The door slams behind him.
Isla stands there, heart racing, skin still burning where his hand had been.
The castle exhales.
And nothing will ever be simple again.
Isla grabs the cassette and storms toward her room, desire and fury tangling in her blood.She’s going to hear his voice.She’s going to know the truth.And not even the near kiss, hot, unfinished, and haunting, will derail her.
Chapter10
The next day, Callum avoided the east wing all morning.
It was deliberate.Calculated.He gives himself reasons that sound responsible, inventory work, a call he needs to make, a leaking window in the north tower that won’t fix itself, but the truth is simpler and harder to face.
He doesn’t trust himself around her.
Not after the Keir’s private music room.
Not after the heat and the loss of control and the way his hand had known exactly where to go, as if his body had already made decisions his mind hadn’t sanctioned.And the touch of her was like a heat he’d never experienced.
So he stays busy.He stays grounded.He keeps to stone and wood and practical things that don’t look back at him with eyes full of challenge and fervor and something far more dangerous.
Guilt.
He tells himself Isla MacLaren will be doing what she always does, playing, searching, digging where she shouldn’t.He tells himself that if he stays away long enough, the edge will dull.The castle will settle.She will settle.
None of it works.
He hears the piano just after noon.
The sound threads through the stone corridors softly at first, barely there, the way fog rolls in without announcing itself.One note, then another.No flourish.No opening declaration.Just sound, hesitant, spare, almost reluctant.
Callum stops where he is, fingers still on the latch of a supply closet, his breath caught halfway in.
This isn’t the music from the night before.
That had been defiant.Angry.A woman staking her claim with both hands and daring the world to argue.
This—
This is something else entirely.
It doesn’t build the way a performance does.There’s no arc meant for an audience, no clean progression, no satisfying resolution.Notes drift, collide, break apart.Silence stretches too long between phrases, as if she’s forgetting to breathe.
Callum’s chest tightens.
This isn’t technique.
This is grief.
Not the public kind, the kind she’d worn at the funeral with her spine straight and her voice steady.This is private.Unfiltered.A sound made when no one is meant to hear.
And yet?—
Here he is.Longing to be near her.Longing to make certain she’s all right.
He tells himself he’s only passing through.Only checking that the staff have kept the wing secure.Only making sure she isn’t doing something that will get her hurt.
