Heart in the Highlands by Heidi Kimball
Chapter Twenty-Four
Callum glanced at the clock. Was it truly only three? The day had inched forward, Davies droning on about the price of wool and the advantages and disadvantages of different breeds of sheep. And the crop rotation. Always the crop rotation. The man was an excellent steward, but sometimes Callum fantasized about replacing him with someone who could make talk of oats and potatoes more interesting.
A knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” he said, casting a look at Davies that indicated he should wait to continue his monologue.
To his surprise, it was Katie who appeared in the doorway. “I—oh. I did not mean to interrupt.” Her gaze swept over the room, taking note of Davies and then coming to rest on the stacks of ledgers on Callum’s desk. She took a step back.
“Not at all,” he hurried to say, half afraid she would change her mind. His pulse thudded in his throat, for the fact that she had sought him out surely meant . . . something. He crossed the room and motioned her in. “Come in,” he repeated. “We can finish this discussion tomorrow, Davies,” he said, dismissing the man.
“Very good, my lord.” The man closed the door on his way out.
Once the steward had left, Katie crossed the threshold, a large leather-bound book clutched to her chest. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I know you are busy.”
“These will never go away,” Callum said, gesturing to the large piles on his desk. “But I am more than happy tae make them wait.”
She huffed out a little laugh, one that bespoke her nervousness. Of what though? Him? Being alone together?
Before he could ask, she said, “Harriet told me you asked her to take on the role of Charlotte’s nursemaid.”
He stepped around the desk. “I should have consulted ye first, I know. But I wanted tae surprise ye.”
She gave him a half smile. “Harriet would have disapproved of anyone else we might have chosen, so I think it worked out rather well. Thank you for seeing her and Archie settled. They are like family to me.”
He nodded but got the sense she hadn’t come to speak of Harriet and Archie or to thank him. “I want them tae feel at home here.” He caught her glancing toward the door. “Would ye like to sit down? Or were ye already planning to take your leave?”
She blushed, a crimson stain climbing her neck and onto her cheeks.
“I won’t bite ye, I promise. Mrs. Hammill already brought me a late-afternoon tray, and I’ve had my fill.” He playfully patted his stomach and grinned, but Katie still didn’t move. He came around the desk and took a seat in one of the chairs near the fireplace, hoping she would follow his lead and take the seat beside him.
Her grip on the book in her hands tightened before she took the chair next to him as he’d intended. A rush of awareness shot through him at her closeness. Katie’s cheeks held a heightened color, and her eyes sparkled as if she’d recently been outside. Would he ever grow immune to the graceful slope of her neck, the full bow of her upper lip? He doubted it.
As if she could read his thoughts, she pressed her lips into a thin line. Callum held his breath, afraid of what she might say. “I read the pages of your journal,” she said at length. She let out a deep breath. It seemed to have taken all her strength to push those few words out.
“Ye did.” It was not a question. It was more of a drumbeat thumping through him, an antsy unsettledness, as he worried over her reaction to what he’d shared with her.
She drew the folded pages from her book and looked down at them. “From these few entries, I understand you better.” She handed them to him. “But please, don’t remove any more pages from your journal. If there’s anything else you wish to share with me, you can simply mark the passage. I’ll not read more than you wish me to.”
He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded.
“And now I have something I wish to show you.”
His throat bobbed. “Yes. Please.”
She dropped her hand and scooted her chair closer to his, opening the book she’d brought. On the first page was a sketch of an old man. He was thin, and his wrinkled skin hung on his face, but he wore a contented smile. Katie reached to turn the page.
“Wait,” Callum said, setting his hand atop the page to stop her. “Is this your grandfather?” This was not at all the man he’d imagined. From what he’d understood, his father and Katie’s grandfather had been friends back at Eton. He’d imagined the man little different from his own father—the very image of severity and intimidation. He couldn’t quite grasp that this man, so warm and inviting in ink, would consider someone like his father a friend.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I drew it right before I left for Scotland. But he’s frailer here than he once was, before he suffered from consumption.”
“Is it still painful to remember him?”
