He lifted an eyebrow. “I cannae change who I was a decade ago. Believe me, I’ve wished otherwise. But I’m nae that pup any longer. Now lead the way. My knees are getting cold.”
She started off in the direction of Edgley House. The coach might have driven them right up to the front door, but she understood why Callum had had them stop four streets away. He wanted them to be seen. He wanted Dunncraigh to know where they went. Thinking about that, though, only made her more nervous, and she had something she’d much rather contemplate at the moment.
“You’re the one who chose to wear your tartan,” she pointed out, glancing down at his kilt.
“I’m a Highlander, am I nae? Buckskins served mebetter in Kentucky, but I dunnae want to be seen as an outsider here. Nae if I’m to convince a magistrate of any of this.”
She could hear the distaste in his voice as he spoke the last bit, but hopefully he would keep to that plan until he actually began to believe it would be better than charging headlong into the fray. And hopefully he wasn’t just saying the words so she would stop arguing with him.
Ahead of them Mrs. Ketchum and her lady’s maid approached from the direction of the bakery, the stout woman nearly falling over her own shoes as she caught sight of them. “Good morning, Mrs. Ketchum,” Rebecca called, smiling, before anyone could duck into hiding.
“Lady Geiry,” the older woman greeted her, inclining her head, her wide-eyed gaze on Callum.
“Oh, do forgive me,” Rebecca went on. “Callum, Mrs. Ketchum. Morag, my brother-in-law, Callum MacCreath. Lord Geiry.”
“Ye’re the one with the devil wolf,” the maid exclaimed, covering her mouth when her employer hit her with a reticule.
“Aye,” Callum returned. “I am.”
“So ye’re back in Inverness, m’laird?” Mrs. Ketchum took up, her voice pitched a little high. “From America, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “From Kentucky. Aye.”
“Do ye mean to stay, then?”
“I reckon I will. For a time, anyway. I’ve my duties here to attend to, now.”
“Oh.” The matron visibly shook herself. “Oh. Well, that’s bonny, then. If ye’ll excuse me, I’ve some biscuits to purchase.” Shoving her maid ahead of her, the woman reversed course and dove through the bakery door withnot an ounce of subtlety. It was rather marvelous, really, seeing people flummoxed by someone other than her.
“That’s the most polite I’ve heard you be since you returned,” Rebecca noted with a smile, continuing up the street toward the harbor.
“I was worried she’d have an apoplexy if I scowled.”
The woman likely would have. “I’m not complaining,” she went on. “It’s… nice not to have the first question on everyone’s lips be an inquiry as to my health or how I’m managing. Especially when they don’t care and are only looking for fodder to gossip over.”
He looked sideways at her. “Is that how it’s been?”
“I had to stay indoors for most of the first six months, but since then, yes. I suppose they’re just being polite—I mean, I wouldn’t know what to say, either—but even a chat about the weather would have been better than simply staring.”
“Ye should have climbed a tree. That would have ’em wagging their tongues about someaught else.”
A laugh escaped from her chest. “Yes, about how I’d gone mad and needed to be sent straight to Bedlam.”
“I never thought ye mad. I thought ye daring.”
She had been much more daring before she turned fifteen or sixteen, though that might just as easily have been ignorance on her part. Raised by a too indulgent father and allowed to run free while he attempted to make business connections in a new town, she’d relished Callum’s swift friendship and his unconventional ways.
“Why are ye staring at me?” he asked, pulling her a breath closer to his side.
Rebecca shrugged. “For some reason it struck me last night that I used to enjoy your company.”
“Aye, back when I put worms on hooks so ye wouldnae have to touch ’em.” A grimace pulled at hismouth. “We had some fine adventures. When we were bairns.”
She frowned right back at him. “You mean to discount everything in the past, then? Yes, we were naïve, and we’re both different now, but wewerethose bairns. I used to love chatting with you. And adventuring with you.”
“Nae, I’m nae discounting who we were. I also spent ten years to nae be that idiot any longer. I stopped being naïve.”
“But young Callum did have his moments,” she pointed out. “We’re both here now because we were friends back then, because we liked similar things.”
