, whenever it was that he first understood that he could not possibly be responsible for her death. Mayhap he’d known it at the very moment he’d kissed her.
He would do better by her, he vowed, whatever that meant, whatever that might require.
But for now, she was breaking his heart. He shifted the reins to one hand and slid his freed hand under her legs, drawing her up more closely against his chest, that she might find ease. She gave no protest but allowed him to arrange her so that her head was nestled between his shoulder and arm, and her legs were not merely dangling along his left thigh but thrown over it that she was now securely cradled in his arms.
“Shh now, lass,” he said. “It is done.”
“I should not have...” she began after a long sniffle. “I—”
“Aye, like as no’, there was a better way to get it out. But dinna be battering yourself about it now. As I said earlier, we’ll talk later.”
“But will you tell them I am sorry?”
No, he would not. That was for her to manage, but he wouldn’t pummel her now with yet more stress.
“Dinna worry about the lads. They’ve seen worse.”
She slept eventually, surely drained after the powerful emotions she’d spent castigating them.
After a while and as she slumbered yet, Finn caught up to Calum and walked his horse beside him. His captain peered around Calum’s arm to see for himself what her state might be.
“Sleeping still,” Calum advised.
“I tell ye, this lass’ll be the death of me. How can she believe we’ve so little regard for her? She ken we’re heartless?” There was no rancor in Finn’s crusty tone, only misery.
“She’s frightened,” Calum reminded him. He glanced down, making sure her eyes were yet closed and said in a lower voice, “Finn, you make sure the lads ken, when we camp tonight, I dinna want one mention made of what all that was. Not one word.”
Finn nodded, his crinkling brow suggesting he was irked that Calum might even think they’d give her grief about her tantrum. “Nae, the lads are all torn up themselves.’ But then he lifted and dropped his slim shoulders in a shrug. “Sure enough though, they blame you.”
Calum rolled his eyes at this. He had more to concern himself with than their fractured emotions or even their opinion of him. He needed to figure out what he might do with her. He was beginning to think she might not be safe at Caerhayes at all, no matter how furiously he might insist to his uncle that she was innocent. Every time he thought about what he might say to convince Domhnall that she would be spared, he kept hearing those words that had been given to her stepfather, that she’d shared with him. Who could have—would have—paid Angus Faucht to murder Calum and his men?
He would have liked to have gotten closer to the party he’d been hoping to meet with now, but in truth they’d kept the pace slower than the terrain would allow while she’d slept. As it was, they stopped only a few miles from the area of the Methven Wood, where he hoped to find William Wallace and his partisans on the morrow.
Julianna roused only when Calum reined in the big black. Calum waited until she was wakeful enough to maintain her seat while he dismounted. When he’d gently pulled her from the steed and set her on the ground, she drew a deep breath. Fortification, he assumed, before she faced the lads.
“Go on then,” he said while he worked on the leather straps of his saddlebag. He faced the horse then, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She didn’t need coddling or hand-holding for this endeavor. Though she’d earlier requested that he convey her apologies, he understood that was asked under duress and while she was so overcome with emotions. Julianna Elliot would take care of her own apology and penance, he was sure. She was powerful in that regard, he knew.
She nodded quickly to bolster herself and walked toward the circle Tomag had already drawn in the dirt. Calum remained near his horse and only listened, foreseeing no trouble on either the giving or receiving end of what was to follow.
She cleared her throat twice, he thought, but finally had everyone’s attention. From behind he could not see her hands so had to assume that they were wrestling with each other in front of her; he’d noticed that sort of wringing previously. But he knew some pride for how straight she stood and how high she held her head.