“The sting has eased over the years. Now I can think of him and remember only the comfort of his love, the happiness he brought me.” A soft smile lit her face.
Callum’s gaze moved from Katie’s face to the sketch of her grandfather and back again. He most certainly looked like a man capable of love. “I’m glad.”
She turned the page, and Callum’s breath was sucked away. Before him lay the view from Katie’s bedroom. He saw the bed first: empty. A mess of twisted sheets and dented pillows. The barren room was all lines and angles, drawing the eye toward the windows, which had been sketched in such a way they brought to mind the bars of a prison. In the distance the sheep, the moors, the Cairngorms all beckoned, yet the viewer was captive, locked inside the room.
“This was the day you left,” she whispered.
He stared, caught up in the simple emotions the sketch evoked. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I knew you’d . . . but I didn’t . . .”
She shook her head.
“But ye kept the picture of me—why?” he managed to ask.
“In truth, I don’t know. I tore it in two a few weeks after you’d left, when it became clear you weren’t coming back. But when I thought about throwing it into the fire . . . I couldn’t.”
The clock chimed the hour, and Katie turned the page. This was a simple drawing, two hands cupped together. In the palm rested a simple gold band identical to the one he’d given Katie on their wedding day. Though the drawing itself was simple, Katie’s desolation came through with startling clarity. As did her acute loneliness.
He could hear the echo of a thousand questions, and every one of them began with why.
“I’ve always wondered,” Katie said, head still bent over the picture, “if you might have stayed if I had been enough—”
“No—no!” Callum shook his head with vigor. “Ye must never think that; never believe it.”
“I know you left because of your father. But if you had cared for me at all . . .” Her breath came out as a sigh. “Why did you not take me with you?”
Panic sliced through his chest; he wanted her to understand. Needed her to understand. “Please, Katie, look at me.”
She lifted her gaze, wariness in the arch of her brow.
His voice grew hoarse as he stared into her sea-colored eyes. “My leaving had nothing tae do with ye and everything to do with my father. I did consider taking ye. And I rejected the notion because I wanted to rid myself of anything that bore a connection to him. He’d arranged our marriage, and I thought that somehow tainted what we could have had.”
She lowered her gaze, her dark lashes concealing her reaction to what he’d said.
How badly he wanted to reach out and touch her, to use his hands to soothe away her doubts. Instead, he made a confession. “But it was more than that. Our first night together, I woke tae hear ye crying.”
Her eyes flew up to meet his.
He cleared his throat. “I thought perhaps ye regretted marrying me. That I’d somehow already made you unhappy. I convinced myself ye’d be better off without me.”
“It was not you, nor anything you’d done,” she whispered. “It was only the newness of it all, the heartsick feeling of missing all I’d ever known. If I’d had more courage, I might have turned to you for comfort.”
His heart contracted, the pain of it gripping his chest. She’d needed comfort. She’d needed reassurance. And instead he’d forsaken her. His jaw tightened. “Leaving was wrong. I should have comforted you. The moment I spoke those vows to you, we were inseparably joined, connected in a bond so intimate no man—not me, not my father—should have torn it asunder. Ultimately no one, no one, is responsible for the choice I made to leave, save me. If there’s even a wee part of ye that believes ye were somehow at fault, let me correct ye now. Ye were enough; ye are enough. In every way a man can be pleased with his wife, I am pleased with ye.” He held his breath, trying to read her. “Do ye believe me?”
She blinked rapidly before nodding. After a quick swipe of the tears from her cheeks, she turned the page.
As soon as the next page was revealed, Callum was assaulted with watercolor instead of a sketch. Jagged moors dripping with dark violet, so dark it was almost black. The scene was so at odds with the beloved hills and purple heather that he knew, a sick feeling coiled in his gut. The painting was evocative and melancholy. Would Katie be forever haunted when August came around?
He nodded, and she turned the page once more.
Another sketch, this one with Katie outside. It was drawn from her perspective as she glanced down. Callum made out the wind whipping at her skirts, a few sheep dotting the landscape in the background. It wasn’t until he looked more closely that he noticed something about her slim figure. He traced the charcoal marking the gentle swell of her belly, aching for an opportunity lost to him.
