“I ken her scent. I told the healer I did not want her there.”
Ella fought to speak normally in Janet’s low tones. “Perhaps ye only imagined…or something of her scent remains in the room from before the healer called the lads and me to ye.”
Without the bandages over his eyes, she expected his gaze would be locked with hers. Was he trying to tell her he knew—or at least suspected—who she really was? Could he truly find her scent among all the others in the keep?
“Perhaps.”
His acquiescence surprised her. She’d thought he would continue to challenge her. As he held her safe in his arms, he’d hesitated before calling her Janet. Was he playing with her? Mocking her? That, she would not tolerate. She’d been through too much, and learned too much, to be any man’s plaything ever again.
But Janet wouldn’t know to take offense. “If she has been in yer chamber, ’twas no’ when I was present. And surely, she only meant to help ye.” She summoned a chuckle. “What man would object to a beautiful lass caring for him?”
Calum’s mouth thinned and his fists clenched. “What good is beauty to a blind man? Can ye tell me that?”
His words hit her like a dirk to the heart. Was that all she meant to him? He saw only her beauty? Even after the last year, he did not have a sense of who she was inside? He wouldn’t feel the same about her if he couldn’t see her ever again? She knew better. She’d spent enough time with him in the year since she’d come to Brodie to know he would have become bored with hervery quickly if all she was to him was someone pleasant to look at. They’d had too many conversations. He knew her history and all she had suffered. How she looked should be the least thing about her that he cared for.
Nay, she would not accept that his enjoyment of her beauty was all she was to him. His fear and frustration sent those resentful words spewing from his mouth.
He pursued her from the moment he met her. He cared for her. He made his feelings for her evident without words, even if she didn’t want to recognize them at the time. Instead, she held him off, certain that she was not ready to be close to any man, even one who interested her, and who pursued her as consistently as Calum did.
Why did every man think her beauty was all she had to offer? She thought Calum was better than that. She was sick of being wanted only for her face. It was the reason Thomas Ross immediately claimed her from among the three captured Munro lasses, but she showed him she had more spine in her than he expected. She escaped. It wasn’t her fault her own Munro chief forced her to return to Ross with the husband she didn’t want when Thomas came to reclaim her. Only her own strength in refusing food for weeks saved her, convincing Thomas that she would rather die than remain wed to him. At least then, he had done the honorable thing, brought her home to Munro and divorced her.
She thought Calum was different.
But was he? He treated Janet with as much courtesy—or more—than he’d given Ella lately. Did he really feel any affection for her, or did he treat any woman as well as he’d treated her in the past, and Janet now? Perhaps what she thought was his patience with her reluctance to get closer to him or to any man wasn’t patience, but some sort of friendly indifference. Maybeshe’d imagined he wanted her—after all, he’d never actually said as much.
Perhaps it was time to end this pretense. To remove this false face she wore around him, and to make him tell her the truth of how he felt about her. She wanted to tell him who she was, but the great hall was no place for such a conversation. For such a confrontation, if that was what it would become.
And if she was wrong about ending her deception right now, she could not let him fall in love with Janet. It would hurt her too much. She knew that was selfish. She’d ignored his advances again and again, but she’d learned, when she feared she’d lost him to his injuries, that she couldn’t bear to be without him. He might be angry at her for what she’d done, but the Calum she knew would soon get past it.
Or would he? After succumbing to such a terrible injury, was he still the Calum she knew?
Who would Calum become if, as he feared, he’d lost half his sight? If he could not be the warrior he was before Harlaw? Would he still be the man she could love? Friends warned her he might be changed. Different. But she believed, deep inside, he would be the same man he’d always been, and he would adjust. Iain would give him every opportunity to assume an important place in the clan, no matter what. She would help.
So she must wait until the healer determined it was time to reveal his eye—and his future. The Marymas feast was a time to celebrate the Assumption, the coming harvest, and to prepare for the long winter ahead. It was also a celebration of good fortune. Of miracles. Ella hoped for two—that the feelings Calum once held in his heart for her remained, and that once his eyes were no longer covered, he would see on her face and in her eyes, the feelings for him that she had hidden from him for too long.
Calum took another breath,annoyed when his belly rumbled in reaction to the scents of the feast being prepared. “I will return to my chamber now,” he announced, not even certain Janet remained with him. She’d been silent since his angry comment.
“I’ll take ye.” Her voice had taken on a gruff edge. Had he hurt her feelings? He would never deliberately do such a thing to any lass. Or he wouldn’t have, before Harlaw.
How much had this injury changed him? Calum knew he should be grateful he was still alive. Yet, he didn’t know how much longer he could stand living like this. The enforced blindness was bad enough, but worse were these feelings for a woman who was not Ella. So like her in some ways, but not in ways he could be certain were real or contrived.
If Ella was indeed pretending to be Janet, he didn’t know what he would do.
Was she? There were times he was convinced Ella attended him. At times, the onions Janet favored failed to completely mask her natural scent. But her touch seemed like that of a lass who worked with her hands, rougher than Ella’s. Her voice was different, deeper, but not remarkably so.
Altered.Deliberately?
He’d held this woman in his arms moments ago, more closely than he’d ever been able to hold Ella. He’d nestled her body against his chest, her heat warming his hands, his arms, his blood. Surely, he could not be this attracted to any other woman but his Ella. He was a warrior. A scout. And Ella was the woman he loved. The one that he wanted for his wife. The woman he wanted to bed, damn it. Without any doubt, he should know thedifference between them. Were his senses failing him? Or, after the blow to his head, was his mind?
Or was Janet a mummery cooked up between Mhairi and Ella to find a way around his wish that she not be involved in his care?
He could not bear for Ella to see him as weak and helpless, like a child. But, when he told Mhairi to keep her away from him, he might have been days too late to prevent it. She was at his bedside when he woke up. Had she cared for him until he regained his senses and objected? Had she cared for him as a mother cares for a sick wean? He couldn’t stomach the idea of it.
He wanted to erase from her memory the misery of her forced marriage to Thomas Ross. He wanted to show her what love could be when it was right. What loving him could do for her. For both of them. Yet, how was he to arouse her to accept him as a man if she’d cared for him for days while he was unconscious and helpless?
A sudden sense of guilt further soured his belly. Had she damaged her hands to make the ruse more believable?
And what harm had he just done by his angry words?What good was beauty to a blind man, indeed? Yes, Ella was beautiful, but he loved all of her, not only her appearance. Her beauty encompassed who she was, how she cared for others—even for him, perhaps—and how she fought for and protected herself and her friends at Ross.