“I should—I want to—apologize to you,” she began. “All of you.” Another throat-clearing took a moment. “I can try to make you understand my...discontent earlier but that makes no difference. You all, every one of you, have been from day one very courteous to me, and my behavior was both inexcusable and so very misplaced. You didn’t deserve that, not any part of it.” Her shoulders dropped in some uneasiness as she begged for what mattered most to her. “But please say you’ll forgive me. Please don’t...don’t hate me for—"
“Och, lass,” Finn cut her off. “Dinna talk like that. We could no more hate you than we could sweet, innocent Mairi. Now dinna be crying, there’ll be none of that. Us lads dinna ken how to make that stop.”
Artur surprised Calum by saying. “Courteous, lass? That all?” But he softened this by adding, “I ken we’ve been more than that.”
“Aye, and aren’t we friends,” Booth said, clarifying Artur’s comments.
Tomag and Peadar chimed in as well, that Calum was quite proud of his men for how good they really were to her, never mind that he couldn’t imagine how a person might not be charmed by her.
“I am forgiven, then?” She went further. Calum heard the relief in her lighter tone.
“Nothing to forgive, lass,” Artur said.
“We put up with this one’s snoring,” Finn said, cocking a thumb at Artur, “though it’s been known to wake the dead and pardon lass, and Peadar’s eye-watering gas, and the fact that Booth really has no purpose here, since he dinna ride so well and cries like a lass when any battle comes near, so aye, lass, we can stand a little caterwauling from you.”
“You are all very dear,” she said. “If I cooked half as well as Beitris—well, if I knew how to cook at all—I would make you the most decadent and wonderful dessert you’ve ever seen.”
“Dinna care so much for those ifs,” Artur said, scratching the back of his neck, though his grin was intact.
“I have nothing to offer, though,” she said with some sadness. “But I vow, I will figure out some way to repay how kind you’ve been to me.”
“Aye now,” that’s no’ true,” Finn said with a scowl. “Ye might have seen us skewered by Gavin Spence and his men or might have left Peadar to his own quiet demise, but ye did no’.”
“Anyway, ye dinna repay friends but with friendship, lass,” Tomag said. He faced her, which meant he faced Calum as well, as he hovered yet behind Julianna. Tomag’s pale expression, crinkled brow and puckered mouth, suggested he thought everyone knew this. More pride swam through Calum, as those words, almost verbatim, had once been part of a scolding he’d given to Tomag and a few other lads who’d been fighting within the ranks a few years back.
He strode forward, knowing all would be well. They were all going to be just fine.
When the fire had been made and everyone settled around it and Calum had returned to the camp after scouting around for a bit, he approached Julianna.
She’d been sitting on the ground next to Booth, the lad showing her how to play one of his silly hand-slapping games. A bare spot remained on her left, as if all knew that position belonged to Calum. She turned as his shadow fell over the pair, her pretty eyes alight with laughter at Booth’s nonsense.
Calum extended his hand down to her. “Let’s have that talk now.”
Only a slight hesitation preceded her reaching up to place her hand in his. Pulling her to her feet, Calum wondered if he’d ever noticed how small and fragile her hand was. He didn’t release it but led her away from the fire and the men, not too far, just toward a little clearing beyond some thicker brush that he’d discovered but a few minutes before. There were no tall trees here that the small flames of the fire and the men were clearly visible, though their voices were only muted murmurs now at this distance. And, though they were yet close, soon enough they would be cloaked in darkness as the sun had minutes ago passed out of sight over the western horizon.
Calum released her hand when he stopped. He faced her, but looked left, indicating a larger rock mound that might make a fine chair. “Do you want to sit?”
Julianna shook her head, watching him warily, the laughter gone from her eyes.
Calum took a deep breath and said what he should have as soon as he knew it was truth. “My plan, in regard to you, is that I inform my uncle that you hadn’t any part in the ambush, that you should be spared.”
“All right,” she said, waiting.
He had left it hanging, the intimation of a but discerned.
“Julianna, I can only promise you that I dinna want you to die, but...but Rory was killed and Domhnall will want...he can no’ let that go unpunished. Likely, you will be—remain—a prisoner of the MacKinnons.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip, considering this. She did not, though, focus any anger or fear onto him. “What...what would that mean? Would I be locked away...forever?”