Words failed him. “Ye were . . . frightened?” he finally choked out.
“Terrified. And strangely, lonelier than before I knew our child grew within my womb.” She paused and let out a heavy breath. “I am not sharing this to punish you,” she said softly.
Air hissed between his teeth. “I know. But the regret—”
“Regret is good, Callum. But it will not fix what has been broken. Regret is not enough to build a marriage on.”
The silence reverberated with that truth. “It seems to choke me sometimes,” he confessed. Seeing the pictures had confirmed his uttermost fear. That he’d hurt her too deeply to ever earn her forgiveness.
She slid an errant tendril of hair behind her ear. “I am not the only one who will have to let go of the past if we wish to move forward.”
He brushed his hand along the line of his jaw. “I fear even if by some miracle ye find a way to forgive me, I will never be able tae forgive myself.”
She said nothing, only reached out and set a hand on his shoulder. The warmth of her touch, even through his jacket, was immediate; he enjoyed it far too much.
“I, too, am in need of forgiveness,” she said.
He jerked his head up and regretted it when she withdrew her hand. “What could ye possibly need forgiveness for?”
She met his gaze with authority. “For not telling you I carried our child. I denied you your daughter.” Her throat bobbed. “And I denied Charlotte her father. I should have told you—” She broke off, shaking her head. “You may have hurt me, but it does not excuse what I did.”
It was the last thing Callum had expected. He’d abandoned her. Surely, surely Katie had been justified in keeping the pregnancy to herself. But the grief in her eyes said her remorse was as real as his. “For my part, there is nothing to forgive,” he said. “Ye were protecting yourself, protecting Charlotte. I cannot blame ye for that.” He took one last look at the sketch with Katie’s slightly rounded belly and then closed the sketchbook. He bent over, resting his elbows on his thighs. “If we are not careful, we’ll both drown in an ocean of regret.”
She cleared her throat. “The other night. You said—you said you . . .” Her breath hitched. “You said you were falling in love with me.”
He nodded, silent. The backs of his knees tingled with expectation.
“My grandfather had an arranged marriage. Within the first year it evolved into a love match.” She licked her lower lip, a nervous gesture. “He hoped the same for me, for me to find love in my marriage, even if it didn’t begin that way.”
His blood was thrumming now, the hair at his nape standing on end as he waited for her to finish.
“For him, I want to try. And for Charlotte.” She drew in a sharp breath and whispered, “How can I not try for Charlotte?”
He lifted his shoulders, unable to put his question into words.
“It is going to take time, Callum. I don’t know how to forgive you. How to forget what you did to me. Or if it is even possible.” His mind raced toward the sketch she’d drawn of him, torn in two and yet kept tucked away for all these years. There was silence for one heartbeat, then two. “But I would like to try.”
Her words began to sink in. They crept over him slowly, like the first tentative rays of the sunrise, slowly lightening the horizon until at once the sun burst into its full brightness and glory.
A second chance.
That was what she was offering him.
He bent his head down and placed a fist over his mouth, his entire body shuddering.
She set a hand on his arm. “And here I thought what I’d said would make you happy,” she said, smiling, though it was obvious she felt the solemnity of the moment the same as he.
He lifted his head and laughed through the emotion swelling in his throat. “Aye, lass. Very happy.”
He wanted to revel in the promise of what she’d just said, to bask in the hope she was offering. But she deserved the truth. He interlocked his fingers to keep from touching her in return. “I must be honest with ye, Katie. Love . . . is not something I have much experience with. I’m afraid I won’t be any good at it. I am going to stumble, to fall. I certainly won’t get it right all at once.” His breath caught in his lungs. “I am trying. But I cannae bear to disappoint ye again.”
Her hand trembled as she raised it from his arm, hesitancy in every inch she moved. Callum felt the weight of her palm long before she cupped his cheek. He let out an audible sigh at the contact. Her touching him. Showing him a measure of trust.
