“One night willnae hurt her,” he responded tartly.
“That,” Sophie snapped, “is nae the point. Did ye nae like her, then?”
“What?” Callum managed, halfway to the door.
“The English girl. Was she pretty?”
“I didnae notice,” he lied.
Sophie narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh, I think ye did. Come on, let me have a wee look at her. Bring her up here. I bet she has good, young eyes. Jane and I struggle to read small print these days. She can read to us.”
“Nay. She’s goin’ tomorrow. And every lass ye send to try and seduce me will spend a night in the dungeons from now on, ye hear? I’ll nae have it, Grandmother.”
“I only want…”
“Aye, aye, ye only want what’s best for me,” he sighed. “I am nae angry, I only want ye to stop, do ye understand?”
Sophie sniffed, tugging at her blankets. “Ye need an heir, Callum. Ye must marry. Ye need a wife.”
He clenched his jaw, striding toward the door.
“I had a wife, Grandmother. Remember?”
She said nothing, and he slipped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.
3
He reallywasn’tcoming back, then.
Melody paced up and down the narrow cell, trying to make sense of where she was.
“I broke into a stranger’s castle,” she mumbled. “Just to flee my future. Well, more like postpone it. It was just supposed to be a little adventure.”
Onelastadventure before she married Lord Sinclair and had to stop reading and travelling and having fun…Being herself altogether.
“I got caught instead, and now I’m in the dungeon. For trespassing? Or worse? If he thinks I’m a spy…” she trailed off, shuddering.
Was the law different in Scotland? She thought it might be. Would she get executed? Oh, heavens.
“I suppose if I escape, I can go to visit Victoria and tell herall about this,” Melody mumbled. “And if I’m kept here as a prisoner and never sent back… well, then at least I won’t have to marry a dull, bald man that I do not love.”
A key clanged in the lock, quite without warning, and Melody spun around, eyes wide.
The door shuddered open, revealing the same stone-faced jailor who’d brought her a couple of neatly folded blankets earlier. Melody had not quite decided whether she was being rescued or was about to face a new horror before the man stepped back, revealing the oldest woman she had ever seen.
She was not sure if the woman had ever been tall, but now age had hunched her over and shrunken her spine until she was almost child-sized. Layers of shawls and blankets draped around her, and she rested heavily on a gnarled birch stick as a cane.
The jailor hovered assiduously at her side, one hand poised to assist her. The old woman ignored him, preferring instead to twist her head up to look at Melody with unrestrained interest.
“Me Lady, it is very cold and damp down here,” the man begged, after a moment of silence. “Let me escort ye back upstairs.”
“I’ll go upstairs when I’m ready, lad,” the woman snapped testily. “I want to see the English lass. Although, lassie, I heard ye talkin’ to yerself in here. That’s the first sign of madness, as they say.”
Melody flushed. “I… I don’t normally talk to myself.”
“Well, ye ought to. It’s the most sensible conversation ye will hear, in me experience.”
“B-But madness…”