He shook his head quickly to disabuse her of this notion. “Nae, nothing like that. We’ve no’ had too many political prisoners, but a few over the years. They’ve been treated fairly. But you could no’ leave Caerhayes.”
“Not ever?”
He shrugged, having no clear answer. “Domhnall will send word to your stepfather. If he would make recompense or take responsibility for his actions, likely you would be...freed.”
“He will not.”
“Then, unless someone of greater worth than Domhnall would speak for you, you would remain a prisoner.”
She digested this, her eyes darting across his chest and arms while she thought. “But you live there?” She asked then, lifting her gaze to him. “And Finn and Artur and everyone, of course?”
“Aye.”
“Would I—that is, would I be kept in a dungeon?”
Calum frowned. They weren’t barbarians. “Nae, lass. No dungeon.”
“And I could see you—all of you?”
He nodded.
She did the same. Then she flapped her arms at her side with some nervousness and pasted a grin on her face. “Better than I had hoped for.” Contrarily, her hands were fisted when they landed at her sides.
Jesu, was she trying to make him feel better?
“You would have chores, a position in the household like as no’. But you could write letters to your family. You have sisters, aye?”
“Yes, three. Do you have siblings?”
“Dozens of cousins, most young like Mairi, but no siblings.”
The mention of Mairi must have put her in a mind of something that she asked quickly, “Why do they live there? Robbie and Beitris. It’s so remote.”
“He’d had enough of the fighting, this war, dinna want his bairns raised without a da’.”
“That’s a rather extreme leap though,” she said. “I expect he lived at or grew up at Caerhayes?”
“Aye. But he dinna get on with his own da’—oil and water, as they say, those two.”
Her mouth gaped. A light came on. “Is he Domhnall’s son?”
Calum nodded.
“That sounds...complicated.”
He let loose a crooked grin and a wee chuckle. “Aye.”
“It’s probably none of my business...”
His grin improved. But she’d be thrilled to listen if he cared to share, he understood. “You dinna want to hear that maudlin tale, lass.”
Absently, perhaps without really knowing what she did, she reached out and plucked something from his plaid, just in the middle of his chest. As she studied the crumb, a piece of thistle, he thought, she said, “That’s not giving me so much hope that your uncle will listen to reason, to the truth.”
“Then I’ll take you away.” This came as no great surprise, even as he was sure this thought hadn’t formed fully inside his head but only had floated in the periphery the last few days.
And now her gaze was sharp and steady on him, and a wee bit breathless. “You would do that? Defy your uncle?”
God, what he wouldn’t do. “Aye. You are innocent.”
Her lips parted as she considered him. She blinked twice, digesting this. And then brightly, mayhap with some attempt to lighten the suddenly charged atmosphere, her tempting mouth quirked at one corner. “Well, yes, of that charge.”
Tilting his head, enjoying very much her sudden ease with him, he teased, “You will no’ be prosecuted for your crimes against Nicol Waiddo.”
She laughed outright at this, seemingly surprised by his jest. The moonlight highlighted the sparkle of her eyes and a flash of her white teeth. “I’d best keep to myself all the trouble I caused poor Ned Bean then,” she said playfully. “Though you should know that he had it coming.”
“Another uninterested party?” How could such a thing exist?
“Not exactly. He was very interested, but in my sister, Alice, the reigning beauty of Kinclaven.”
She was no such thing, Calum knew. He’d have to see to believe that a person walked the earth that could outshine Julianna.
“Overzealous, was he?”
“Ignorant, he was. I won’t bore you with the particulars, but suffice to say, he needed a little help understanding that he was not, after all, enamored of Alice.”
“Did this involve blood or any weapons?”
Warming to his teasing, she grinned pertly and shook her head, her gaze locked on his.
“Julianna, you practiced all types of nonsense on the Waiddo lad. How could you persecute someone for attempting the same?”