“That is all either of us can offer,” she said. “A willingness to try. For now, it is enough.”
He swallowed and nodded, leaning into her touch a little. He felt unaccountably weary, as though they’d spent the last half hour prying open his chest and rearranging his organs.
Seeming to sense his inner exhaustion, she dropped her hand and took the sketchbook from him. “Perhaps we have tried enough for today,” she said, the hint of a smile in her voice.
He lifted his head. Despite his weariness, he didn’t want her to leave. When she left, he would be back to hours of ledgers and Davies’s monologues. Having Katie here beside him was like seeing an island after months upon months at sea. He wasn’t ready to let her out of his sight.
“Not quite enough,” he said, getting to his feet. He went over to his desk and moved a few of the ledgers to reveal his well-worn journal. After flipping through the pages, he paused on a date in early February. He handed it to her and then sat beside her, his head close to hers as they read.
February 3, 1813
I’ve introduced myself to everyone here as “Mr. Rowand,” for I do not wish my past to follow me here. Whatever I make of myself, I want it to be my own, not something given to me by the grace of my father’s title.
I have entered a partnership with William Reynolds. He has provided two-thirds of the capital, which means I provide most of the grunt work—sixteen hours a day or more—but William seems pleased with my efforts. I am satisfied, as it leaves me too busy and too tired to dwell much on the past.
The one thing I cannot stand here is the slave business. It galls me to see men and women treated as chattel, expendable and easily replaced. On our way to meet a contact, William and I walked past the slave auctions, and I was sickened by what I saw. An old man and his wife who had been trained as house slaves were to be auctioned off since their old master had died. On impulse, I purchased the two of them together.
I have freed them and pay them a monthly wage, so in that, at least, I am satisfied. Abisai and Carina now make my life far more comfortable than I deserve, but they have paid me in far more than the service they provide. In them I have begun to remember what love can be. Abisai watches for opportunities to make Carina’s burden lighter. She bakes for him, waiting for a smile to light his face when he tastes her fare. They cherish each other. There is no doubt: they were never meant to be anyone’s property.
The whole matter has made me think of our own laws. We Scots understand and revere freedom, for it is something we have long been denied. We bend the knee to British rule. And in the eyes of British law, a wife is little more than her husband’s chattel. Was my mother ever more than that to my father?
Did I make a mistake in leaving Katie behind? She has not responded to any of the letters I have written, so perhaps she is content with the situation as it lies. But if ever we live again as man and wife, I swear I will treat her with the respect she deserves. She will be my equal in every way.
Katie pressed the pages of the journal together, closing the book.
“I meant it, Katie,” Callum said. “I want our marriage to be a partnership in every sense of the word. Ye should feel free to speak your mind and make your opinions known. I hope I have made that clear to ye.”
She pursed her lips, considering. “I have felt that, Callum. And it means a great deal. Thank you for letting me choose whether or not to come back to Scotland with you. You chose to leave, and . . . well, I needed to choose to come back.”
He nodded, lacing his fingers together.
“Tell me of this Captain Reynolds,” she implored. “Of Abisai and Carina. Of the Caribbean.”
And so he did, telling her of the palm trees and exotic fruits and the horrors of seeing slavery firsthand and the gut-clenching helplessness that came from not being able to do anything about it. He told her of Carina’s cooking and Abisai’s stooped back and how they’d come to be his family, along with Captain Reynolds and his wife, Lydia.
“I’d love to take ye to Barbados to meet them. And Charlotte too. Ye cannae imagine the fuss they would make over her. And ye could sit on the veranda and paint. Glorious scenes, vibrant colors ye’ve likely never painted before.”
One corner of her mouth curved up, revealing her dimple. “I’d like to travel. But isn’t it quite a long journey?”
“I see,” he said, with mock severity. “Ye do not like the thought of being aboard a ship with me for three long months.”
“That isn’t what I—”
He grinned, and she swatted at his arm.
“Perhaps not Barbados yet,” he agreed. “For now, I would settle for something more modest. What would ye think about ye and Charlotte joining me for breakfast every morning?”