It was Robbie, but Calum didn’t stop. He’d blacken MacDonald’s damned eyes later. After he found Amy.
He walked down the wharf, asking if anyone had seen her. Then he moved past the opposite end of the hall, where an open field of freshly mown grass had become the place for the children to play and run wild and free after being cooped up for a month in a ship.
And that was where he found her... or at least he spotted her head.
It was bobbing up and down in a large crowd of little girls. He moved closer, trying to figure out what she was doing.
Her head and her braid flew up and then down, up, then down.
When he was about ten feet away he could see her clearly. She was skipping rope and singing some silly rhyme about fleas and knees and the number of peas in trees.
The MacDonalds were right. He was trailing her like a hound. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stood there, half relieved and half scared of what he was feeling for her.
Calum had never really needed someone in his life or felt he needed someone, especially a woman. He had thought marriage was not for him. He had been so used to living alone, being the bachelor for so long, that his loneliness had become part of his routine.
And because that was what he was used to, he was reluctant to change it. There was safety in his scheduled routine. He had thought he liked his life exactly as it was.
When things in his world became strained or didn’t meet his expectations, he would fight and struggle to keep everything the same—detailed, structured, and meticulous, as if by making everything orderly that would fix what was really wrong, which was that he was alone, and deep down inside he didn’t want to be.
But when he listened to that laughter, when he saw her playing with the children and jumping rope in time to some nonsensical rhyme, with her braid bouncing up and down and her skirts halfway up her calves, he just didn’t care.
Because with Amy he had no routine, there was no way it was supposed to be. This whole thing was foreign to him because for the first time in his life he was in love.
Chapter Forty-Three
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
—Edward Lear
On the notes of a fiddle and pipe, laughter rode out of the meeting hall and into the cool night air. Inside there was a celebration. The next day the Highlanders would leave to go to new settlements inland and new farms far from the coast, some as far as Canadian borders.
They laughed and sang and rejoiced. They toasted their benefactors with cider and beer and cried over the friends they had found at a time when their lives had seemed most bleak.
Amy watched the dancing, the reels and jigs, and listened to the lively music. She had never been happier than this last week. She supposed it should have been strange to her to feel this way. She been to a hundred or more parties and balls, had been to every kind of social event known to society. And there had been some real doozies.
She had been to birthday parties for thoroughbred horses. She’d been to opera openings and art parties and parties just because someone wanted to serve strawberries and champagne. She had been to grand balls where a duchess was guest of honor and another where an Austrian prince danced with her. His principality needed money desperately.
But she had never had as much fun or felt as if she belonged in a celebration more than she did in this room with these people.
She tipped her head back and twirled an ankle to the beat of the dance, her eyes closed as she caught the refrain and hummed it over and over. Something brushed her hand and she opened her eyes. She was looking up into Calum’s grinning face.
The next thing she knew he had pulled her into the circle of dancers, his arm around her waist as he twirled her round and round until she was laughing so hard she could barely keep time to the music.
He swung her around again, then led her down the line of clapping dancers, only instead of taking their places at the end of the line, he danced her right outside onto the boardwalk and kept on twirling her down past the docks.
“Calum!” She gasped as he swung her around until she was dizzy. She had to grab handfuls of his shirt to keep her balance.
“Don’t you worry now, Amy-my-lass. I’ve got you.”
And he did. His hands were on her waist and she felt a small thrill in the pit of her stomach, the same thrill she got whenever he touched her.