“That was different,” she said. She laid her fingers over her chest and deepened her voice to declare flamboyantly, “I was in love.”
Calum burst out laughing, completely bewitched.
She was so close. She was so damn lovely. Her infectious smile lit a fire inside him.
His laughter ceased, almost abruptly. He blew out a ragged breath.
“Lass, I...I need to kiss you again.” When she only stared at him, completely still, he thought he might want to kick himself for his callousness. Jesu, barbarian indeed! He held up his hand, as if that could stave off whatever images or recollections might have come to her mind. She’d been attacked not two days ago! “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I dinna want you to....Christ.”
***
HOW STRANGE.
Her first thought, as he’d stated that he needed to kiss her, had been that a simple nod would see his lips claim hers once more. How quickly the horrors of what those two men had tried to do was forgotten. It was shameful, really, that Calum MacKinnon had taken center stage in her life. How did that happen? How was it possible? It seemed nothing else mattered. Live or die, everything was upended, her entire life turned on its head. But Calum MacKinnon wanted to kiss her again.
And now he showed a rabid awkwardness, the likes of which she’d not ever known in him, and she wanted only to make things comfortable again. For the last few minutes, she’d known a lightness, true pleasure, as she’d not in so long. It was with him, and because of him, and there was no getting around that.
Sadly, his unease at his own statement had indeed brought to mind the near calamity that might have befallen her had she not managed to free herself only long enough to make a dash toward freedom. It wasn’t at the fore, but she knew it was there, and she didn’t want to chance that it might be thrust front and center if Calum did kiss her. Of all things, she wanted this least, that a kiss from Calum be in any way connected to that assault.
Julianna swallowed and suggested, with no small amount of nervousness herself, “Would you settle for just...holding me?”
Relief lightened his features. He inclined his head and said in his deep and low voice. “Aye.”
But then he didn’t move that Julianna supposed he was only waiting for her, wanting the action and the choice to be hers. Holding his steely-eyed gaze, and while her heart suddenly beat as if she’d run for miles, Julianna took one step and then another toward him. Still, he did not move, that she moved closer, until only inches separated her shoes from his boots. With her heart now firmly lodged in her throat and while he remained still, Julianna lifted his hand and pulled it toward her. She set it on her hip and placed her hand on the top of his arm. She kept contact with his eyes yet, realizing that his breathing was affected as well, coming in short bursts through his nose. She moved his other hand, laying it upon her other hip and closed her eyes as she melted into him, sliding her hand up his arm and pressing her cheek against his chest. Closing her eyes, she listened to his strong heart beating in time to her own. After a moment, she moved both her arms, folding her elbows close that she was tucked so securely against him. And finally he moved, circling his hands around her back and drawing her closer yet. The kiss he pressed against her hair was, Julianna thought, both sweet and telling.
Once, this man was to be her husband and now was naught but her captor. How remarkably peculiar that right now, with his arms holding her so warmly, so securely, she didn’t care how he’d come to be in her life.
They stayed like that for several minutes, neither in any hurry to disrupt this perfect circumstance.
But then Julianna wondered, against his chest, “When did you decide—or know—that you didn’t want me to die?”
She felt him draw in a deep breath and his response came a moment later.
“A seedling of that idea might have whispered to me at the alehouse, or mayhap when Gavin Spence came.”
She liked the way she felt his words, rumbling up from his chest, as well as heard them.
“I really am sorry that my stepfather ruined...everything.” She was of a mind, and not only suddenly, that she might have been well-pleased with her bridegroom if things had gone as intended. She was beginning to believe—to fully understand—that her original impressions of him as brutal and angry and cold were naught but her fear reading him. He wasn’t those things, not under normal circumstances. He was holding her now, being considerate and so very kind to her that her heart ached for what might have been.
He tightened his arms around her and, with more ease, closer to what they’d enjoyed earlier, he said, “This dinna feel ruined, lass.”
No, she smiled against him. It did not.