Keir used to say the castle was a sanctuary.Callum is beginning to suspect it’s also a cage, beautiful, gilded, comfortable enough that you forget there’s a door.
Mrs.Grant waits, not impatient, just certain.
Callum sets Isla’s letter down carefully on the bed as if it’s something fragile.He smooths it once, his hand lingering on the paper, on her name, on the final line.
I love you.
He takes a breath.
“I’m going after her,” he says.
The words feel like stepping off a cliff.Terror and relief in the same heartbeat.
Mrs.Grant nods, unsurprised.“Good.”
Callum blinks.“Good?”
She gives him a look that could slice stone.“Did you think I’d tell you to sit in this room and mourn while she disappears into her life again?”
His mouth tightens.“She left because she didn’t want to disappear.”
“Aye,” Mrs.Grant says.“And now you’ll go and prove she doesn’t have to.”
Callum’s chest aches.“She left me the castle.”
Mrs.Grant waves that away with a small flick of her hand.“She left you a test, more like.”
Callum stares at her.
“She wants to know what you’ll choose,” Mrs.Grant says, as if explaining something obvious.“She wants to know whether you’ll hold on to stone or go after flesh and blood.”
Callum’s stomach twists.
Because that’s exactly it.
The castle has always been his excuse.
His constant.
His reason to stay put.
If he leaves, he risks everything: legal mess, headlines, responsibility, the gnawing fear that if he steps away, the only home he’s ever had will stop being his.
If he stays… he will become exactly what Isla fears.
Another man who explains absence.
Another man who chooses safety and calls it love.
Callum turns away from the bed and walks down the hall to his bedroom.Mrs.Grant follows.He opens his wardrobe and begins to pull clothes out: shirts, jeans, a coat.He packs quickly, not neatly.Function over ritual.His hands move with a strange urgency, as if speed can make up for yesterday.
Mrs.Grant watches him for a moment.“Where will you go?”
“New York,” he says, the word foreign in his mouth.“She said she was going there.”
Mrs.Grant nods.“And how will you find her in a city that size?”
Callum pauses.The practical question cuts through emotion like cold water.
