“This.” She thrust out her hand, palm up. “A stone heart. Fossilized, from the trees.”
“Bluidy hell,” he muttered, seeming to blanch.
Indeed, he looked ill.
But before she could wonder why, he lifted her by the waist again and plunked her onto his horse. As quickly, he swung up behind her, and then spurred the beast, muttering beneath his breath as they galloped away into the night.
And this time she knew exactly where they were going.
To the coast.
Chapter 11
“Your trials will end soon, lass.”
Callum ground out the words as they rode across a seemingly endless stretch of high, snowbound moorland, making for a deserted farmhouse and, just beyond it, a little known track that wound down the cliffs and led right to where – he hoped – Grim and his men waited with Wave-Dancer.
He could breathe better now that Seacliffe Castle was far behind them, but it hadn’t helped his mood to pass the ruin of Draugar Hall, a pitiful shell of crumbling stone, its shameful silhouette dark against the starry sky.
Even Lady Alanna turned her face away, as if the tumbled remains of his ancestral home proved too great a disgrace to occupy Grant lands.
Aye, well.
So be it if the pitiful place offended her.
He found Seacliffe more distasteful.
But her silence annoyed him. If she didn’t soon speak, he’d address her as Lady Winter to honor her frostiness.
For now, he leaned down, whispered above her ear, “I said, you’ll soon be rid of your cares.”
“Oh?” She responded at last, her tone icy. “Will you be stopping here, surrendering your steed so I can ride home? Leave you to stride off to wherever pleases you?”
“This beast is no’ mine, sweeting.” He saw no reason to lie. In truth, spewing falsehoods was one of the reasons for the blackness of his mood.
He abhorred lies and even if his were for the lady’s own good and safety, they still tasted bitter on his tongue.
More unsettling, each bluidy one felt like a stab through his heart – as if he should be comforting her, even murmuring sweet words of love to her.
He wasn’t a soppy, dreamy-headed poet.
For sure, he believed in romance even less than magic.
A man’s sword and his honor, fighting to right wrongs were the measure of his life, nothing else.
Still…
He didn’t like how she’d stiffened on hearing the truth about Storm.
He leaned in again, tried not to inhale the fresh, lavender scent of her hair. “Storm is borrowed.”
She huffed. “You mean you’re stealing him, too. Are you not worried he’ll be afraid at sea? Thrash about and hurt himself?”
“By the gods!” Callum swore. “Did you stick bog cotton in your ears? I said he’s borrowed. He’ll be going nowhere by ship. He belongs to a friend and we’ll be returning him up ahead, at an abandoned farmhouse.”
“The old MacCulloch place,” she said after a moment. “There are ghosts there.”
Callum laughed, he couldn’t help it. “Haints and silver trees. Your greatest love, a fat and aged cat. Can it be, lassie, that you’re of the fey or perhaps a hen wife?”
